Page 6 of Faking it For Summer

Silence fills the line. I watch a pelican walk along the sandy white beach, looking for some scrap of food. The waves crash into the rocks near the lighthouse, pounding as hard as my heart is.

“You can take me.”

My stomach flips for reasons that have nothing to do with Rex and his engagement. Heat fills my cheeks, and a fire ignitesin my stomach. I brush my hair away from my face as my throat constricts.

Luke Haverbrook has been my best friend since we were four. When we were thirteen, after we almost kissed, we made a promise to never cross that line.

Now, suddenly, it feels like that promise and our friendship could become dangerously complicated.

If I took him and it went wrong, I wouldn’t just feel embarrassed in front of everyone; I could also lose my best friend. The thought sobers me. The thought of risking my friendship with Luke makes losing Rex mean absolutely nothing. But the thought of him pretending to be my boyfriend in front of everyone fills me with a shot of excitement. Everybody would be shocked, and I wouldn’t mind just a little bit of positive attention on me.

chapter two

Luke

“Wait, what?” Mia’s familiar tone sounds just as shocked as I feel.

I can imagine her standing there with parted pink lips. I bet anything that her blond hair is in a messy ponytail, and she’s twirling a few strands of hair between her fingers.

“What did you just say?”

“You can take me,” I say again softly. “Want to be my girlfriend?”

She’s quiet, and I laugh loudly so she knows it’s a joke. If she needs a reason to believe I’m not being deadly serious, I will give her one.

“Luke, what are you saying?”

“I said, do you want to be my girlfriend?”

I quickly FaceTime her, and she answers immediately.

“Hey.” I grin when I see I was right about the ponytail.

“Hey.”

Her nostrils flare and her eyes narrow. Mia wears her emotions on her face, and I can always tell what she’s thinking. It’s been that way since we were four years old and playing in pre-K. Back in the days when she stood up to bullies for both of us.

I can still remember in first grade, when Kenny Longbottom took the last two cookies off the plate, and she went up to him and demanded that he give me one of them.

When he ate the first cookie right in her face, she pushed her little shoulders back, glared at him, and then said, “You give Luke his cookie, or I will pull your pants down.”

She then turned to me with a crooked little smile, which was missing a front tooth.

Seconds later, Kenny gave her the cookie, which she ceremoniously brought over to me.

“You didn’t need to do that, Mia,” I mumbled, though I happily took the cookie from her.

“Best friends stick up for best friends.” She beamed at me, hooked her little arm in mine, and we found our seats and read our books.

That was the moment I definitively knew that Mia—though she was bossy, goofy, and far too direct for me—was someone I’d be best friends with for the rest of my life. And here we are, twenty years later, and she is still my number one everything, even though I haven’t seen her in person in years. But there were reasons for that.

“Be. Your. Girlfriend?” She enunciates each word like she’s practicing speaking in a foreign language. “Is this about my emails? We’re not forty yet, Luke.”

She licks her lips nervously, and I can’t stop laughing. Mia looks clueless, and I wonder what’s going through her head right now.

“Not my real girlfriend, you doofus.”

Her face relaxes slightly, but I can see that she’s still super confused.