Page 39 of Hexed Up

“Yep,” I admit, “pretty stressed to be honest.”

“Is it this reversal potion?” he asks, offering me his bottle of beer.

“Not exactly.” I take the bottle from him and have a swig of my own. “And actually, I may have invited you round on false pretences.”

“Not to eat brownies?”

I shake my head.

“If it’s to get me naked, I don’t mind.” He takes the bottle back from me, our fingers brushing together for a moment and something very close to magic seeming to spark between us.

I sigh. The man does look very good naked and I haven’t even seen everything.

“I need to ask you a favour.” I cringe. This is so embarrassing, but at least the man is under the effects of a love potion. He’d probably think the sun shines out of my arse, even if I was boiling kittens and puppies and eating them.

“Ask away,” he says, draining his beer bottle.

“My family are having this gathering this weekend and originally I wasn’t invited.”

“Why not?” He frowns.

“It was couples only.”

“That’s shit.”

“Yeah, but that’s sort of how my family operates. To be fair to them, they thought it would be awkward for me or something.”

“Hmmm,” he says. He strokes his chin and his lips gradually curve up into a smile. “We aren’t dating.”

“Yes, I know that. But my sister – the one you met on Saturday – told everyone that we are and so then I got an invitation to this gathering.”

“And you wanna go – even though they didn’t invite you in the first place?”

“That’s kinda why I do want to go,” I mumble.

“So what exactly are you asking me here, Molly?”

“That you’ll agree to come with me to this gathering this weekend and pretend to be my boyfriend,” I blurt out, offering him another brownie in the hopes of softening the blow.

He takes the brownie and bites into it, chewing as he considers me and his answer.

“Okay,” he says, and my shoulders sag with relief, “I can pretend to be your boyfriend for a couple of hours.”

“Ahhh,” I say.

He lowers the brownie from his mouth. “What?”

“It’s not really a couple of hours kind of gathering. It’s actually the entire weekend. Friday to Sunday.”

He places the rest of the brownie into his mouth, once again chewing as he weighs up his response.

“So let me get this right,” he says finally, “first you poison me with a love potion–”

“–bewitch,” I correct, “technically I didn’t poison you.”

“Semantics,” he says, “and now you want me to spend the entirety of my next weekend pretending to be your boyfriend and lying to a bunch of strangers?”

I gulp. “In a nutshell, yes,” I say, wishing the earth would swallow me up or hoping this would be the moment I got picked for an alien abduction. Honestly, how has this become my life?