Page 91 of Fake it ’Til Fall
“I never said—”
“You did. In every way that matters.”
He exhales. “Fine. Then what is she?”
I look at the handwritten rules on my kitchen table.
The coffee in my hand goes untouched.
Puck sits beside me like a furry moral compass with terrible recall around squirrels.
What is she?
A fake girlfriend.
A Thorn.
A woman who made a list of rules to keep both of us safe and still somehow wrote herself straight into the parts of my life I’d stopped letting people near.
“She’s helping me,” I say.
“That’s all?”
No.
Not even close.
“She’s helping me,” I repeat. “So, I’m not letting you turn her into collateral.”
Silence.
Then Mark says, “Understood.”
He doesn’t mean he agrees.
He means he understands where the wall is.
That’ll have to be enough.
“For the record,” he adds, “a local girlfriend who already knows the community is still good optics.”
“Mark.”
“I’m saying it once.”
“You’ve said it seventeen times.”
“Fine. I’m done.”
“Good.”
“Except one thing.”
“No.”
“You need to tell your mother before she hears it from someone else.”
I hate him again.
