Fake It With Me: A Friends to Lovers Romance

by Kate Hunt

  Fake It With Me

  A Friends to Lovers Romance

  Kate Hunt

  Copyright © 2019 by Kate Hunt

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  1. Hunter

  2. Lydia

  3. Hunter

  4. Lydia

  5. Hunter

  6. Lydia

  7. Hunter

  8. Lydia

  A free novella!

  Chapter One

  Hunter

  “What do you think about him?” Lydia asks, turning the screen of her phone toward me again. My eyes slide over and meet a profile pic of a guy with a smirk plastered across his face.

  “Want my honest opinion?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says.

  “He looks like an asshole.”

  Lydia sighs and slumps in her seat beside me. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. But they all kind of look like that. I’m just trying to find the least assholey among them.”

  “There’s no filter for that?”

  Lydia laughs. “God. I wish.”

  Lydia and I are sitting at our usual tables at the coffee shop we work in weekday afternoons. We started meeting here to work about six months ago, when Lydia quit her 9-to-5 to write full-time. I’d already been doing freelance dev work for a couple years by then, and when Lydia suggested that we start meeting up at coffee shops, I was all for it. Working alone in my apartment had been getting old.

  Now, after lunch everyday, I pack up my stuff and head out to meet Lydia at the coffee shop, where we spend the afternoon working side by side. We tried out a few different coffee shops when we first started doing this, but this one was by far our favorite. It was never too packed, they played decent music, and the coffee wasn’t shit.

  I slide my eyes back over to my laptop screen, finish up a quick email that I’d been in the middle of writing, hit send, and then look back over at Lydia. Her laptop is open in front of her, her current work-in-progress up on the screen, but her eyes are still focused on her phone. She’s back to swiping through profile after profile.

  Lydia’s older sister, Hallie, is getting married this weekend, and Lydia is determined to bring a date along. She told me she wants to avoid the inevitable pestering she’ll get from her relatives if she shows up alone. I get where she’s coming from—I hate relatives asking me why I’m not seeing anyone, either—but I also wish it wasn’t stressing her out so much.

  Leaning over to get a better look at her laptop screen, I clear my throat and start to read aloud the last paragraph she wrote.

  “His hands were big. Muscular. She couldn’t help but think about those hands roaming over her curves, gripping onto her—”

  “Hunter!” Lydia quietly shrieks, and slams her laptop shut. “Don’t read it out loud. We’re in public.”

  “But what was she thinking about his hands gripping onto?”

  “Nothing,” says Lydia. A pretty shade of pink rises to her cheeks.

  “Nothing? Really? Sure seemed like it was something. Like maybe her br—”

  Lydia gives me a severe look. “Stop.”

  I grin. I love teasing Lydia about the books she writes. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s incredible and I’m proud as hell of her for the success she’s had so far.

  But I’m still going to tease her forever for writing steamy romance novels.

  Lydia and I have been best friends since grade school. I don’t have a clue why we became friends so easily. We just did. And our friendship has never gone beyond being platonic. Not that she’s not pretty. Honestly, if I met her for the first time as the twenty-three-year-old I am today, I’m sure I’d amp up the charm and try to get her number.

  Things are good the way they are, though. She’s a fantastic friend.

  “Too bad you can’t take one of the guys from your books to the wedding,” I say, settling back against my chair.

  “No kidding,” says Lydia. She returns to her phone and swipes through several more profiles before sighing. “Shit. I think I’ve swiped through every guy in a fifty-mile radius.”

  I hear the defeat in her voice and feel bad for her. I hate that she’s stressed about it. And of course I want to do whatever I can to help her out.

  “I could go with you,” I say.

  Lydia looks up from her phone, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “What?”

  “I could go with you,” I repeat. I give her a shrug. “Doesn’t seem like there’s any good options on that app. So let me take you.”

  Amusement lifts the corners of her mouth.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Why would I be joking?” I ask.

  “Um…because you hate weddings?” Lydia says.

  She’s not wrong about that. I do hate weddings. I hate the insane amount of spending on one fucking day. I hate the bad music, the awful food, the forced seating arrangements, and especially the drunken dancing.

  But I guess in my empathy for Lydia’s situation, I’d forgotten about my loathing for the event in question.

  “Why do you hate them so much, anyway?” asks Lydia, cocking her head curiously at me.

  “I just do,” I grumble.

  Lydia studies me for a few seconds longer. “You’d really do that for me, Hunter?”

  Shit. Well…now that I’ve made the suggestion, I’m not going to back out. “I’d really do that for you, Lydia.”

  “Aw. You’re so nice.” She breaks out in a smile. But then the smile fades. “The thing is, though...the whole point is that I’m going with a date. If I show up with you, everyone’s still going to bug me about being single.”

  “So we’ll tell them we’re dating.”

  Lydia laughs. “Okay, now you’re definitely kidding.”

  “Jesus. I’m not, Lydia.” My words come out a little gruffer than I intend. But it finally gets my seriousness across to Lydia.

  “Wait,” says Lydia. “You’re really suggesting we should fake a relationship? Like in a romance novel?”

  “Yep. Like in one of your romance novels.”

  “What will you get out of it, though?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “We both need to get something out of it. That’s the way this works.”

  “What, the joy of doing something nice for a friend doesn’t count?” I ask.

  “Nope,” she says. “It’s gotta be something else.”

  “Okay,” I say. I look around the coffee shop, as if the answer’s going to be there. Nothing comes to mind. “I can’t think of anything right now. But…let’s just say you’ll owe me? I’ll cash in the favor sometime in the future?”

  “Deal,” says Lydia, and sticks out her hand.

  Chapter Two

  Lydia

  “Try these on, too, Hunter,” I say, slinging a pair of dress pants and a shirt over the top of the dressing room door. I feel his grip take hold on the pieces of clothing and I let go. It’s been a little over twenty-four hours since Hunter suggested being my fake date and we’re at the mall shopping for wedding clothes for him.

  “And show me when you’ve got something on, okay?” I call through the door.

  Hunter grunts in response and I hear the rustle of clothes and hangers in his dressing room. I sit down against the wall and drum my fingers on my jeans while I wait. I’m still pretty amused that Hunter offered to go to my
sister’s wedding with me—and not only that but pretend to be my boyfriend. I never expected him to offer that.

  But I'm grateful he did. The whole time I was flipping through all those profiles on the dating app, I had this knot of dread in my gut. It’s not like I wanted to bring a stranger to my sister’s wedding. But the idea of showing up alone and facing the unavoidable questioning about my persistent status as a single woman was enough to make me consider doing it.

  I know my family means well. It’s not like they bug me to make me feel bad. And for a long time, I was able to just laugh it off. But I’ve gotten tired of it. And whenever I spend time around my family, I always end up leaving the get-togethers feeling bad about myself. I really don’t believe that you need to be with a guy in order to have a fulfilling life, but that’s what my family’s comments always end up making me feel.

  The door to Hunter’s dressing room opens and he steps into the doorway wearing some of the clothes he picked out himself.

  “What do you think?” he asks.

  “I think the shirt and the pants are slightly too close in color,” I say. “Do you have a darker shirt you can try on?”

  “Yep,” says Hunter, stepping back into his dressing room and shutting the door.

  A woman and a man walk in just then, the man heading into the furthest dressing room and the woman following him in. She’s talking to him about some dinner party or something and he’s saying uh huh every few seconds. The door closes behind them and locks.

  Leaning my head against the wall behind me, I wonder what my family will think when they see me show up with Hunter. My extended family hasn’t ever met him, but my parents and my sister know Hunter, of course. Will they be suspicious of our new status as boyfriend and girlfriend? I guess we’ll have to make sure our relationship is convincing. I don’t think that will be too hard to do. A little hand holding, some loving gazes at each other…yeah, Hunter and I can totally pull it off.

  There’s only been one time in my life when I thought of Hunter as more than a friend. Our senior year of high school, Hunter went to prom with one of the most popular girls in our class. I teased him about it, of course, saying all this stuff about how he was totally going to get laid that night, and with Miss Popular no less, teasing that he received with eye rolls.

  But on the night of prom, halfway through the night, I looked over and saw Hunter and Miss Popular kissing in the corner of the room, and a wave of jealousy hit me like a tidal wave. I found myself wishing that I was in that corner with him, that I was the one he was kissing.

  As soon as the night ended, though, my feelings for him were gone. And they never surfaced again. I shrugged off the prom night incident as silly jealousy over Hunter showing another girl attention.

  And we went on with the friendship we’d always had.

  Hunter’s dressing room door opens up again and he steps out wearing a darker shirt. I nod when I see him.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That one looks better with those pants.”

  “I like it better, too,” Hunter says.

  “You’re still going to try on the stuff I brought for you, though, right?”

  “Yeah,” he says, sighing a little. Poor Hunter. He hates shopping.

  I screw around on my phone while I wait for Hunter to change again. But then something catches my attention in the corner of my eye and I look over to the dressing room that the couple went into earlier. I can see both pairs of their feet, but they’re both standing in the corner of the dressing room. The woman is sitting down on the little built-in bench in the corner, and the man is standing. But the way their feet are positioned—

  I think she’s giving him a blow job.

  No, I’m almost certain she’s giving him a blow job.

  I choke back a laugh. I’ve always heard about people doing stuff like that in public places, but I’ve just assumed a lot of it was made up. So to see it happening before my very eyes—

  I hear a muffled groan from the guy and it takes everything in me not to burst out laughing.

  Hunter’s dressing room door opens, drawing my attention back to him. First, my eyes move to the shirt he’s wearing, a dark gray button-up. It fits him really well. God, it almost looks like it was tailor-made for him. The chest is fitted but not too tight, the sleeves hit his wrists at just the right place, and the back doesn’t puff out at all.

  “Not bad,” Hunter says, studying himself in the mirror. “Actually...I think I like this one more than the one I thought I was going to get.”

  “Yeah, it’s good,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the couple step away from each other and then hear the sound of pants being rezipped, clothes being adjusted.

  “What do you think about the pants?” asks Hunter.

  My eyes move to his legs. His long, athletic legs. Normally I don’t think of words like that about Hunter—normally I don’t think about Hunter’s legs at all—but in the pants he has on, I can’t help it.

  Like the shirt he has on, the pants I’ve given him to try on also fit him like they were made for him.

  I’m about to say they’re perfect and he should buy them. But then my gaze accidentally drifts to his crotch.

  And…well, the pants are a little too tight there.

  “Um,” I say. “I think...maybe the other pants are better.”

  I try to avert my eyes from my best friend’s bulge. But it’s like my gaze is stuck there. I’m sure it’s just the pants, but…God. Hunter is packing.

  “Really?” says Hunter, frowning as he looks in mirror. “You think the other pants are better?”

  “Yes,” I say quickly. “Definitely get the other ones.”

  Hunter looks at me a little strangely—oh God, is my voice giving it away? And how can he not see the problem? Is he that oblivious to his own size?—but after a few excruciating seconds, he just shrugs.

  “Okay, whatever,” he says, closing the dressing room door once again. “You’re the one who knows more about fashion.”

  Chapter Three

  Hunter

  A flash of silky maroon enters my peripheral vision as Lydia lowers herself into the passenger seat of my car. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m picking her up at her apartment so we can head to the wedding.

  “Hey,” she says, settling into the seat and closing the door. “You ready for this?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” I say. I glance over at Lydia and the long-sleeved maroon dress she has on unexpectedly stirs something in me. I’ve never seen her in that color, and it’s striking on her. It’s not just the color of her dress that’s striking, though—it’s also the neckline.

  The neckline is…plunging.

  I quickly pull my eyes away and focus on pulling out onto the road. But only a couple seconds of silence pass before I realize I’m being an asshole by not saying anything about her dress.

  “You, uh...you look nice,” I say, keeping my eyes out the windshield.

  “Oh, thanks,” says Lydia. She flips down her sun visor and slides open the mirror. “I don’t know about my hair, though. Do you think I should put it up?”

  I glance over to see what she means. I’d been too distracted by her dress to get a good look at her hair. But now I see that she’s wearing it down in loose curls.

  “No, it looks good,” I say. “Not that I know jack shit about hair.”

  Lydia laughs. “As long as you don’t think it looks bad, that’s good enough for me.”

  I draw my eyes back to the street, but I can feel Lydia’s eyes rove over to me.

  “You look nice, too,” she says after a second.

  “You helped me pick out the clothes,” I remind her, giving her a shrug and smile. “Hey, you’re going to give me directions, right? I don’t know where I’m going.” I guess seeing Lydia all dressed up like that had gotten me a little flustered and I’d just started driving.

  “Right,” she says. Lydia pulls up directions on her phone and tells me what the next few turns are going to b
e. The next one’s not for another half-mile.

  “So,” she says, after we’ve established where we’re headed, “guess we should probably talk about this whole fake relationship thing, huh?”

  “Sure,” I say. It’s only been a few days since I brought up the idea, and we haven’t really talked about it in detail.

  “Since people are going to ask…how long have we been dating?”

  I shrug and slow for traffic. “Couple days? Weeks? Does it matter?”

  “It just matters that we’re on the same page.” Lydia thinks for a few seconds. “How about we say a couple weeks? If we say much longer than that, my parents and my sister are probably going to get after me about not telling them sooner. And any less and it might seem suspicious.”

  “Sure,” I say. Then another thought occurs to me. “And how did it happen? Did we just…look at each other one day and fall in love?”

  Lydia laughs. “Um…that couldn’t sound more fake, Hunter. You don’t just look at someone and fall for them. There’s gotta be…you know…a significant moment or something.”

  “Like?”

  Lydia blows air out between her lips. “Like…you saved a small child from running into the street or something. And I was there to witness it.”

  “I saved a small child?”

  “Don’t make fun of me. It was just an example. We don’t have to use that.” She points out at the road. “Take a left.”

  I nod and pull into the turn lane. As we’re waiting for the light to change, we keep brainstorming ideas for our so-called special moment.

  “Maybe I saved you from running into the street,” I joke.

  “Why would I run into a street?”

  “I don’t know. You were running away from a bad date?”