Playing Pretend
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Jane Anne
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19,3K
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52
Louise believes in plans, payback, and perfect timing. Love is not on the list. When a forgotten promise resurfaces in the form of Adam, her movie-star ex, Louise decides it’s finally time to even the score. A fake engagement feels like the ideal setup for public embarrassment and long-overdue closure. The problem is Adam refuses to play the villain. He’s charming, steady, and far too good at reading between the lines. As pretend moments start to feel real, old memories soften and new sparks fly. Louise must decide whether revenge still fits, or if the love that waited patiently all along deserves a rewrite.
Chapter 1: Pact
LOUISE
I once made a pact with my best friend to marry him.
To be clear, we had never been romantic. We hadn’t even kissed. But somehow, promising to tie myself to him had been as easy as smiling and saying yes.
At least, that’s how Adam told it. By the time this promise came back to bite me on the ass, it came in the worst way possible.
I was merely a geeky editor who loved to hide in books, and Adam was a major movie star on a sharp rise to global fame. People tend to believe his version of events over mine.
But I’m skipping ahead.
To tell this story properly, my version, not Adam’s, I needed to start at the beginning. At a night I hadn’t imagined would create a shockwave that would knock me over ten years later.
Forethought and future planning hadn’t been in my head the night I made that pact. Nothing much had been in my head, really.
I was in the midst of college, it was a Saturday night, and like most weekends, I had probably been tipsy. I couldn’t quite remember. The edges of the memory were hazy now, worn away by time and my reluctance to think of it.
But I did recall being at a party. I was ready to go home, tired from my then-boyfriend’s constant complaints, random strangers’ insistence that I dance, and the specter of my exams in the coming week.
My best friend since forever, Adam, had already completed his. He’d majored in drama, while I had a much heavier load with a language and media arts degree.
Somehow, toward the end of the night, I found myself leaning against Adam in a dark corner, nearly falling asleep on his shoulder.
He smelled like he always did, a familiar and comforting mix of green apples, geranium, and fresh rain. His shirt, soft and rumpled against my cheek, had been enticing me to sink into his chest further.
He was lean back then, with curly auburn hair and warm brown eyes, and quite a few inches taller than me. I had always fit into him just right, with my short, curvy figure. The hand he used to stroke my long dark hair felt warm and firm.
I barely heard his whispered words, something about getting me back to my dorm, as they washed over my head while the loud music competed for my attention.
“Soon. Just let me lie here for a minute,” I slurred, already heavy with fatigue.
He chuckled. “Only a minute. Don’t fall asleep, okay?”
“I won’t.”
Back then, I would have done anything for him. He’d been my other half since grade school. So I know I tried to obey him. I tried to keep my eyes open and my head from slumping further into his shoulder.
“Do you want me to get Martin?” he asked.
“No.” My answer was a grumble into his shoulder. “He’s been annoying me all night. I think we’re over.”
“Ahh, yes. The three-month curse.”
“It’s not a curse. It just takes me three months to work out if I want to keep them or not. And I haven’t found anyone worth keeping yet.”
“Boyfriends aren’t goldfish, Lou.”
“I know. But it’s a big deal deciding to spend the rest of your life with someone.”
“You don’t need to marry them. Just start by spending more than twelve weeks with someone.”
“Nah, that’s too much effort. Besides, I have you. I don’t need another man.”
“I’m your friend. That’s different.”
“Like you can talk anyway. You haven’t had a girlfriend since Amber cheated on you last year.”
“And who’s to say my next girlfriend won’t do the same thing?”
I picked up on the strain in his voice that he was trying to hide. “Not everyone is like Amber. She was a liar and a manipulator.” Adam went quiet, and I winced. “Sorry. I know you loved her, and it still hurts.”
“Not as much as it did.”
“Well, that’s good. That’s progress. I’ll keep changing out my goldfish boyfriends, and you can move on to another girl who isn’t a stone-cold cheater.”
I went quiet then, worn out from the effort of simply stringing words together. My head dropped even further, and my breathing slowed.
The night blurred a little then, the memory losing its sharp focus and becoming a hazy fog. Time distorted as Adam’s heartbeat under my cheek beat away the seconds and then minutes in a steady rhythm.
“Lou? You did fall asleep, didn’t you?”
I remembered that. I remembered Adam shaking me gently as he asked again if I was awake.
I think I made a sound, maybe a whimper, as I tried to hold onto him even as he was trying to straighten me away from his body.
Then I’m sure he sighed before saying quietly, “The two of us make a fine pair. You’re terrified of commitment, and I can’t trust anyone. If we’re both single in ten years, let’s just give in and get married to each other, okay?”
The proposal should have surprised me. But I depended on him back then. I counted on Adam so much that I would have even agreed to his silly idea, phrased half as a joke and half as a tease.
I laughed, trying and failing to think of the name of the frothy romantic comedy we’d watched together only the night before, the one inspiring this out-of-the-blue notion.
I don’t recall my answer. But in the years since, I’ve reasoned that whatever I said in response was irrelevant.
I was so sure back then that my answer wouldn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in Adam in that way, and he had never once made a move on me.
We were friends. And that tiny moment at a college frat party was all a stupid, drunken mistake.
It shouldn’t have mattered what I said. No one in their right mind would take our lazy, intoxicated conversation seriously.
And to further prove that my version of the whole event was correct, after Adam drove me home, we never spoke of it again.
Of course, all of this was before.
Before Adam moved away after graduation.
Before he stopped being “my” Adam and instead became Adam Monroe, star of a hot new television series, a string of movies, and the poster boy for teenage fandom everywhere. Basically, before he became an asshole.
Before he stopped being my best friend, and then stopped being my friend at all.
And then, ten years later, on a day I thought was going to be completely and utterly normal, that pact came back to haunt me in the most public and humiliating way it could.
The shockwave I’d apparently put into motion at that party finally reached me with a sonic boom and the sounds of bodies flying everywhere.
Because even though Adam had once been my protector, my safe place, my anchor…now he was going to turn my life completely upside down without an ounce of regret.
And that, my friends, is how a true enemy is made.
