Idiots to Lovers (bxb)

21 | Happy Songs and Runny Eggs

Holly scoffed. "Of course I knew, I'm a licensed therapist."

Everett and I could only stare at her with our minds reeling and jaws hanging open until we recovered from the whiplash of her casual words. Remembering that I had insisted upon the fact that any therapist would be able to see through our ruse, I glared at Everett who just shrugged and scrambled back onto the couch.

"I figured it out pretty early on," Holly continued, "But you seemed well suited so I let it play out."

Everett was the first to recuperate from the mind-bending admittance, and at Holly's request started regaling her with the tale of how we had met and the bet we had made.

Holly found it hilarious. She laughed until tears ran down her face, chuckling so hard that she was gasping for air by the time Everett's story was over.

"Technically, I suppose Clementine won the bet." Holly grinned, wiping residual tears from the corners of her eyes. "But you both thought you were fooling me, while I was playing you all along."

"You even gave us couples activities and made us go on dates!" I accused.

"Please. I didn't hear you complaining." Holly snorted. "You went through so many boring couples counseling sessions just for cupcakes? You must actually be in love."

My cheeks stained pink and even Everett looked shocked, although he couldn't stop smiling.

Holly teased us a bit more before she let us leave. I suppose it was payback for wasting her time with all the sessions, but she seemed to be enjoying our mortification.

"In my professional opinion, I daresay this bet was subconsciously just a ruse for you both to get close," Holly added, pointing two fingers at us as she finally shooed us out of her office.

"She's right, it's a lot to go through for cupcakes," I admitted to Everett as the door shut behind us, "Maybe I did have some ulterior motives."

"Oh, I definitely had ulterior motives," Everett assured as we walked in the direction of his house.

I stopped walking. "What do you mean?"

"I've always dreamed of getting roped into couples counseling with a hot stranger. I hoped something would come of it." He dramatically cast his eyes heavenwards as if his prayers had been answered.

I snorted. "Don't lie."

"No, really...I've definitely fantasized about it." He laughed, his nose getting scrunched up all cutely. "Honestly, I think I just read way too many Wattpad novels."

"Wattpad?" I asked in amazement, "You read that crap?"

"Hey don't diss the Orange Site!" Everett paused, cocking his head to the side as he considered the ghastly repercussions that too much Wattpad could bring to a person. "To be honest though, I can't stop shipping every single movie and anime character I see now, it's a big problem."

"Sounds awful." I paused. "So when you claimed to have stayed up reading recipe stories all night that day, were you really just on Wattpad?"

Everett laughed. "Yeah actually! But to be fair, that was just a really long recipe story I was reading on Wattpad. It was a whole fifty thousand word novel but there was a recipe in like chapter twenty-six. That's where I got my really good brownie recipe from."

I stared at him, aghast. "That might be taking the whole 'longer the story, better the recipe' thing a bit too far."

"It was a cute story though; I thought the characters were similar to us." Everett grinned. "It's by the same author."