My Fake Boyfriend

Danny Boy

"Pick, Aaron. Avalon or Alexis?"

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As soon as Danny's words had been processed, in my head, I spontaneously began choking on the air, making me tear up. I glared at Danny through the tears in my eyes, but he seemed either ignorant or oblivious to the drama and awkwardness that he had created.

I tried to hold back the cough, but this only worsened the cough, and a hag-like choking sound escaped my lips. Suddenly, I felt a warm hand, patting me on the back to relieve the cough.

Wait, not hand. Hands.

There were 2 hands on my back and I looked up to see both Aaron and Justin with their hand on my back and a look of concern, in their eyes. They, then, both seemed to realise that the other was also mirroring their actions and moved their hands away quickly as if I was a hot lump of coal that just burnt their fingers.

"Come on, Aaron. What's your answer?" Avalon spoke, a hint of smugness in her tone. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye, smirking slightly and it took everything in me to not use the glass bottle to crack her thick skull open.

Wow, Alexis. You need to stop hanging out with these boys because you're starting to sound like them.

I shook my head at my thoughts. I had always harboured the ideology that one must give love and respect in order to attain love and respect. How could I respect a girl who saw these boys as merely a prize? She didn't deserve my kindness. She didn't Aaron's kindness either, but that wasn't for me to decide.

Aaron shifted, uncomfortably, before looking at the two of us.
"Well, I-." He began but before he could, a voice interrupted him.

"This game is boring." Justin said bluntly, before standing up and glaring at Danny. He walked over to Aaron, pulled him up and they both left the room.

I sighed in relief, glad he didn't answer the question.

Was I relieved?

A part of me felt uneasy and anxious to know what his response would have been. Maybe, a part of me hoped he would have picked me. I shook my head, an action I seemed to be doing too much recently.

It was wrong to gather any hope that Aaron would have picked me over Avalon. We were both his friends, in his eyes, so he probably would have avoided the question. I thought back to when Avalon hadn't been, in our lives

I watched in anxiousness as he regained his voice and spoke again.
"Well, I didn't have an answer then, but now I do." He said, looking down at me. I bit my lip and turned away. I was too mortified to look into his eyes. I considered running away from him, but immediately disregarded the thought when he pulled my face up to look at him.

"My answer is that I-"

I groaned in frustration. What was he going to say that day, before Avalon came? I had thought about that event multiple times after, each with a different scenario, which varied from him declaring his love for me whilst  sweeping me off my feet and riding into the sunset on a white stallion or him rejecting me, laughing in my face before riding off with Avalon, on a white stallion.

Yet, all I attained from those thoughts was an overwhelming feeling of confusion and a realisation that my love for white stallions was bordering unhealthy.

At times like this, I wish I had a female friend with whom I could share these troubles and they could help me overcome them. We would gossip about boys and have girly inside secrets that only we would know. This could never have happened for I hadn't ever been close to a girl in such a manner.