Chapter 02: Just Another Trauma.

CORBIN.

The question just sat in the air between us and I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was being serious.

What she had just said did not make any logical sense to me at all, not even a little bit.

Fake date.

She wanted me, Corbin Stones, to fake date Sydney Sharma.

I turned the sentence over in my head a few times, trying to find the angle where it made sense, and I could not find it.

I genuinely did not know if I should laugh or just pretend she never said it and move the conversation somewhere else entirely.

But then I looked at her and her eyes were completely steady on my face, not even blinking.

I realized with a very uncomfortable feeling in my chest that she was not joking at all.

I blinked. "No. Why would I want to date you?"

Her eyes went wide and she straightened up immediately. "We are not dating Corbin, you are fake dating me, there is a difference."

I looked at her for a long moment, trying to understand how those two things were different in any way that actually mattered, because at the end of the day, fake or not, nobody on this campus was going to be told it was fake.

It was going to look real to every single person who saw us, and that meant it was going to affect my life in every real way possible, and there was no version of that I was willing to sign up for.

I let out a sigh. "Sydney, I know this has no effect on you but it has on me. Let's talk about my social life for a second. How exactly do I make girls fall for me when they already think there is a cowgirl in boots waiting for me at home?"

She looked at me and she was not even embarrassed by that statement, not even slightly.

That alone told me Marcus had done a very thorough job of making her so used to hearing things like that, that she did not even flinch anymore, which was its own kind of sad, but that was not my problem to fix right now.

She tilted her head. "You're right, I already thought about that, but girls tend to want a guy more when there is competition. That's literally the whole point."

I rubbed my forehead. "Sydney. I cannot fake date you. Not even in my dreams. Not even if someone handed me a hundred billion dollars. We are completely different worlds. If Marcus dumped you, why exactly would you think I would be the one to pick that up?"

She stared at me. "I thought we were friends. Friends are supposed to be there for each other."

I stared back at her, genuinely trying to understand how fake dating someone and being there for someone were the same thing in her head. "Nah. I can't do this."

She went quiet and I watched her face shift, that soft expression settling in, the one she had been pulling since we were children.

The baby face that had been guilt-tripping me into doing things I did not want to do since we were literally six years old.

She stood up slowly and picked up her bag. "Alright. It's fine. I'll just go home and cry into my pillow. Thanks anyway Corbin."

She started walking towards the door with that slow walk she did when she wanted me to call her back.

I lasted about four seconds.

"Alright fine," I heard myself say, "I'm in."

She stopped.

She turned around and she was already laughing, running back towards me and throwing her arms around me like she had not just manipulated me with the most obvious guilt trip in the history of human interaction.

I stood there with my arms slightly out.

She pulled back and dropped back onto the couch. "Thank you so much Corbin, I mean it."

I nodded slowly, already feeling the weight of what I had just agreed to settle across my shoulders like something I could not put back down. "Okay but how long are we doing this."

She thought about it. "Not long. Just until Marcus comes back to me."

I looked at her. "So you are doing all of this to go back to him."

"No," she said immediately, and then, "no, why would I do this for a man, I'm doing it for my confidence, I need to feel like the hot girl, I need to feel like I can walk into a room and own it, that's all."

I looked at her for a long time because I knew Sydney Sharma and I knew exactly what that no actually meant, but I let it go because arguing about it right then was not going to help either of us. "Alright. But if you know you are going back to him then we end this the moment he notices we are together. Two weeks maximum. Because Sydney, I genuinely still need to have a life."

She waved her hand. "About the whole sex situation, don't worry, weekends I will personally sort you out, I know girls in my dorm who have always been interested in you and I will arrange it so you are not completely suffering."

I stared at her. "Are you calling me a sex addict?"

"I'm not calling you anything," she said very calmly, "but Corbin you literally have sex every single day."

I frowned because that was not accurate. "That is not true. Some days it's just a hand job and a blow job. I don't even get the chance to finish so it does not even count as the full thing."

She stared at me in complete silence for so long that I actually started to feel slightly judged, and then she just nodded slowly. "Alright. That's fine."

She grabbed her phone and started typing and I watched her for a second.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She let out a tiny chuckle. "Texting Jamey so she can let people know we are together."

I reached over immediately and put my hand over her phone, because if she did not know who Jamey was then let me be very clear.

Jamey was the single most efficient information distribution system this campus had ever produced.

The kind of girl where you whispered something to her at nine in the morning and by ten, fifteen people who were not even in the building knew about it.

Now Sydney was sitting here about to voluntarily text this girl and report the situation herself.

I took a breath. "Don't do that. If Jamey finds out on her own when she sees us together, it lands completely differently than if you text her. If you text her she might think it's forced. Let it happen naturally and she will do the rest."

Sydney looked at me and something in her face shifted into genuine surprise, like she was not expecting that from me, and she said, "oh my god, look at you being actually smart about this."

I smiled because I had to, but deep down I already knew that whatever I had just agreed to was going to be so much heavier than I had prepared for.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Alright so I think we should wrap this conversation up because I actually have things to do tonight and we need to be somewhere."

She frowned. "We have not even started and you want to take me somewhere already?"

"Not a date," I said quickly, "it's tonight's welcome back party. Hot people, hot chicks, and Marcus is going to be there, which means tonight is literally the perfect first moment. You need to walk into that party looking like someone he has never seen before."

Her face did something complicated, like excitement and terror fighting each other at the same time, and she said, "Corbin I don't even know if I can do that, hot girls are going to be there, I am not even in that category."

I pulled out my phone and texted Fiona, my kid sister.

Within what felt like an unreasonably short amount of time, the door swung open and Fiona walked in with a bag over each shoulder and the energy of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment her entire life.

"I heard someone is finally getting rid of the cowgirl situation," she said, "and I am so ready for it."

The two of them hugged immediately with that specific female energy that made me feel like a guest in my own apartment, and I said, "okay can we please move quickly because it is already late and we need time."

Fiona pulled back and looked between us slowly. "Wait. Why exactly are you this invested in how Sydney looks tonight?"

I opened my mouth and closed it, and Sydney just smiled and said, "Corbin and I are dating now."

I did not even fully understand what happened next, because before I could think about it the words just came out. "No. No we are not, it's complicated Fiona, Marcus dumped her and she wants to fake date me to make him jealous, that is literally all this is."

The room went completely silent.

Both of them turned and looked at me, and I could see the heartbreak on Sydney's face the exact moment I said it.

I stood there knowing I had absolutely done something terrible.

I rubbed my face. "You know what, just do whatever you two want to do."

I got up and walked to the kitchen because my heart was beating faster than it should have been and I needed a second.

I needed a drink, and I needed to figure out how I was going to walk out of that apartment tonight and face every single person on that campus knowing what I had just agreed to.