The Trouble with Faking

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

“So, what does being on duty entail?” I ask Damien. “I mean, aside from having to be on site the entire time.” I’ve been talking since the moment he came to reception to meet me. All I can think of is the awkward look he gave me the other night, and I’m worried that if I allow even a moment of silence between us, things will turn weird.

“Well, if anything goes wrong, I’m the one people call,” Damien says as we climb the stairs to his room. “Basically, I’m the guy in charge tonight.”

“Cool. It suits you, this job. You’ve always been the responsible type.”

Damien smiles and unlocks his door. “Responsible doesn’t equal boring, does it?”

“No, no, no. You’re definitely not boring.” I drop onto the couch and Damien closes the door.

Silent moment.

“So are you part of any clubs or societies?” I ask, rushing to fill the void. “I signed up for some stuff, but now I wonder if it might be too much.”

“Okay, wait,” Damien says, sitting on the desk chair and spinning it around to face me. “Before we talk about anything else, I need to apologise for the other night. There was definitely an awkward moment there, and I don’t want it hanging between us because, you know, things have always been easy with us.” He runs a hand over his short hair. “So … I’m sorry about the half-kiss thing. I really don’t know what that was about. Seriously. I think I’ve had too many late nights recently, and I’m not functioning like a normal person. I apologise, and I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I—yes, of course.” The ember of hope inside me fizzles out. “Don’t worry about it. Everything’s cool.” I try to convince myself that everything is cool. That this is fine. After all, I didn’t honestly expect anything else, did I? “Hey, let’s go sit on mem stone and watch the city lights,” I say, feeling suddenly claustrophobic.

“Can’t. Gotta stay here, remember?” He gives me an apologetic look.

“Oh yes. Sorry.”

“Show me all the new things you’ve made since I moved to Cape Town,” he says, removing his laptop from the desk and wheeling his chair across the room towards me. “I used to be up to date on every product in your store, but I think I’ve missed a lot over the past two years.”

“Probably because I could no longer force you into helping me make them.”

“I don’t believe there was any forcing involved.” He hands the laptop to me. “I’d deny it in front of my friends, of course, but I actually enjoyed helping you with Alice in Wonderland brooches and Mr Darcy button things and those pendants with the Northmonger Abbey quote.”

“Northanger Abbey,” I say with a laugh. “Anyway, this is the newest one.” I lift my arm to show him the charm bracelet with five miniature classic novels attached to it.

“Cool. They look just like real books.”

“That’s the idea.” I lift the lid of his laptop and find his f*******: page open. “Oh. Um, you have messages.” I pass the laptop back to him, but not before I’ve seen some of the words in the little message windows open at the bottom of the page.

Damien sighs. “Great. I’ve now got people on f*******: letting me know I’m a cheat.”

“Sorry about that.” I bite my thumb nail. “And what about that girl Marie? Any luck with her?” WHY am I asking? I don’t want to know about Damien’s love life.

“No. Nothing. She’s completely ignoring me.” He closes f*******: and hands the laptop back to me.

“So I guess she’s only interested in you when you’re not available, huh?” I open a new browser window and type the Etsy address.

“Looks like it.”

“You know,” I say, sitting back as an idea slowly begins to form in my mind, “we could make it so that you’re once again not available.”

His eyebrows pinch together. “What do you mean?”

“We could …” Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it. “Pretend.” No, Andi, that is SUCH a bad idea. STOP TALKING NOW! “We could pretend that we actually are together. We could act like the happiest, most in-love couple ever so that the girl you really like finally notices you, and the guy I really like finally notices me. Half of res already thinks there’s something going on between us, so it would be entirely believable.”

A hesitant smile plays on Damien’s lips. “Wait. I can’t figure out if you’re joking or being serious.”

I’m so surprised at myself for voicing this ridiculous idea that I start laughing. “I’m actually being serious. I mean, people do this in movies all the time. Why shouldn’t we?” I ignore the internal voice reminding me that those are the kind of movies that annoy the heck out of me.

Damien narrows his eyes, but that half-smile is still there. “Don’t the people in those movies generally end up falling for the people they’re pretending to be with?”

“Well, yes,” I admit, “but that’s because those are movies. This is real life, and we both know exactly who we want. That will keep us focused.”

“Wait, so … who is it that you want?”

You, I almost sigh out loud. But since I can’t admit that, I grab the first name that comes to mind. “Mike. The first-year guy who was here the other evening.”

“Mike? The guy who’s barely been here a week and had to buy three padlocks already?”

“Okay, so he’s a little forgetful when it comes to his room keys, but other than that he’s great.” That isn’t a lie. Mike is great. He sat with me on the hike near the end when it got too steep and all I could focus on was the sheer drop down the side of the mountain and my spinning head that made me want to fall over. “I really like him, but he seems to be interested in every other girl except me.” Now that’s a lie. I don’t really like him, and he doesn’t seem to be interested in every other girl. But if I can get Damien to fall for me at the end of all this, a few lies will be worth it.

“If he’s interested in every other girl,” Damien says, “maybe he isn’t the right guy for you.”

He isn’t. You are. “Hey, do you like my idea or not?”

“I …” Damien chuckles to himself. “I think I actually do.”

The dying embers inside me blaze to life. “So … are we really going to do this?”

Damien’s eyes meet mine. “I think so. No, wait, wait. I don’t want us to be known as the couple that got together behind Charlotte’s back. We’ll always have that cheating label, and that’s horrible.”

My heart sinks. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

“But we can still do this. We just don’t get together yet. We say we’re still friends, and then, uh … the Valentine’s Dance at the end of next week. Do you know about that?”

“Yes, I think I saw it on our calendar. It says we’re having some kind of dinner thing with Smuts?”

“Yes. It’s nothing fancy. Just a nice dinner and some pretty decor in the Fuller dining hall. It’s for freshers, but sub-wardens are allowed to attend. We can let everyone see us dancing together there, and then officially start dating after that. And if anyone asks, we can say we’ve always been good friends—which is true—and when Charlotte accused us of secretly dating, we first laughed it off as a ludicrous idea, but the more we thought about it, the more we realised it was meant to be.”

Well, at least that’s all pretty much the truth from my side. “People probably won’t believe you, though. They’ll still think we got together before and you cheated on her.”

He shrugs. “It’s never bothered you what other people think, has it?”

“No. I’m just checking whether it bothers you.”

He shakes his head. “No matter what the truth is, people will always think whatever they want to think.”

“Okay. Great. So we’ll find ways to be head-over-heels for each other in front of Marie and Mike, and that way they’ll see what they’re missing out on.” Part of me is giddy at the thought that I’ll finally get to hold and hug and kiss him the way I’ve always wanted to, while another part of me feels sick knowing Damien will just be pretending.

“Maybe we can try—”

A pounding on the door interrupts whatever plan Damien was about to suggest. The door opens before Damien can get there, and a well-built guy with a closely shaved head enters. “Dude, someone just fell out of a window into A quad.”

“What?”

“Yip. Real i***t. I think his arm’s broken.”

Damien grabs his keys. “Disaster number one for the night. Andi, I’ll be back just now.”

He heads out while the other guy turns back to look at me. From this angle, I can see the decorative tattoo of a cross on his upper left arm. “Hey, you’re Andi,” he says. “Andi … Clark?”

“Um, yes.” He must be a friend of Damien’s if he knows who I am. “And you’re the salt flicker,” I add, realising I recognise him from the dining hall.

He raises an eyebrow. “The what?”

“You flicked a salt sachet at us the other night. You have pretty good aim, by the way. You hit my friend on the cheek.”

“Oh, yes, I remember that. Tall, scary girl.”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, no offence intended. We flick salt at everyone. And my official name is actually Noah Ferreira, not Salt Flicker.”

“Right. Noah. Hey, you don’t sound … I mean … nothing.” I press my lips together as I realise I was probably about to say something inappropriate.

Noah frowns. “Sound what?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Sometimes I say things without thinking about them first. The words seem to bypass my internal filter. So … never mind.”

He sits on Damien’s wheeled desk chair and scoots closer. “Now you have to tell me.”

I lean back on the couch “Fine. I was going to comment on your accent. It’s … not what I expected.”

“You mean because I’m a Coloured guy living in the Cape, but I don’t sound like a Cape Coloured?”

“Um … yes. The unfiltered version of my thoughts went something like that.”

“And you were worried I’d be offended by your unfiltered thoughts?”

I nod. “People generally are.”

“Well, you can add one more person to the list. It’s highly offensive that you think all Coloured guys should sound the same.”

“Uh—”

“How would you like it if I said all white girls sound the same?”

“That’s different,” I say before I can stop myself.

“Oh, is that so?” Noah’s eyebrows rise.

“Well, yes,” I say, hoping I can explain this rationally without causing any more offence. “You get Afrikaans white people and English white people and white people who are from Europe or America or Australia or—”

“But Coloured people are all the same. You’re right. That’s not offensive at all.”

I cross my arms. “You know, sarcasm really doesn’t help.”

“Who says I’m being sarcastic? Maybe I’m agreeing with you. Perhaps I see the logic in what you’re saying.”

I hesitate, trying to figure out from his expression if he’s telling the truth. All I can see in his dark eyes, though, is a challenge. I shake my head. “Liar. You don’t agree with anything I’ve said.”

“Oh, so I’m a liar now, am I?” Noah slides away from me on the chair. “Next thing I’ll be a gangster and a thug too.”

I shrug. “Your words, not mine.” Shut up, Andi! Will Damien really appreciate you making his friends angry? “I’m sorry.” I lower my eyes to the scuffed wooden floor. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Right.” Noah stands. “Just like I don’t mean it when I say self-righteous, overprivileged white girl.”

I breathe in sharply and bite back the urge to tell him he’s got thug written all over him. I uncross my arms and stand up. “Well. At least now we know exactly what we think of each other.”

I pull open Damien’s door and hurry down the stairs before I can do any more damage to the first impression I just made on his friend. I pass a crowd of guys in A quad as I walk briskly along the corridor and wonder if Damien’s in the middle of it, dealing with the i***t window jumper. Instead, I find him at reception, talking to someone on the phone.

I sign out and wave goodbye to him, then head outside. Seconds later, I hear hurried footsteps behind me. “Hey, Andi, you’re leaving?”

“Yes, sorry, it’s getting late.” And your friend and I have exchanged enough rude words for one night. “Is that guy okay? The one who fell out the window?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all taken care of.”

“Okay, good. Well …”

“Before you go, I just wanted to check that you’re okay with this,” Damien says. “This plan of ours. It’s not going to get in the way of our friendship, right? You’re happy to do this?”

I give him a smile I hope he doesn’t realise is fake. “One hundred percent happy.”