Free Jenna & Jonah's Fauxmance by Emily Franklin, Brendan Halpin Page B

Aaron?” I say as he busies himself slicing tomatoes. I can’t get used to calling him Aaron, but now Fielding sounds fake, too. He looks up but doesn’t respond with any words, as though he wants me to pay him for any dialogue. “A montage.” He raises his eyebrows, hair falling over his forehead in his trademark way. I want to brush it away and touch his stubbled face—until he gives me a look that suggests I’m an idiot. Then I want to chop all his hair off in his sleep. “You know how they’d make almost a whole episode of flashbacks? That time we recorded ‘Living with You, Living without You,’ when you—”
    “Jonah—”
    “Right, when Jonah had appendicitis? It was, like, no new footage, just a few minutes of us in that lame hospital room—”
    Aaron finally breaks into a grin. “So ridiculous—it was the same room they used for global studies, just with a gurney and fake medical devices beeping.” We lock eyes, laughing, remembering.
    “Anyway, that’s sort of what we need now, a montage with music over it—we’d get the house all repaired …”
    Aaron joins in. “Yeah, with me yanking weeds and planting new trees …”
    I let myself get excited, my voice rises in pitch, and my hands flail. “Then, just as the grounds are looking great, our careers would get a makeover, too. We’d remember who we used to be before and we’d suddenly be back on top of the teen world, but we wouldn’t have had to deal with this part.”
    “And what part is that, exactly?” Aaron puts the tomatoes on a cookie sheet and drizzles olive oil on top.
    I bite my lip. “The stuff in between. The hard stuff. The crap. That’s why they don’t show it in movies and TV, because it’s impossible to document.”
    Aaron slides the baking sheet into the oven and comes over to me. For a second I think he’s about to hug me, reach for me. But instead he puts his hand on my shoulder in one gesture of pity. “That hard part is called life. Reality. And it’s what you don’t know how to deal with.”
    Feeling deflated like the withered helium balloons on our prom set, I leave the main house where Aaron and his starkness rebuff me and head outside. The property is amazing, in need of major repairs—like, say, paint, plastering, and a toilet that flushes—but it is a thing of beauty. Just like that old cliché of something beautiful hiding under the messy exterior. Off the kitchen is a small patio, emptied of furniture but rimmed with more flowers, ones so tall they nearly bend over with their own weight. I study the blue, pink, and yellow bursts and then notice something way off to the left, halfway down the cliff side, nearly jumping off the ledge into the ocean. Across the uneven grass and along the rocky paths that haven’t been tended in who knows how long, I walk toward what appears to be a small cabin. I lift a latch on the broken wooden gate and slip through, hoping the cabin also technically belongs to Aaron so I’m not trespassing and doomed to wind up in the tabloids for this embarrassment, too.
    Inside, there’s just one main room, with a double bed flanked by side tables made from old fruit crates, two oil lamps, a little bathroom with a claw-foot tub, and a view of the ocean from every square foot. In a word, it’s perfect. I sit on the bed and feel, really for the first time in ages, my whole body. Tired. Hungry. The worry of what lurks in the rest of the world feels farther and farther away, and I lie back, wondering how I could have lasted so long playing the love-interest-next-door of someone who so clearly despises me. How could anyone have bought the whole charade?
    Sure enough, when I wake up after my unexpected nap, the sky has darkened and I can only barely find my way back to the main house and Jonah—I mean Fielding—I mean Aaron—is nowhere to be found. I try not to get creeped out to the point of calling the police, because the last thing I want is more scandal. First, I walk around