The Perfect Promise

Chapter 11: The Unhoneymooners:

~Chapter Song: Brand new, Ben Rector~

This is not going to work.

I was with Cameron outside of the school, already regretting this whole plan.

We were ready.

He gave me a black hoodie which was very clearly not mine. The sleeves were huge, and they almost reached my knees. But that was what couples do, right?

We also took a couple of pictures together, to use as our wallpapers. Cameron chose one where I had my arms around his neck, and he was kissing my cheek -disgusting by the way- and I put one where he hugged me from behind. We changed them in the car from home to school and the opposite because we didn't want our families to think we were dating. We would lie to enough people, without them involved. His would be awkward enough as it was. All this took us three hours.

Three hours to take two good pictures. We were that useless, on this fake-dating thing, we had to search for a couple of poses ideas, because apparently none of us had any idea, what we were doing.

See the problem? I didn't have any experience in a relationship, and I guess he didn't have either. I've never really asked him. The only thing that mattered at that point was to make sure no one suspected us and since my acting is -let's be honest- horrible, fooling anyone? Won't be as easy as.

"Oh, I almost forgot.", he said and grabbed a thermos from his back, "I made you coffee."

I tried a sip. It was... perfect. He remembered the way I drank my coffee exactly right. Not even Christine was able to do that.

"Don't look so surprised, I know how you take your coffee." I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. He didn't either. We just stared at each other.

He broke the silence, after a second. "Ready?"

"As ready as I can be. Shouldn't we... I don't know... hold hands or something?", I asked.

The face of horror on his face was very fitting to the situation. I'm pretty sure I had a similar one on mine.

"I guess so. That's what couples do right?"

I shrugged. How the hell was I supposed to know?

He reached for my hand, but last minute he backed out. Then did it again.

I don't get it. He had no problem putting his palm at my waist and calling me 'hon', yesterday, why was he so awkward now? Maybe he changed his mind. Of course, he did. The whole plan was absurd, it was a matter of minutes before one of us backed out. It just happened to be him. I wouldn't be surprised. At some point, in summer, all other family friends were in a hotel, on a break with all of our families, and we decided to wait until midnight and climb down the window, to go out. He backed out last minute and David didn't want to go only with me so none of us went.

"Did you change your mind?".

"Do we even have a choice?", he asked desperately for me to give him a way out, even though -and I can't stress this enough- he is the one that got us in this mess in the first place.

I shook my head, "I got it."

I wrapped my finger around his. It wasn't holding hands, but it was close to it.

"Perfect. Sorry, I'm so awkward. The whole thing is very..."

"Odd, strange, abnormal, weird, irregular, uncomfortable?". I wasn't even that good at English, but the last days gave a boost to my vocabulary.

"Yeah...", another awkward pause.

This was killing us, slowly and painfully.

"Shall we?", he didn't wait for me to answer. He started walking to school, dragging me along.