Faking It With His Rival

We were having dinner at my childhood sweetheart’s house, and the table was a mess of red shells and melted butter. I watched as he systematically cracked open a Maine lobster claw, extracting the meat perfectly and sliding it onto my plate until I had a small mountain of it. His mother, sitting across from us, finally let out a long, contented sigh. "I knew it. I knew you two couldn’t stay away from each other." She offered a warm, knowing smile. "You’ve been together for almost ten years. You don’t just throw that away." A sudden, suffocating silence descended over the dining room. It was Nolan who broke it. "Mom, we really did break up," he said, his voice terrifyingly steady. "I’m just used to taking care of Tess. Muscle memory, that’s all." I jumped in, offering a bright, practiced laugh to cut the tension. "He’s right, Mrs. Wright. Your son moved on ages ago. He’s already got a new girlfriend." I paused, swirling my wine. "Unlike me. I can’t even come home for the holidays without my mom forcing me into blind dates with old classmates." I pushed the plate of perfectly picked lobster meat back across the table, right to his spot. Nolan’s hands froze mid-crack. He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Which classmate?" 1 Seeing the flash of triumph on my face, Nolan raised an eyebrow and let out a low, humorless chuckle. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm just making conversation." He leaned back in his chair. "You're not going to count this as a breach of contract, are you?" I gave him a single, emphatic nod. "Fine." He didn't miss a beat. He pulled his phone from his pocket, his thumbs flying across the screen. A second later, my phone vibrated against the wood of the table. [Venmo] Nolan Wright paid you $50.00. When Nolan and I broke up, we laid down three ground rules. The most important one: absolute radio silence regarding each other's dating lives. The penalty for asking? Fifty bucks. If you scrolled back through my transaction history to six months ago, you’d see a week where I went insane and Venmoed him $350. But tonight? This was his first time paying the fine. After dinner, I headed to the foyer to grab my coat. As I was stepping into my boots, a tall shadow fell over me, entirely blocking the porch light. "Since I already paid the fine," Nolan murmured, his voice dropping an octave, "you can tell me now." "Who are you going on a date with?" 2 Nolan’s relentless stubbornness was something I had suffered through since we were kids. I ignored him, pushing the heavy front door open and stepping out into the biting Boston cold. But he just followed me. He matched my pace exactly, stepping on my shadow as we walked down the porch steps, acting as if he’d been cheated out of fifty dollars if he didn't get a name. To shut him up, I threw out a name. He paused on the sidewalk, searching his memory. Then, his lips curved into a devastating, wicked smile. "The guy who reported us for making out under the bleachers in sophomore year?" He let out a dry laugh. "Isn't it going to be a little awkward, sitting across from him over appetizers?" I pulled my scarf tighter around my neck and met his gaze evenly. "In high school, you threw away the love letter Sloane slipped into your locker," I said, my voice deadpan. "Didn't seem to make things awkward when you started sleeping with her." At the mention of Sloane, the amusement vanished from Nolan’s face. "Tess," he said, his tone suddenly heavy with that patronizing exhaustion I knew too well. "Stop waiting for me in the past." The motion-sensor light above the neighbor’s garage clicked off, plunging us into the blue-black winter night. In the dark, his voice sounded entirely too confident. "There is no blind date, is there?" he said softly. "You still lick your bottom lip when you lie. You really need to work on that." That was the curse of the childhood sweetheart. We knew the topography of each other’s souls too well. He was right. I was lying. My mom had brought up the blind date last week, but I had shot it down immediately. The reason was incredibly simple. I already had a new boyfriend. 3 Behind me, the crunch of Nolan’s footsteps faded into the snow. The streetlamp flickered on, casting my solitary shadow against the brick wall of the brownstone. Suddenly, I was struck by a memory from a decade ago, in a stairwell just like this one. Sixteen-year-old Nolan had taken my hand, his palms slightly sweaty, his eyes burning with an intense, boyish sincerity. “I love you, Tess,” he had said. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life.” No one could have predicted this. We met when we were three. We fell in love at sixteen. And at twenty-six, we shattered. I still remember every agonizing detail of the day it ended. It was our ten-year anniversary. It was snowing in London. I had dragged a heavy suitcase all the way up to Cambridge, planning to surprise him. Instead, I found him walking out of the university library with Sloane. They were walking shoulder to shoulder, laughing at some shared joke. Nolan, playing the perfect gentleman, was tilting his umbrella heavily toward her. The snowflakes that didn't land on her red knit beanie fell onto my shoulders instead. They felt like anvils. The crushing weight of jet lag, the time difference, and the sheer exhaustion of loving him came rushing to the surface, clawing its way out of my chest. I looked down at my phone. I had already typed the text: Guess where I am right now? I didn't have the strength to hit send. Perhaps it was some twisted telepathy forged over twenty years, but Nolan suddenly stopped walking. He looked up. Through the falling snow, he saw me. 4 The moment I turned on my heel and walked away, a pathetic, bruised part of my heart expected him to chase after me. He didn't. After all, we were in the middle of a cold war. Following undergrad, Nolan and I had been navigating the grueling reality of a transatlantic relationship for four years. For the second year in a row, he had used his PhD dissertation as an excuse, telling me he was too swamped to host me in Cambridge for the Christmas holidays. Yet, two days later, I saw Sloane’s new Instagram post. Nolan had gone with a group of friends—including her—to the Greenwich Observatory, a place I had been begging him to take me for years. They took pictures in the rain, standing right on the Prime Meridian. After the storm, a triple rainbow appeared. The center photo of the carousel was of Sloane, reaching her hand up to "hold" the rainbow, beaming radiantly at the camera. I knew his photography style. I knew instantly that Nolan had taken that picture. I had called him, furious, tears of frustration hot in my eyes. "Is this what you meant by working on your dissertation?" Over the phone, he just let out a soft, patronizing sigh. "I'm a human being, Tess. Not a machine that runs twenty-four-seven. Am I not allowed to take a few hours to unwind with my friends?" The knot in my stomach tightened. "Then why did you lie to me yesterday? Why did you say you were stuck in the lab?" He adopted that tone—the one that said I knew you'd be like this. "See? This is exactly why I didn't tell you. You always spiral into these paranoid fantasies." I saw red. "Oh, I'm paranoid? Is that why you conveniently forgot to mention that Sloane was a visiting scholar in your exact research group? You hid that from me for half a semester, Nolan!" I could hear him suppressing his irritation. "I hid it from you to avoid unnecessary drama. Need I remind you who threatened to break up with me in high school just because I didn't immediately throw away a letter she wrote me?" He paused, letting the silence stretch before delivering the killing blow. "Long-distance is exhausting enough, Tess. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with your constant interrogations. I can't report my every move to you." When we first went long-distance, he used to text me just to tell me he was stepping out of the shower. He used to say goodnight, and then text me a second goodnight just to be the last thing I saw. But eventually, simply missing him—simply wanting to know the mundane details of his day—was weaponized into "interrogations" and "paranoid fantasies." I was exhausted, too. Navigating an eight-hour time zone difference meant I could only ever call him when it was convenient for him. I didn't want to spend the precious few minutes we had to connect fighting on an empty stomach. I took a breath, ready to soften my voice, to apologize, to bridge the gap. The line went dead. A second later, a text came through. [This conversation is over. I'm going back to my literature review.] That was his signature move. The ultimate signal that he was out of patience. By the time I finally made it to the cafeteria for lunch, the food was ice cold. That night, I came down with a vicious case of food poisoning. Sitting in the ER with a 102-degree fever, watching the IV drip into my vein, the sheer, crushing loneliness of it all finally broke me. We were in a cold war. But the universe has a funny sense of timing. A few days later, my company finally approved the transfer request I had been fighting for over the last six months. I stared at the email. New placement: London Office. Just like that, I managed to glue my own heart back together. I worked massive overtime for a week, burned my vacation days, and flew to Cambridge on our anniversary, ready to tell him face-to-face that our long-distance nightmare was finally over. Only to be greeted by another spectacular disappointment. 5 By the time Nolan tracked me down, I was sitting in a dimly lit Cambridge pub, aggressively self-medicating with gin. He marched over, a dark scowl on his face, and snatched the glass out of my hand without a word. "You're a lightweight. Stop drinking." I reached for it, swaying slightly. "Someone bought that for me. Give it back." His jaw tightened, and he held the glass higher out of my reach. "Who bought it?" While I was sitting, I felt fine. But the moment I stood up, the room tilted violently on its axis, and my stomach initiated a full-scale revolt. Seeing me double over, gagging, Nolan—a notorious germaphobe—instinctively reached out, cupping his hands under my chin. "If you throw up on this floor," he threatened through gritted teeth, "you're paying the cleaning fee." All the suffocating misery and resentment I had been carrying for months miraculously evaporated in that instant. Back at his flat, I clung to his neck. Staring at the face I had missed so desperately, my vision blurred with tears. "It's been almost a year," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Nolan... I missed you so much." And then I threw up all over his shirt. "Tess!" Nolan cursed under his breath, furiously pulling the ruined shirt over his head. When he handed me a glass of water to rinse my mouth, his bare torso was right in my line of sight. His abs seemed even more defined than the last time I saw him. Catching my blatant staring, his Adam’s apple bobbed. He swallowed hard. "Are you going to shower or what?" On the TV console in my apartment, there’s still a faded photograph of Nolan and me taking a bath together as toddlers. Two chubby babies sitting in a red plastic tub, covered in bubbles, smiling wildly at the camera. We were like two saplings planted in the same patch of dirt. Over twenty years, our roots had tangled so deeply underground that it was impossible to tell where I ended and he began. Just like that night. From the bathroom to the bed, we kissed like we were dying of thirst. We tore at each other with a desperate, familiar hunger. When I woke up the next morning, I could hear the sizzle of bacon from the kitchen. The heavy, wonderful reality of my surprise finally rushed back into my brain. I padded out to the kitchen barefoot and wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, my voice light and soaring. "I didn't even get to tell you the good news last night! I'm transferring to the London office. I mapped it out—it's only an hour-and-a-half train ride from my new place to Cambridge. We can see each other every single weekend now." Nolan turned off the stove. He walked away, grabbed a pair of slippers from the bedroom, and placed them gently at my feet. After making sure I put them on, he stood up. He looked at me, his eyes dark, unfathomable, and utterly hollow. "Tess," he said softly. "I think we need to stop here." 6 I stared at him, my eyes snagging on the red, bruised kiss mark blooming on his neck. My mind went entirely blank. "Nolan, what are you talking about?" The words felt like sandpaper in my throat. "Are you breaking up with me?" His silence was a physical weight pressing down on my chest. My heart plummeted into my stomach. "We were perfectly fine last night. Why are you suddenly saying this?" My voice tipped into panic. "Nolan, are you sick? Is something wrong?" It was the only logical reason my brain could conjure for him wanting to let me go. To my horror, he laughed. A short, dry, exhausted sound. "Do you really not know why?" he asked. "How many times have we fought over Sloane in the last few months? The endless cold wars, the making up just to fight again... I am suffocating in this relationship, Tess." "But the distance is over!" I blurted out, desperate. "We don't have to deal with the time zones anymore! If we have a problem, we can fix it face-to-face—" He cut me off, his brow furrowed in disdain. "Tess, all these 'sacrifices' you think you're making for me?" His voice was ice. "To me, they're just a burden." A burden. While I was working myself to the bone, cramming two days of work into one just to secure this transfer—while I was sitting in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm, typing emails on my laptop just so I could be closer to him—he was calculating his exit strategy. In that moment, what hit me wasn't anger. It was a raw, primal terror. The absolute dread of watching Nolan Wright become a stranger. I clung to his arm like a stubborn, terrified child, refusing to let go. "We walked to elementary school together every day," I pleaded, the tears spilling over. "When you learned to ride a bike, I was the first person you put on the back pegs. We rented our first apartment together. When we moved out, it took us six hours just to take down the photo wall. Even your food preferences—the things you like to eat—you developed those by finishing the food on my plate when we were kids." My voice cracked, shattering into a sob. "We have been together for ten years, Nolan. Thousands of days. Thousands of nights. Teach me. Tell me how the hell you just neatly carve someone out of your life like they were never there." I cried until my lungs burned and I had no tears left. All it earned me was the slow, methodical peeling of my fingers off his arm. "Tess," he sighed, looking down at me with pity. "No one is incapable of living without someone else." He paused, adjusting his cuffs. "Even if we aren't together, I'll always be your friend." And he actually meant it. That was the sickest part. Even after executing a textbook blindside breakup, Nolan diligently fulfilled his "duties" as a friend. He pulled strings to have Stella, a fellow grad student he knew, act as my tour guide so I could distract myself in the UK. On the day I was scheduled to fly back to Boston, he personally drove me to Heathrow. Before I went through security, he shoved a heavy paper bag into my hands. "These were the gifts I bought over the last few months," he said evenly. "I never got around to mailing them. You might as well take them back with you." I looked inside the bag. There was a pin from the Sherlock Holmes Museum. A star-shaped silver ring from the Greenwich Observatory. Hand-picked items that only someone who had known me for two decades would know I'd love. Seeing me staring blankly into the bag, he frowned, irritated. "What are you looking at on your phone?" I snapped out of my daze and quickly hid my phone behind my back. Just a second ago, a text had popped up from an unsaved number. [You kissed me and then just ran away. Aren't you going to take responsibility?] 7 It had been six months since that text. That "unsaved number" had long since been changed in my contacts to "Boyfriend"—a modification Tristan had brazenly made when he stole my phone. Looking at the location pin he just sent me, I was slightly caught off guard. [Don't you have a tournament coming up?] I typed back. [What are you doing in Boston?] He replied instantly. [Accompanying my mom on a visit back home. Where are you right now, babe?] As I stood in the hallway of the bar, typing my reply, the twisting anxiety in my chest finally began to ease. The absolute worst part about breaking up with Nolan was the collateral damage. Our social circles were a perfect, overlapping Venn diagram. Case in point: tonight. A holiday get-together with our high school graduating class. Of course, he was here. And the news of our spectacular ten-year-implosion had already spread through our social circle like a virulent disease. I was walking back from the restroom, fixing my lipstick, when I heard voices carrying from around the corner. "I heard you tried to ask Tess out and she shot you down?" a guy asked, laughing. Another guy scoffed, his raspy voice dripping with contempt. "She told me she has a new boyfriend. Yeah, right. Everyone knows Nolan dumped her. With her baggage, she’s basically damaged goods—might as well be a divorcee. I was doing her a favor by asking her out. I don’t know why she’s playing so hard to get—" The sentence was abruptly cut off by a sharp, agonized yelp, followed by the sickening thud of someone hitting the wall. I peeked around the corner, my heart in my throat. The guy with the raspy voice was clutching his bleeding face, looking up in sheer disbelief. "What is your problem? You two broke up! Why the hell are you still defending her?" Under the deep purple neon lights of the hallway, Nolan’s face was a mask of cold, terrifying rage. "Are you going to walk out of here on your own," Nolan said, his voice lethal, "or do I need to throw you out?" The two guys scrambled away, disappearing into the crowd. I took a deep breath and started walking back to the booth, pretending I hadn't seen anything. But as I brushed past him, Nolan threw an arm out, blocking my path. "You have a boyfriend?" 8 When I didn't answer, Nolan raised a dark eyebrow. "Right. I know the rules." He pulled out his phone. A second later, my screen lit up. [Venmo] Nolan Wright paid you $100.00. I hit decline. "Let's just drop it. The contract is void," I said coldly. The smirk on his face didn't reach his eyes. "Why do you get to decide when it's void?" I looked him dead in the eye. "The only reason I was at your house the other night was because my mom couldn't make it and asked me to drop off the gifts. Your mom practically held me hostage for dinner. I don't have some weird fetish for being friends with my ex. I only tolerate you because we run in the same circles and I'm forced to maintain the peace." I took a step closer, my voice dropping. "As for our private interactions? Let's keep them to a permanent minimum." Unfortunately, the acoustics in the bar were terrible, and our mutual friends overheard the tail end of the argument. Back at the booth, during a brutal game of Truth or Dare, one of the guys purposefully targeted me. "Tess, I heard you’ve got a new guy? When did that happen?" The entire table went dead silent. A dozen pairs of eyes swung toward me, hungry for gossip. I hesitated, looking at the shot glasses. "Can I just take a drink instead?" A chorus of groans and teasing erupted. "Oh, come on, why hide it? Unless... the 'boyfriend' is just an excuse because you're still not over Nolan?" "Hey, give her a break," someone else chimed in, grinning. "Nolan’s a tough act to follow. If it were me, I'd need three to five years to recover from losing a guy like him." Since we sat back down, Nolan had been brooding in silence, nursing his scotch. But now, a slow, arrogant smirk spread across his face. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "No drinking option tonight," Nolan said lazily, locking eyes with me. "If you don't want to tell the truth, you take a dare." He genuinely believed them. He thought my attempt to draw boundaries was just a pathetic, transparent defense mechanism because I was still hung up on him. The truth? The only reason I went crazy Venmoing him six months ago, desperately asking about his dating life, was out of pure, unadulterated guilt. I had been with him for ten years. When he dumped me, it nearly killed me. Who could have predicted that mere days later, I would stumble into a relationship with a guy I had just met? Could I say that out loud? Absolutely not. Just then, Sloane’s old best friend—the former class beauty—slumped back into our booth, looking thoroughly defeated. "Ugh, crashed and burned," she complained, pointing a manicured nail toward the bar. "That gorgeous guy over there? The one with the crazy jawline? Total tease. He clearly has a girlfriend, but he keeps looking over at our table." Our semi-private booth had a direct, unobstructed view of the main bar. It was prime real estate for spotting targets for Truth or Dare. Someone's eyes lit up with malicious glee. They pointed at me. "Alright, Tess. Here's your dare. Get that guy to come over here and sit with us. If you can do it, we drop the boyfriend questions. Deal?" 9 The table buzzed with anticipation. They were practically salivating to watch me fail. After all, if a guy who was taken had just shot down the prettiest girl in our class, there was zero chance he was going to respond to a random invitation from me. But I just let out a quiet sigh of relief. "Easy." I turned toward the bar, caught a pair of striking, light brown eyes in the dim lighting, and simply curled my index finger, gesturing for him to come over. The table erupted into snickers. "Tess, are you trying to use the Force or something?" But the laughter died in their throats when they saw the guy instantly push off the barstool. He didn't hesitate. He walked with a loose, predatory grace, cutting straight through the crowd, heading directly for our booth. "Holy shit, no way." "Alright, fine, you win. Respect." Nolan was the only one not smiling. The second he laid eyes on Tristan, his face turned to stone. Tristan didn't even acknowledge the rest of the table. He slid right in beside me, wrapping a heavy, warm arm around my shoulders. He looked directly at Nolan, his smile dangerously sweet, and spoke in perfect, unaccented English. "Hi. I'm Tess's boyfriend. Nice to meet you." Nolan looked like he was going to commit a felony. The holiday trip concluded in spectacular, theatrical fashion, and a few days later, I reluctantly boarded my flight back to London. Right before I switched my phone to airplane mode, a text from Nolan came through. [Are you seriously dating Tristan Holden?] [My PhD advisor's youngest son is a professional at using his face to manipulate women.] [Do you have any idea how many girls he's made cry?] I locked my screen and looked to my right. Tristan Holden—the master manipulator—was currently passed out next to me, utterly defeated by the time zone changes. A black baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes, but even the sliver of his jawline was enough to make the flight attendants find reasons to walk down our aisle every five minutes. It reminded me of the first time I met him. He had looked exactly like this. Dressed casually, baseball cap low, but with those piercing, amber eyes locked onto me. He had smiled that devastatingly sweet smile and explained that his sister, Stella, had an emergency, so he—currently on break from the ATP tour—was stepping in to be my tour guide for the week. At the time, I was so deeply submerged in the trauma of my blindside breakup that I didn't even have the mental capacity to appreciate how obscenely attractive he was. Feeling my gaze on him, Tristan sighed in his sleep. He shifted in his seat, wrapping his arms around me and burying his face in my neck. "You can cry if you want to, babe," he murmured sleepily. I knew it didn't mean anything. In his world, casually tossing around terms of endearment was just how people spoke. But his words were like a spell, completely obliterating whatever fragile dam I had built in my mind. It had been three days since the breakup. I had been desperately wanting to vent my misery to a friend, but every friend I had was also Nolan's friend. In the inevitable custody battle of the breakup, I wasn't sure who they would choose. I started sobbing into his chest, preparing to unleash a hysterical monologue about Nolan’s betrayals. But then I felt the steady, firm rise and fall of his chest beneath his sweater. His pecs... felt surprisingly incredible. My brain short-circuited. The sheer physical distraction of being pressed against an elite athlete temporarily wiped the grief right out of my head. Later, sitting on the top deck of a double-decker sightseeing bus, I tried to be polite. "Tristan, thank you for listening to me trauma-dump for three days straight," I said, looking out at the city. "If you ever need to vent about anything, I'm a good listener, too." The moment the words left my mouth, I realized how stupid it sounded. Tristan had grown up in the elite academic bubble of Cambridge, got bored, and went to Oxford just for fun. He majored in physics, but last year, the Tennis Association named him the most promising young professional on the tour. He had the face of a movie star and the body of a Greek god. What the hell kind of problems could he possibly have? But Tristan actually tilted his head, thinking it over seriously. "If I had to pick something that’s bothering me," he said slowly, "it's that the girl I'm in love with is still deeply in love with her ex." I blinked, processing the information, and then a lightbulb went off. "Oh my god. You're in love with Sloane?" 10 By the time I said it, the bus was turning onto Regent Street. It was twilight, and right on cue, the massive Christmas light installations—the glowing, golden angels hovering over the street—flared to life, illuminating the entire avenue. It was breathtaking. It took Tristan a long moment to pull his gaze away from where my hands were excitedly gripping his forearm. His smile was still sweet, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yeah. I am." Knowing that someone as genetically blessed and privileged as Tristan was also suffering the indignity of unrequited love somehow made my own heart hurt a little less. Over the next few days, he dragged me everywhere. We stood in the fake snow at the Winter Wonderland market. We huddled in a wooden chalet by the River Thames, clinking paper cups of steaming, spiced mulled wine. On our last night, standing shoulder to shoulder waiting for the New Year's Eve fireworks to start, he turned to me. "When in Rome," he whispered, his eyes crinkling. "Let's say goodbye like the locals. La bise." He leaned in, aiming for my cheek. If beauty was a weapon, I would have bled out on the pavement right then and there. My brain completely stalled. Wait, do British people even do the cheek kiss thing? Isn't that French? By the time I realized I was being played, I instinctively turned my head. And my lips crashed directly into his. I bolted. I literally ran away into the crowd. The next day, Tristan somehow acquired my phone number. He unilaterally decided to classify the 'accident' as an intentional kiss, demanding I take responsibility for compromising his virtue. By the time I made it through airport security to fly back to the States, I had a barrage of texts waiting for me. [Okay, babe, jokes aside. Let's talk business.] [Sloane confessed her feelings to Nolan yesterday.] [From what I hear, Nolan is absolutely planning to pursue it.] [After what he put you through, don't you want to get even?] The jarring thump of the plane’s landing gear hitting the tarmac snapped me violently out of the memory. I turned my phone off airplane mode. Nolan’s unread text, sent just before takeoff, flashed on the screen. [Tess, if you're only dating Tristan to get back at me... the only person who is going to end up destroyed by this is you.]