I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN anyone Archer had dated would be drop-dead gorgeous, but that didn’t make it any easier to settle my somersaulting stomach or ease my pecking insecurities. And the worst thing? It wasn’t even like I had a reason to not like her.

Annalise Bromley wasn’t just beautiful, no, she just had to be intelligent and funny and, from what I could gather from a ten minute conversation, genuinely kind.

“We’ll have to catch up again,” she said to Autumn as she linked arms with her now less-stern faced friend, who I now knew was called Madison. “It was lovely to meet you Jolie. I wish you and Archer the best.” That effortless smile graced her face, no hint of resentment or hatred beneath those eyes.

She bid us a final farewell before going to the till.

“Come on,” Autumn said, nudging me once they’d disappeared. “I don’t need anything from here anyway. Let’s just go for something to eat.”

I appreciated her noticing my unease and offering an escape route, even if she had been eyeing a certain piece on the rack and would likely have wanted it.

“You go get what you wanted,” I told her. “I’ll meet you in the café on the corner.” She gave me a look as if to say you sure? “Yes, just go. You won’t stop thinking about it if you don’t get it.” Again, she seemed uncertain but with a small encouraging shove, she was on her way.

In all honesty, I just needed a little time to think. I knew Autumn would be more than willing to offer me advice or even just a shoulder to cry on, but at the end of the day, she was still Archer’s sister.

I settled in a seat by the window in the café I’d told her we’d meet in and ordered myself a drink.

I knew I had no right to feel this way. None, whatsoever. We’d agreed on this whole fake relationship being nothing more than just that. Fake. I knew that from the beginning and I’d promised myself to stick to it… yet, I couldn’t help thinking:

how could he ever want me when girls like Annalise Bromley existed?

I shook my head to clear it. It didn’t matter that if I wasn’t useful or valuable to him, he wouldn’t have given me a second glance. It didn’t matter. I really tried to believe it.

Autumn came in then, arms filled with bags, and slumped down in the seat opposite mine. She eyed my coffee greedily. I was in no mood to drink it, so scooted it along the table towards her.

“Over-exerted yourself shopping?” I asked, cracking a small smile I didn’t know I’d been capable of as she chugged the drink.

“Ha ha,” she muttered once she’d wiped her top lip. “More like running from Noah.”

“He’s here?”

“Yeah— oh jesus, they’ve just come in,” she said, squirming in her seat and lowered herself until she couldn’t be seen around it. I looked over her head to the door to see that Noah and Archer had, indeed, just come in.

“They’re coming over,” I said, putting my hand to my face casually to hide my lips. Archer hadn’t ever told me about a secret ability to lip read perfectly, but I wouldn’t put the ability past him.

Autumn’s eyes were wide in panic.

“Just act natural,” she said.

I stared at her, still more than three quarters of the way down her seat as she tried to conceal herself. “Like you, you mean?”

She righted herself. “Oh, shut up.”

Archer leant down to me first, eyes alight as he kissed me on the cheek in greeting.

It’s an act.

It’s an act.

It’s an act.

I stiffened.

He must have felt it because once he’d got up, he looked at me with his eyebrow raised in confusion. I looked away, unable to bear making eye contact. Looking at him, his looks undeniable, I just couldn’t bring my mind away from him and Annalise. No wonder he was still hurt over her.

“What are you doing here?” Autumn asked when she realised I wasn’t about to initiate conversation.

He raised the bag in his hand, some designer name brandishing it. “Mum said to bring this back, remember?”

“Oh my god,” Autumn said. “I completely forgot. You are a life saver.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, standing far too close to me for my liking. Yet, a small part of me wanted him to be closer, until no space separate us. No. Dangerous territory. “You owe me.” He paused for a moment, like he was going to say more but thought better of it. “I should get back.”

He pointed over to Noah, who had a drink in either hand and didn’t look like he was about to come over anytime soon.

“See you in a bit.”

Again, he looked at me and again, I looked away. I really needed to train myself to make eye contact with him without it leading to feelings I wasn’t prepared to face.

“You going to tell me what that was about then?” Autumn, so much like her brother, had her eyebrow raised in question. It’d be a struggle looking at her soon, too. “This isn’t about Annalise, is it?”

“No,” I lied. “Anyway, I’m not the only one. So much for ‘everything is sorted’ between you and Noah.”

That morning, when she’d finally got up, Noah had made his excuses and disappeared off. I’d asked her then how things were, just to be met with a dismissive answer.

“Touché.”

***

I don’t quite remember how I’d let Autumn manipulate me, or as she calls it ‘gently persuade’ me, to come to this club. Only, that that was where we’d ended up.

The music was loud and insufferable, but for once, I didn’t mind it all that much. The throbbing in my ears seemed to aid in numbing the pinches I felt every time a girl showed an interest in Archer. The alcohol had much the same effect.

It wasn’t like he was reciprocating their interest, but a few times he had to lean down to their level to hear what they were saying. Just the closeness of him and someone else was enough to make my chest ache strangely.

“Shot, please,” I said, sliding my money over to the bar tender. I looked over at Archer again, his athletic build and handsome features drawing yet another girl out of the crowd. I watched as her friends giggled, one pushing her forward into him. “Make it a strong one.”

“Rough night?” He asked.

I looked up at him. His hair was longer than I was used to on a guy, but I didn’t mind it. It suited the whole ‘ski all day, party all night’ persona I’d labelled him with. His features were cleanly cut: dark eyes, a sharp and narrow nose, and lips pulled into a smile as he registered me checking him out.

“Something like that.”

“Here,” he said, pushing my money back towards me. “On the house.”

I smiled slightly, looking down into the drink he lay before me. “Thanks.” Archer had caught the girl, hands on her hips to settle her and she took the opportunity to wrap her own around his neck. And with that, no room to chicken out, I knocked it back in one.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, throat burning. “What’s in that? Rat poison?”

He was leant over the bar so we were close. He shrugged. “You said strong.”

“Bloody hell. I’ll be careful what I say next time.”

He smiled. “Feeling better?”

All of my senses were abuzz. I almost couldn’t even remember what I’d been trying to forget. Almost. “Much.”

“Jolie!” Autumn called as she crashed into my side, misjudging completely the space between us. She slung an arm around my shoulders. “I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too, Autumn,” I said, trying to unlatch her arm from me. I did, but had to reach out again as she wobbled. I looked to the barman again. He really couldn’t be much older than us. “Can we get her some water please?” He nodded and eased himself up, turning round to the taps.

“Come on, don’t be a spoil sport and dance!”

I caught her as she teetered again. “How about you sit here,” I said, giving my seat up for her and pulling my dress down. “And I’ll dance.” She cheered in victory. I didn’t tell her that I actually had no intentions of dancing.

That is, until a light hand settled on my arm as I passed. A boy, blonde hair falling over his face, and a little dazed, asked, “Dance with me?” I was prepared to refuse, say I couldn’t dance or that I was about to go, but then with a small glimpse of Archer and the girl, I thought: why the fuck not?

He grinned a grin big enough to spread across his whole face.

I was the one to lead him to one of the very few empty spaces, pretty much right in the middle as a couple left. By the way their hands had been roaming each other, like so many around us, it didn’t take much to figure out where they were off to.

His hands settled on my hips and I drew him to me.

I didn’t bother with small talk.

I’d blame the alcohol in my blood for letting a random stranger be this close to me, for letting his hands wander here and there, and for most importantly, what happened next.

I spun so that my back was to him.

He immediately reattached his hands to my hips. I breathed in the smell of sweat and alcohol that had all combined in the dingy club.

With courage I wouldn’t have by the morning, I pushed my rear into his front. His hold on my hips tightened until his fingertips were pressing almost painfully into my skin.

His breath was on my neck.

“Want to get out of here?”

“I—” I didn’t have time to say anything else as the guy was wretched away from me. I suddenly got a gust of air, enough to regain my senses, if only a little.

“Dude, what the fuck?” He said, eyes going from angry to fear as he looked up at Archer towering over him.

“I should ask you the same,” he said, voice low and threatening. “Like why you’ve got your hands on my girlfriend.”

He blanched. “Ha ha no harm, no foul right bro?”

Archer continued to glare at him. “You don’t come near her again.” The boy shook his head so hard it looked about ready to come off. “Leave.” And he was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

“Coward,” I muttered at his retreating back. I looked up at my ‘boyfriend,’ his features a little fuzzy, “Yes?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

Not enough, I wanted to say. “Why do you care?”

“Of course I care, Jolie.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just go back to that girl you were with before, yeah. See you later.”

I imagined his brows pulled tight into a frown.

I followed the boy before’s lead and squeeze my way out of the crowd, but turn back toward the bar.

“You’re back,” the barman said. “Your friend just left.”

“Figures,” I muttered, looking around. “What’s your name by the way?”

“I’m Jamie,” he said, hand out.

I met it with a smile. “Jolie.”

“Cute,” he said, putting down the drink I’d asked for, letting me pay this time after I insisted. “What’re you trying to drink away, Jolie?”

I laughed into my drink. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“My love life is in a bit of a shambles at the moment.”

“Makes it a little more interesting though, don’t you think?”

I scoffed. “By interesting, do you mean makes me want to repeatedly bang my head against a wall?”

“Whatever works.”

So, I gave him the general gist of my situation, leaving out things here and there, alcohol making me far looser tongued than when sober.

“Whoever this guy is would be insane to not want you,” he said, putting money in the till from a bunch of girls that had just appeared beside me. “You should talk to him, tell him how you feel, then figure out what to do from there.” He received the girls with a smirk when he must have heard them all giggling and muttering about him.

“Ladies,” he said, full flirting game being put into play. I turned away slightly, letting him get on with it.

A large figure slumped into the sparse chair on my left. Noah looked buzzed, that certain drunk absence about him.

“You’ve been sitting here all night?” He asked, once he’d pulled me in for a sloppy side hug, almost smothering me with his large arms. I pulled away to breathe.

“Not all night.” Just most of it.

“What about you?” I asked, remembering how I’d seen him in a rather compromising position with the girl I recognised as a waitress.

“Eh,” he waved it off.

“She’s pretty.” I encouraged him to keep on subject and not brush it aside. But she’s not Autumn, I imagined him thinking. And by the faraway look on his face, it wasn’t so improbable that it was exactly what he was thinking.

The girl we’d been talking about, the waitress I mean, appeared then, wrapping her arms around him and tilting his face so she could bestow a kiss on it. Her lips then travelled down his neck. It felt wrong for me to be witnessing this, so I looked away from the pair.

“Four beers,” a voice from beside me said. The girls had gone off to party, leaving space now for a group of boys. Jamie nodded at them, before going about getting them for them.

I was prepared to just ignore them, and go about my own business, when a name stuck out. “Jacques, we need your pass for the ski lift man but you’re always with that girl.”

I didn’t make direct eye contact, kept it subtle but I, of course, was listening into their conversation.

“Yeah, I know,” I assume ‘Jacques’ said. “As soon as I’m done with her, I’ll be back with you boys.”

Another new voice spoke up. “And how long’s that gonna be?”

“I’ll just load her with a few drinks,” I pretended to look unbothered as my gaze flickered towards them but his smirk made my stomach churn uncomfortably.

He better not be insinuating what I think he’s insinuating.

“She already seems pretty drunk man,” one of them said. I chanced a glance at where he was looking and watched in horror as I realised who they were talking about. Right where they were looking was Autumn, stumbling into someone and then apologising profusely. I clenched my knuckles so hard they began to pulsate. “She’ll pass out if you give her anymore.”

“Even better.”

I was about to get up and out of my seat and deck him. But, someone beat me to it.

Before I could move an inch, Noah’s fist was coming slicing through the air at an inhuman speed… right towards Jacques.