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If you asked her now, she’d tell you that it was the best decision she had ever made. But if you asked her while it was happening, she’d tell you that she had never hated herself more. She’d tell you that trying to trick Farkle Minkus into thinking she had a boyfriend was literally the worst decision she had ever made. And Riley Matthews had made her fair share of bad decisions.
It started innocently enough, she never planned for it to get to the point it eventually got to. She just wanted Farkle to see that she wasn’t disposable and that he better act fast, that’s all. She she told a simple, little white lie that then turned into a complicated mess of a phrase.
“Good morning Farkle!” She was bright and cheery, as per usual, but whenever he entered the room there was always something in her demeanor that radiated brighter than usual.
“Good morning Princess,” he smiled at her and tried very, very hard to ignore the nickname he just called her. Him and Smackle just broke up last month. And besides, his love for her was gone and she had to get over it. But today was not that day.
She scoffed at him, “The only person that gets to call me princess is my boyfriend-” she looked up from where she was doodling and stared ahead, speechless. She really needed to get a hang of the whole ‘think before you talk’ thing.
Farkle looked at her in disbelief from the desk next to her, his eyebrows furrowed and his fists clenched, “I’m sorry, you’re what? Riley you only know five boys. I think I’d know if you had a boyfriend.” He leant back in his chair, disgruntled.
This would be another action that Riley would say she regretted, “He goes to a different school. You wouldn’t know him,” she doesn’t make eye contact with him because she knows if she did her story would fall apart just like everything else about her does when he looks at her.
“Shocker.”
“Are you doubting me, Minkus?”
“Not at all,” he drawled sarcastically. Turning in his desk to face her more he feigned intrigue and inquired on, “What’s his name? Is he, like, a total babe?
She rolled her eyes and turned toward, mirroring his expression and body language, “His name is Oscar and for your information, he is, in fact, a ‘total babe’.”
And before Farkle could retort, the school bell rang and he was left to slump into his seat and think of all of things he would want to shove up “Oscar’s” backdoor.
Meanwhile, Riley was planning her alternate routes throughout the school day that she would have to take in order to avoid Farkle.
Riley somehow managed to avoid Farkle for the rest of the day, praising herself at the Riley Awards for managing to bury the “Oscar Incident” deep in her subconscious so she wouldn’t have to worry about how much of an idiot she looked like in front of Farkle ever again. But, nothing good stays and while she was thanking the academy for her award, she received a text.
farkley
where are you riles i thought we were going to study for our apush test at the library after school? hope u arent ditching me to be with “oscar”
This was the text that made her realize that maybe her word vomit wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Farkle was jealous of her mystery boyfriend and she was definitely going to milk it for all that it was worth.
riles
sorry bud, it completely slipped my mind :/
riles
and don’t worry, i wasn’t with oscar. i was just facetiming him instead
farkley
charming.
She sees him type but then stop, type and then stop, type and then stop. She was just about to finally reply when he beats her to it.
farkley
hang up on him. im coming over.
She immediately jumped off her bed and began grabbing her dirty clothes off of the floor and shoving them into her closet. She also decided that she needed to be wearing clothes that she hadn’t been sleeping in for the past five days. She needed to look like she had better things to do than study. Which she didn’t. But he didn’t need to know that.
After what seemed like mere seconds, he was tapping on the bay window mercilessly, waiting for her to unlock it. She strutted over, probably making a fool of herself but trying not to care.
She opened the window for him, “You rang?”
He climbed in and sat next to her on the window seat, “Technically, I knocked. Which is more than your ‘boyfriend’ can say,” he was being so cocky - she tried not to love it, “How was your FaceTime date anyway? Everything you could have hoped for?”
She smiled a fake smile at him, nonverbally continuing the banter, “It was more actually. Thanks for asking.” She stood up from the window without looking back at him, but she could feel his eyes boring into her back side.
She sat down at her desk and started to take out her APUSH notes, “Alright so I guess we should get started, since you interrupted my date and came all this way-”
He stood, “Stop calling it a date. You were FaceTiming. You want to know what a date is, Matthews? How about when we went to the movies last weekend? Or had sushi last night? Or maybe when we went to the pier every day during spring break? Those all seemed like dates to me, but I guess I was wrong. Because apparently a date to you is staring at each other’s pixelated faces on a phone screen rather than actually being with them.”
Her heart stopped and she stood up from her desk, “Farkle,” she started.
“You know what? If he really is as good of a boyfriend as you make him out to be, tell him to come over right now. I want to meet him. I need to know who’s taking the girl from me this time,” he finished.
“Farkle, it’s not like that,” her voice was small and her eyes were fixed on the floor.
He walked closer to her, so close that she could feel his hot breath on her neck.
“Oh yeah, then what is it like? Did he not just show up out of the blue and sweep my girl off and way before I can barely get back up on my own two feet? History seems to be repeating itself, Riles.” He seemed to be getting sterner and more sarcastic, almost every breath in between phrases was equipped with a scoff and an eye roll.
She had had enough of his self pity. She was the one that sat around for the longest year and a half of her life just waiting for Farkle to come back to her. But then he didn’t. And now here she is, just trying to move on with her fake life with her fake boyfriend and all he can do is hold her back.
“You could have done something about it you know!” Her voice suddenly had some weight to it, “I sat around when you and Smackle were together just hoping that something would happen to lead you back to me, hating myself for not cherishing you sooner. And then my wishes came true and you still didn’t do anything,” she moved closer than she thought was possible, “You know all of those ‘dates’ you mentioned before? We did all of that stuff when you and Smackle were together too so how was I supposed to know they suddenly meant something? I’ve spent the past year and a half convincing myself that they didn’t mean anything and that I was overanalyzing. How dare you come at me and whatever boyfriend I may or may not have when this is just as much your fault as it is anything else’s.”
His face was stone cold and his hands beside him were as steady as a rock. Riley almost went to open her mouth to add more to her attack when his hands were gripping her face and his lips were latched onto hers.
She didn’t kiss back at first because this was so new and sudden that her body hadn’t yet had time to catch up to her brain yet, but when they met in the middle, her body sang.
His hands moved down to her waist and he walked her backwards until she fell back onto the bed. He rested one arm on the side of her head and the other one rested on her upper thigh of one of her legs, he ran his hands up and down her leg until he finally grabbed it and wrapped it around one of his hips.
“You can’t get this over FaceTime, huh princess?”
His breath sent shivers down her spine and she could only reply with a whimper and a roll of her head against the pillow underneath her.
He went back to kissing her and it was like nothing either of them had ever experienced before. Every body part synchronized perfectly, from their hips to their hands to their lips. She pulled at his hair and he grabbed at her backside, lifting her up to meet his hips. They both moaned at the contact.
He moved his lips down to her neck where he did everything but set up shop and raise a family. He nipped and licked and soothed and attacked all in what seemed like one fluid motion and she was hating herself for not making up some fake boyfriend sooner.
But then his lips left her neck. They were on her collar bones. And then her shirt was gone and they were in between her breasts. Her stomach. Her hip bones. And then they were right above her waist band.
He looked up at her and then hovered back over her face, leaving a lingering kiss, barely separating themselves as he whispered, “Tell me you want me.”
She wrapped her legs around him in response, doing her best to make as much friction as possible.
“Use your words, princess.”
She sighed, grinding her hips against his instead of forming words.
He sighed back, trying to keep his feelings under wraps.
He leaned down to her ear, kissing underneath of it and then whispering, “The least you could do is tell me I’m better than him.”
She half sighed, half laughed and before she could stop herself, she was word vomitting again, “He’s not real.”
He immediately sat back and she groaned at the loss of contact.
“What the hell do you mean he’s not real?”
She supported herself on her forearms and elbows, “What I mean is that I made him up. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. But, I guessed it worked out in my favor. It made you jealous.” She smiled triumphantly at herself. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“It did not make me jealous. It just made me rethink a few things, that’s all.” He smirked and began making her way back towards her again.
Mirroring his smile, she leaned back against her pillow, “Oh yeah, like what?”
He smiled lazily before returning his attention back to her neck, “Like,” kiss, “How,” kiss, “Much,” kiss, “I,” kiss, “Want,” kiss, “You,” longer, stronger kiss.
She re-wrapped her legs around him and flipped them over so she was on top for the first time that night, “The feeling’s mutual,” and right as she leant down to kiss him again, he flipped them back over.
“You must be confused, princess, I call the shots around these parts.”
She raised her eyes suggestively, “Which parts exactly?”
He raised his eyebrows back at hers and, instead of answering, grinded his hips against hers, their sighs creating the perfect harmony.
“Mmm, ok those parts.”
“Stop cracking jokes on my behalf, I’m trying to be sexy.”
“Well you’re doing a very good job, bud.”
He raised himself up a bit and looked her in the eyes with a raised eyebrow, “Did you just ‘bud’ me? That’s it, I’m not putting out.”
He rolled off of her and laid beside her with his arms crossed.
She laughed and sat up beside him. “Just because you won’t doesn’t me I can’t,” she said as she went to lift her shirt up, he, however, stopped her.
He swiftly got back on top of her and pinned her arms down against the mattress, “Oh no, princess, nothing is coming off until I take it off.”
Her mouth went dry. She promised herself in that moment to never admit how much his strong words affected her.
Since she hadn’t answered, he decided to make sure she was listening, “Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he released her wrists from his grasps and sat up, off of the bed. “Now, if you excuse me, I must use the restroom.” And without another word he almost ran out of the bathroom.
Understanding his swiftness, she called after him, “The lotion is sitting on the counter and the tissues are underneath the sink.”
Her laughing at her own joke was only intensified when he called back, “Get your head out of the gutter Matthews, I haven’t pissed since lunch.”
“Whatever you say, lover boy.”
“You’re disgusting!”
“Then why do you want me so bad, huh?”
He came rushing back into her bedroom and practically pounced back onto the bed, “Because you let me call you princess. And I thought only your boyfriend gets to call you princess.”
He leant down to kiss he again when she interrupted him, “Yes. Him and all of the other gentleman callers I have crawling through my window on various school nights.”
He sighed and hung his head, looking back at her with a smile on his face that showed he was trying not to laugh, “You’re not making it easy to sweep you off your feet, Matthews.”
She rested one of her hands on his cheek, “Oh Farkle, I thought it was obvious that you did that a long time ago.”
He smiled at her and began lowering his head once more, “That’s more like it.”