Status Updates From Fake Yourself a Merry Littl...

Because no matter how grumpy, how misunderstood, or broken, or shy, everyone deserves their own happily ever after, and the cheesier the better.
Christina

Sunshine. I know you’ve only been single for a month. But I’ve been yours since the first moment I laid eyes on your marshmallow mustache….
Will you please be my (real) wife?

Jake’s proposal 💍

Jake- Sitting here next to this woman, who is smart and funny, a little wild, and all mine—there is not a doubt in my mind that I’ve found my person. And for once, I am excited about the future. I can’t wait to figure out how the HEA will look like for Christina and Jake.
But there’s no rush. Today, we can just be happy, and that’s more than enough for now.

Is this what happiness feels like? It used to be a concept I only knew in theory. Something that you get to have in the ever after, when all the hurdles have been cleared and it’s finally time for an epilogue. But maybe happiness is not something you earn. Maybe it’s something you allow yourself to feel whether you think you’re worthy of it or not.
It’s not something that happens to you. It’s a decision.

“I don’t know if I can help at all, but if you ever need a hand to hold, you only need to text me, and I’ll be here with both my hands.”

Jake to Christina
This might be my favorite line from the whole book.

“My fake wife is a real romance author!”

They made an entrance.

Christina- If the price for getting my dream is losing Jake, if in order to get my theoretical happily ever after with a theoretical partner and a theoretical child in a theoretically distant future, I have to let go of the real, perfectly flawed man in front of me, who practices making me happy on a daily basis—maybe it’s time I change my dream.

“Why would you not tell everyone you know that you’re a writer?”
…Every reason I had turned out not to be mine. As much as I hate to admit it, I allowed Paul to leave a huge mark on my career. It’s time I started thinking for myself. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. Revealing my face to the world seems such an easy & insignificant gesture now. There are no stakes to it, only benefits.

Christina- In my defense, truth is not always the answer to everything. If it was, my answer would be yes. I am still pretending.
Pretending I was pretending.

She’s pretending to pretend
Not ready to admit her real feelings for Jake

He could have so easily become a cynic like me, closed himself off from the possibility of falling in love ever again. Instead, not only does he read romance, he also believes in it, which is an act of bravery in our world….
Look at that, my biggest fan has more courage than his favorite author. I hide inside my stories, writing out scenarios that I wish to see in real life but don’t actually believe I would.

…studying myself in the mirror. I look like I imagine my heroines look at their lowest point in the story. I thought I understood exactly how they felt when I wrote their stories. I had no problem sending my characters to the bottom of despair, because I knew their happily ever after was waiting right around the corner, and it would be so much sweeter if they really deserved it
Do I deserve it?
Does Jake?
Christina

Christina- I couldn’t stay outside. There was no air there—only Jake in his perfect black suit and gray wool coat, and his soft golden waves and sincere eyes full of hope, when I feel nothing but hopeless. So I left to gather my thoughts and throw a hearty splash of water on my face, preferably one that won’t turn into a thousand icicle bullets before it hits my skin.

Ran to bathroom to get away from him

Jake- When Mary left me in such a public and humiliating way, it felt like being crushed under a falling ceiling, my lungs almost exploding from the pressure.
I don’t know how it’s possible, but this feels worse.

💔

Jake- If you haven’t noticed, I stopped faking it a long time ago.
Christina- Ten days. It’s been ten days, Jake.
J- In How to Fall in Love in Five Days, Annie and Malcolm fall in love in⁠—
C- That’s not funny.

She thinks he’s still pretending.
He wants to convince her that he isn’t.

I like to think I did my best, and all I can hope for is that I made her life just a little bit better, easier, even if for a short while.
Because that’s what Christina did for me. She made me smile on a daily basis. First, with her books, and then simply by being her. She made me dream and hope again when I’d given up on those concepts a long time ago. And it was scary, but I welcomed it.

Her books helped him

Paul served Christina with papers at her reunion. They fell on the floor and Lacey saw them. Her secrets are out, and her reunion was ruined.

Here she goes again. Taking my side, with no judgment and no strings. She doesn’t tell me to get over it, to rise above it or turn the other cheek. She just…listens. And then casually offers to name her characters after anyone who wronged me and do horrible things to them in her books. She even suggested adding some suspense to her next series so she could have a serial killer serial-kill my entire senior class.

I drop my head to her back and try to catch my breath, but it’s useless. I’ve been trying to catch my breath for a week now. Just when I feel like I’m back to normal, she rolls her eyes at me or gives me one of her shy smiles, and there goes my heart again.
Not to steal words out of her characters’ mouths, but I think I might be fucked.

Jake’s in trouble

The sight of her in only her thigh-high socks and flimsy underwear makes me feral.
I don’t think I’ve used the word feral before in my life.

New word for Jake
Feral is a good romance word

Jake- From the first time I saw Christina, I felt a pull between us, and I wanted to explore what it is about her that makes me want to be around her. And after a week of living under the same roof, all I can say is…it’s everything. Every tiny detail I learn about her ends up making me want her more.

Jake- I was never that into alpha male behavior in my books, but Christina…she’s awakened something in me. Possessiveness, hunger, and this uncontrollable need to always be touching her, kissing her.

Alphas
She turned him into an alpha.

“Do you wanna see them aga⁠—”
“Yes, please.” The words tumble out like a plea.
“Please?” His smirk turns into a grin. “Now that’s a good wife.”
A shiver runs through my body. I never thought I had a praise kink. Could it be a wife kink? Or a Jake kink?

Nipple poems 😅

Does he think I see him differently now, weaker, after what he’s told me? Because what I see is a man who could have easily lost his faith in people, but who didn’t hesitate to offer help to a total stranger, and who hasn’t been anything but sunshine to my grumpy this whole week. Honestly, I have no idea how I would have survived coming back home if it wasn’t for him.

Christina about Jake

Jake’s wife betrayed him. 💔

Christina- Jake, I’m sorry. You don’t need to tell me anything.
Jake- Oh no. You’re not backing out now. I will tell you everything, and you will listen. And after this, I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about us being strangers.

He’s going to tell her his story.
Bad marriage?
I wonder what happened to him.

“You need this reunion as a redemption for your high school years. Well, maybe I need it too, to override the worst night of my life.”

Jake to Christina
He’s finally opening up to her about why he’s there.

“You got it backwards, wife. I have to pretend I don’t like you, just so I could look away.”
He tugs on my bottom lip with his thumb, and I feel the movement down to my core. My heart beats so loudly I’m pretty sure he can hear it.
“Were you acting in the photo?” he asks.
“You know I wasn’t. You caught me off guard.”
“So did you.”