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Hey Cheer Queen, Your XXL Ex Is Now The New QB
Novelix
Completed
"I've been secretly dating Chloe, the hottest cheer queen, for three years. I knew why she never wanted to go public—because I was fat. I told myself it didn't matter, as long as she loved me. Then she lost a bet at that party and started fake-dating the quarterback. So I broke up with her and left for football camp. On Homecoming night, I came back—leaner, sharper, and the team's new QB. And that's when Chloe finally realized what she'd lost."
Chapters (6)
第1章
The party started right after the spring game, and by ten o'clock Delta House was packed from the porch to the back fence.
Someone killed the music and shouted across the room.
"Heartbeat challenge."
The rules were simple. One guy, one girl, sixty seconds of eye contact. If both heart rates crossed one hundred and fifty, the two of them had to fake date for two months, until homecoming.
The room went up like a fire.
I stood against the wall with a cup of soda I wasn't drinking. I told myself it didn't matter who I got.
It mattered.
The first name out of the hat was Chloe Aldrin.
The second was mine.
People shoved us into the middle of the floor. Somebody strapped a smartwatch onto each of our wrists and set the timer.
Chloe Aldrin, Riverton's star cheerleader, stood two feet in front of me with her ponytail still damp from the game.
I could not look at her.
I looked at her.
My watch climbed. One hundred and twenty. One forty. One sixty-four.
Hers stayed at seventy-eight.
The whole time she watched me the way you watch a stranger waiting for a bus. Calm. Level. Somewhere else.
The timer buzzed. The room exploded.
Chloe took off her watch without a word and handed it to the crowd, like a lab result.
"Julian, your heart's doing cardio for the first time tonight." A guy near the keg had his phone pointed at my face. "He really thought the cheerleader was gonna melt for him."
"Chloe dates the quarterback," another one said, laughing. "Not the guy who can eat the whole team."
I said nothing.
None of them knew that Chloe and I had been together for three years.
None of them knew that I had picked tonight to make it public. I had been planning it for a week. She had promised me she would.
"After finals," she'd said. "I'll tell everyone. I promise."
Somebody in the crowd called her name.
"Chloe, what about Julian? He's clearly obsessed with you."
Chloe glanced at me.
A glance. Half a second. No more.
"Julian is just my childhood friend," she said. "He's not my type."
Just my childhood friend. Not my type.
One sentence, and three years were gone.
The guy next to me laughed so hard he spilled his beer.
I stood there and let the room move around me.
Then somebody dragged a second name out of the hat.
The second round started. Chloe was paired with Mark Montgomery.
Mark was the star quarterback of the team and, until that year, the closest thing Riverton had to a god.
He and Chloe were famous for hating each other.
The crowd hooted.
The timer started.
Mark's heart rate hit one hundred and eighty. Chloe's hit one hundred and eighty-three.
Delta House went insane.
"We got winners!" somebody screamed. "You two fake date for two months. Two months!"
"Fake date!" the room chanted. "Fake date!"
Mark spread his hands. "What? This is stupid."
"Stupid," Chloe agreed. "Completely stupid."
But everyone pushed them together, shoulder to shoulder, until they were standing close enough to touch. In the end they agreed.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
[J, it's just two months. We'll end it before homecoming. I can't lose to Mark. You know I only love you.]
I stared at the screen for a second.
Then I typed back.
[okay. enough.]
Across the room, Mark was already arguing again.
"We've barely been dating for one night. It's fake."
"Two months," Chloe said. "Then we're done."
The cheers got louder.
Somebody near the door laughed and pointed at me.
"So what about Julian? He looked like he was about to faint when he got paired with Chloe."
第2章
Chloe's face went blank.
"We're friends," she said, to the room, to the cameras, to everyone except me.
I left the circle and went to the table where the drinks were. I don't drink. I just needed something to do with my hands.
My phone buzzed again.
[You can't handle alcohol. Stop drinking. Be good.]
I looked up.
Chloe was standing in front of Mark, close enough that his shadow fell across her face. She was laughing at something he'd said, the easy laugh she used with strangers.
I knew Chloe better than anyone alive.
Which was how I knew that whatever she felt for Mark, she had already stopped hiding it.
The party ended sometime after midnight.
Outside, the rain came down hard, drumming on the front steps of Delta House, running in sheets off the gutter.
I opened my umbrella at the bottom of the stairs.
Chloe walked over and took it out of my hand.
"Julian, Mark and I don't have one," she said. "Let us use this. Someone else can walk you back."
The umbrella was mine. It had my initials inked inside the handle, in my handwriting, from the summer she'd given it to me.
"Thanks, kiddo," Mark said, ducking under it beside her. "I'll give it back tomorrow."
They walked off down the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder under my umbrella, and disappeared where the streetlight ended.
Everyone else left in cars. Tires hissed on the wet road, one after another, until the street was empty.
No one asked how I was getting home.
I stood in the rain and watched the place where they'd been. Chloe knew no one would wait for me. She knew exactly how long it would take me to walk home in the dark.
She took my umbrella anyway.
My phone rang. My dad.
"Julian. If you want to stay at Riverton for the summer and take care of Chloe, that's okay."
Rain ran off my chin and into my collar. I closed my eyes.
"Dad, I've made up my mind. I'm done waiting for people who are ashamed of me. Book the flight."
"I'm going to California."
My clothes were stuck to my back. Water filled my shoes.
And when I come back, no one gets to ignore me again.
第3章
By the time I got home I was soaked through. I dropped my keys twice getting the door open. The house was dark and empty, the way it usually was.
My phone chimed.
Chloe almost never posted anything. That night she updated her Instagram.
Meet my boy Mark Montgomery.
The comments blew up inside a minute.
[QB and cheer queen.]
[Finally. I KNEW they had chemistry.]
[Homecoming king and queen energy.]
Then one more, from a name I didn't recognize.
[Julian Stinson must be crying into a pizza right now. He really thought Chloe Aldrin would pick him.]
By the next morning the memes had started.
A picture of me from last year's yearbook, my cheeks round, my shirt too tight, with the mascot's face photoshopped over mine.
[Mascot material.]
[Bro thought the cheerleader is his girlfriend.]
I turned my phone face down and curled up on the couch.
The house creaked. Rain kept hitting the window.
Not her type.
Ugly. Fat.
Those two words had followed me since I was nine years old. They were the first insults I ever learned to expect, the ones I could hear coming from down a hallway.
Chloe was everything Riverton loved. Beautiful, fit, the American sweetheart with a ponytail and a smile for the bleachers.
I was the plus-size boy next door. The invisible boy. The one guys used as the punchline and then forgot they'd used.
But Chloe always protected me.
Once, in tenth grade, a guy in the lunch line said I'd crush a football if I sat on one. I could feel my ears going red. Before I could answer, Chloe was already turning around.
"Say that again," she said.
"Come on, Chloe, it's just a joke."
"It's not a joke unless the one being joked about finds that funny." She looked at me. "Julian. Do you think that's funny?"
"No."
"Fine, I'll stop. Geez, Chloe."
She smiled at me and said, "No one talks about you like that."
Later, we started dating in secret.
We kissed in my dad's truck with the radio on low. We held hands in empty hallways, both of us listening for footsteps. When she'd had a bad day at practice, I gave her a shoulder to lean on and she stayed there until her breathing evened out.
"I only want you, Julian," she said.
But at school she always stayed three steps away when people teased us.
Three steps. Always the same distance, like a rule she'd measured out. When somebody made a comment, she didn't panic, didn't blush, didn't move closer. She said the same thing every time.
"He's just my friend."
第4章
I thought being loved by her in private made me special.
Then Mark Montgomery showed up.
Athletic, handsome, easy in every room he walked into. Everything I was not.
When Chloe had cheer practice, Mark would lean on the fence with his helmet under one arm and watch her basket toss.
"Not bad," he'd say.
Chloe argued with him constantly. That was the thing everyone noticed — how they argued. But her eyes always followed him afterward.
When Mark practiced, she suddenly needed to walk past the football field. When he came off the field with a scraped knee, she already had gauze in her bag. When his coach yelled at the cheer squad for crossing the line, she stood by the fence and smirked and didn't move.
"You're not quitting, are you?" she teased him once.
I told myself she was just competitive. I told myself she loved me.
But girls are not good at hiding who they really want. Chloe's heart had given her away long before anybody strapped a watch to her wrist.
I fell asleep on the couch with my phone on my chest.
When I woke up, the doorbell was ringing.
Chloe stood outside with a paper bag and two coffees, hair wet from the rain.
"Julian. I deleted the comments." She held the bag out. "The post was just for the game. Don't overthink it. Cinnamon rolls. Your favorite."
I didn't take them.
"My dad wants you over for brunch," she said. "Come on."
I went with her. I always went.
At the Aldrin house, the front door was already open, and Mark was already there, sitting in the good chair by the window.
"Thanks for this," he said, holding up a hoodie I recognized. Chloe's. "She forgot to give it back last night."
"So this is the boy Chloe finally brought home." Mr. Aldrin came out of the kitchen and shook Mark's hand. "I've heard so much about you."
Chloe gave me a warning look. A small one. Two seconds of eye contact, then nothing.
I forced a smile.
At the table, Mr. Aldrin got Mark talking. QB1 of Riverton. A GPA that would hold up anywhere. A family that owned the car dealership on Route 9.
"Chloe needs someone like you," he said, passing Mark the salt. "Someone who can keep up with her."
My fingers tightened around my fork.
"Julian, are you still thinking about trying out for the football camp next semester?" Mr. Aldrin asked, glancing down the table without really looking at me.
Mark answered before I could.
"Oh, football's brutal." He laughed, easy, like it was a kindness. "Maybe golf would be better for him."
I looked down at my plate. Gravy, potatoes, a roll going cold.
"I'll figure it out," I said.
第5章
My phone lit up under the table.
[What does that mean? We said we'd be together before homecoming.]
Then, a minute later:
[Be good, Julian. I'll fix this.]
After brunch, Mr. Aldrin walked us out to the driveway and handed Mark his car keys.
"Here, son. Take my car. Dinner, movies, whatever you kids do."
Mark looked back at me with the keys swinging from his finger.
"Do you want to come?" Chloe asked quickly. "I mean, we're all friends. You coming?"
"No," I said. "I'm tired."
Her shoulders relaxed. Just slightly. Just enough that I saw it.
She left with Mark.
That night their Instagram stories flooded my screen, one after another, the way they do when two people are with each other and want everyone to know.
[Hold on tight.]
[Never letting go.]
[End game.]
[Real couple energy.]
[Homecoming King and Queen.]
The comments screamed under each one.
Then Chloe posted one more story. A picture of the dashboard, headlights on a dark road, and words over it.
[What if I don't want this fake thing to end?]
I saw it.
I liked it.
She deleted it four seconds later.
The next morning she was at my door again before eight. She looked panicked, mascara smudged under one eye.
"Julian, it didn't mean anything."
I tried to close the door.
"Julian, stop acting like this."
"We broke up," I said. "Go find Mark."
"You know Mark and I are fake." Her voice climbed. "You know I love you."
"Fake." The word came out flatter than I expected. "You stole my umbrella for him. You wear his jacket to practice. You posted him. You looked at him like he was everything. If you like him, go like him. But don't keep me hidden in the dark while you kiss him in the spotlight."
"Julian—"
I shut the door.
My phone lit up on the hall table. An email.
Congratulations, Julian Stinson. You have been accepted into the Elite Football Summer Intensive.
I stood in the hallway and read it three times.
I was going.
第6章
After that day, Chloe stopped coming over.
She and Mark were everywhere. Beach trips, football workouts, cheer practice, four hundred pictures a week. Every post was tagged, every story was shared, every caption was a joke about how obvious they were.
I knew what she was doing. She wanted me to break first. She wanted me to text her at two in the morning and apologize for something I hadn't done.
I didn't. I was busy.
Running in the mornings before the heat came up. Lifting in the garage with a bench my dad had built in high school. Eating what I was told to eat, sleeping when I was told to sleep, checking my email every hour like a kid checking under the tree.
Then, on a Tuesday, the camp office wrote to me.
We're sorry to hear you have decided to withdraw from Elite Football Summer Intensive.
I read it standing up. Then I sat down and read it again.
I had not withdrawn.
I called them immediately.
"Someone used your email and confirmed the cancellation," the woman on the phone said. "Same address, same password. From a university IP."
"Can you put me back in?"
"There's a waitlist. I'm sorry."
Only one person in the world knew my passwords. I had given them to her in the tenth grade so she could check my grades in the office when I was sick.
I called Chloe.
"Julian." She picked up on the first ring, like she'd been holding the phone.
"Did you cancel my camp spot?"
A beat.
"I did it because I care about you."
My whole body started shaking. I had to put a hand on the wall.
"You had no right."
"That camp is brutal. You're not ready for it."
"You don't get to decide that."
"Julian." Her voice softened, and that was worse. "I don't want you embarrassing yourself."
There it was. Not concern. Not kindness.
Shame.
"My dream is embarrassing to you?"
"Julian, come on. Stay here this summer. Train at Riverton if you want. I'll help you. Mark will help you too."
"I don't need help from you or Mark."
"You're being dramatic."
I hung up.
Then I called the camp again and explained everything. I told them about the password, the shared email, the whole ugly story. I stayed on the line for forty minutes until the woman came back and said, quietly, that she'd moved me off the waitlist.
She'd put me back in.
I thanked her maybe four times. I couldn't stop.
The next day was Riverton's end-of-year pep rally.
I walked into the gym and stopped six feet inside the door.
My football team application packet had been taped to the wall. Every page. My weight from the physical section circled in red marker. My height. My photo from the form, blown up and printed, with GO HOME STINSON written across my face.
The room burst into laughter.
"Who did this?"
Nobody answered. They only laughed harder.