My brain goes blank at her words, then fireworks startup at the back of my head.
'What??!'
"What?" I mumble out loud in confusion.
"Oh, he hasn't told you?" She says sympathetically. "I figured." She adds, sidling closer to me, she pulls a chair along and throws a hand over my shoulder.
I just give her a look because… 'really'
"You look like you don't believe me." She says airily and I frown. "Why would I lie to you about some like this?"
"W-We've been best friends since forever, I'm pretty sure he'd have told me if he had a girlfriend." I say tightly, starting to get ticked off. "I-I don't know what you're trying to pull off here but it's not going to work." I look her straight in the eye as I say this and deliberately take her hand off my shoulders.
We aren't friends, never was and never will be so there was no need being nice to Elise, she didn't even deserve it.
Her icy blue eyes darken as I say this for a split second then she's back to the quiet open Elise that stepped into my personal space this morning.
She laughs lightly. "This is exactly what I told my V, that if he doesn't stop keeping us a secret, no one is going to believe me."
I just remain quiet, waiting for what she's about to say or do.
"Fine!" She exclaims, rolling her eyes when I don't want to fall for her obvious lies. "Look at this!" She says whipping out her phone and furiously tapping on it
I collect the phone handed to me with suspicion and a look of horror drenches my face as I look at it.
"W-Wh-What??" I stutter hard, my hands shaking so bad that I have to keep a death grip on the phone so it doesn't fall and crash to the ground, although at this moment I wouldn't even mind burning it. "Th-This i-isn't t-true." I refuse shakily, looking down at the picture again. "Th-This can't be true!"
She just gives me a sympathetic smile. "I told you I wouldn't lie about something like this, I just wanted to get close to his best friend, you know as his girlfriend." She continues in that patronizing voice that makes my heart turn ice cold and fall into the pit of my stomach.
I just stare at the screen of the device in my shaking hands, someone had taken a photo of Virgil kissing Elise.
My hands shake harder and I have to drop the phone before it crashes to the ground. 'I-t h-has to b-be a l-lie, r-ri-right'
Virgil has always been mine, at least that's what my deluded self thought. Finding out about this in this manner was breaking me.
"I really want us to be good friends too because V and I might just get married…"
I just tune Elise out, the implications of the photo finally sinking in, Virgil was obviously aware that a photo was being taken and he had his arms wrapped around her possessively with a sweet smile on his face.
The ice in my heart starts to thaw but then it begins to burn, bleeding and torn.
I don't know when I get up, packing up my bag in a daze.
"Hayden?" Elise calls in confusion but I can't miss the smug undertone in her voice no matter how hard I try to ignore it.
Virgil was mine, but I guess it was all a lie.
I just ignore her, walking out of the classroom as fast as I can, I think she's yelling my name but I can't hear anything other than the ringing in my ears.
I can't stay in school, I can't let Virgil or the others find me like this. My hands shake harder and my breaths come out in gasps, once again I'm grateful that school is basically empty because my vision keeps tunneling on me and I have to blink and shake my head to get focus from the blurriness.
It had always been Virgil and me and I was naive enough to think that he'd give up everything else, Elise's words had hit me like a brick wall and my sheltered mind was having an intense difficulty in grasping it.
I collapse against a locker because my vision whites out for a couple seconds, luckily exams wouldn't begin till tomorrow. I need to get out of here.
I change directions and start for the back door, at least my brain was still active enough to remind me that going out through the front wasn't the best idea.
I make it out of school without any incident and my brain flatlines, all brain activity going off. It doesn't make sense, why does it hurt so much?
I get a quick memory of Virgil kissing my forehead and the world goes blurry, or maybe it's just my eyes.
Luckily the school isn't far from the park and I find my legs taking me there, I take my time with it because my heart is so heavy that walking any faster makes it hurt.
The sides of my face are starting to hurt from how hard I'm trying to keep the tears in, but I can't cry yet, not now, not here.
I don't think people walking by the side of the road would keep to themselves if they saw a teenage boy rolling around on the ground sobbing.
I think it hurts more because I just realize how stupid I had been, just because he treated me slightly different didn't make me any special, it was probably just the way you'd put up with an annoying sibling because you found them cute.
The park is quiet this morning because it's a workday which works to my advantage because as soon as I go out of eyesight, I break down.
I barely make it to a marble bench before I'm crumbling in on myself, the tears pouring hard and fast.