"Taylor," I yell, but she blatantly ignores me yet again.
The only thing hindering me from setting foot on the football field is the fact that coach doesn't want any of the people who aren't football players on her field during these times. I can't exactly disrespect her rules. I remember how I would also get irritated at people coming onto our field back when I used to play football.
"Taylor, I know you can hear me."
"Yes, she can."
An annoyed groan leaves me when Savannah swiftly strolls over to stand in front of me. A smug smirk makes its way onto her rosy red lips as she folds her arms over her upper front, tilting her head to the side.
"Except she's ignoring you, because you're a lying, backstabbing, two-faced cunt who wants to sleep with her boyfriend."
"Vannah, please. I'll entertain you another time. Right now, I really need to speak to Taylor," then I shout the rest out for my friend to hear, "who just looked at me, so I know she knows I'm here."
She scoffs, cocking her hip out. "That's very funny, Seong Jin, but I don't need you, of all people, to entertain me. What, have you gotten so desperate that now you want to bring girls into your little prostitution agency?"
I roll my eyes upward, shaking my head in irk.
She was the one who started and then went on to spread that rumour about me starting a prostitution company back then. She kept denying it, but I know it was her. I don't understand why she keeps throwing it in my face as if she doesn't know that it's a lie she conjured up to get me both kicked from the football team and our friend group. She won. What's her fucking problem?
She grimaces mockingly, giving me a once-over. "Sorry, but I'm not interested. The same way that Dominic, Michael and James weren't interested. Pretty sure Eddie doesn't want you too."
"That was quite the blow, Savannah even for you. Do you feel good about yourself after that?" I question her while smiling to obscure the fact that her words did get to me a bit.
She merely lifts up her shoulders indifferently, but I don't miss the way the corner of her lips twitch pridefully.
"Whatever. Are we done here, because I really need to clear things out with my friend?"
She fortunately doesn't open her mouth to utter another insult.
I nod in satisfaction and then continue to yell, "Taylor, please, all I'm asking for is just five minutes of your time and not a second more. Then I'll leave you alone."
In the distance, I see Taylor rolling her eyes skyward, but when she turns around and walks towards me, a grin breaks across my face and relief makes my shoulders slump. Savannah glowers at me angrily, but saunters away when Taylor is standing in front of me. She crosses her arms over her chest and her face is expressionless, giving nothing away. It's weird seeing her like this, because she is a very expressive person. She always smiles when she's happy, or frowns when she's annoyed, or sneers when she's disgusted.
"Hey," I greet with a nervous smile. "How's it going, buddy?"
"You have four minutes and fifty five seconds."
"Okay, then," I mutter under my breath, blinking my shock away, "well, I just wanted to properly apologise for what I had written in my sketchbook about your boyfriend. It was wrong in so many ways and—"
"If you knew it was wrong, then why did you keep doing it?"
"I-I don't know. I just, uh, you know that I'm not someone who keeps everything bottled in. I needed to let it out and I… couldn't exactly talk to you about it, because of obvious reasons. The only way I could let it out was to write it down… in my sketchbook."
My explanation is left hanging in the air as she grasps onto certain points, processing them inside her head. I allow her to think, wallowing in the lingering silence even though it brings me great discomfort. Even though it only brings forth negative thoughts, the fact that this altercation is not going to have the optimistic outcome that I had initially thought it would but, really, I miss my best friend.
I miss scolding her when she says something crude. I miss scolding her when she's being idiotic in public. I miss scolding her when she's being rude. Wait, am I always just scolding her? Like a father. God, that makes me feel so old.
"How long?" she finally muses, breaking the quiet.
"What?"
"How long have you been in love with my boyfriend?"
"Taylor, I'm not in love with Edwar—"
"How long, Seong Jin?" she interrupts me harshly, causing me to flinch from her tone. "Just answer the question. I'm pretty sure you have two minutes left now."
No, it's probably like three minutes, but I won't argue with her about that.
"From," I take in a deep, fresh breath of encouragement and then finally admit the truth lowly, wondering if she can even hear me, but not repeating it, "from the beginning of the year. From February… I've had feelings for Edward."
She furrows her eyebrows and seems to be thrown off by my answer.
I bite on the inside of my cheek and avert my gaze to my hands, playing with the ends of the jacket's sleeves. Seriously, where are all the granola bars when I need them? I should not have eaten the last one yesterday. I need to tell my parents to restock on them when they go out grocery shopping. Or maybe I should just go with them just to be sure that they do buy them, because they have this tendency of supposedly forgetting to buy them. I think they think I'm addicted to them, but I'm not. I swear I'm not. They're, like, just a crutch, you know?
"That's way before him and I started dating. That's months before I even liked him," she points out.
I nod slowly, still keeping my eyes on my still tangling hands.
"Why didn't you tell me that you liked him? I would've backed off immediately."
"I was planning on doing it, but then you asked him to be your date to winter formal and then you guys started vibing and then he asked you to be his girlfriend and the rest is history," I tell her with a sad smile and after huffing out a long exhale I continue, "I didn't wanna mess it up for you. You just looked so happy with him and I want my best friend to be happy. Even if it's at my expense."
She stares at me for a while, confliction playing in her eyes, before she groans out loud in irritation. "You make it so difficult to remain angry at you," she yells, causing me chuckle softly from the sudden relief which seeps into my pores. "I mean, you liked him way before I did so… it's not really betrayal. I still think you should have told me though. Even if I asked him to be my date."
I nod with a relieved lopsided grin. Sheepishly, I muse, "So… forgiveness?"
She remains quiet for a while until she smiles back at me and says, "Forgiveness."
Then we fist bump through the fence and it's almost like we weren't even fighting in the first place.
"I was getting pretty sick of the populars, to be honest with you," she admits. "I missed you, little halfling."
I wrinkle my nose in distaste.
"Too mushy?"
"Yeah."
"Agreed."
We both chuckle loudly and I am instantly filled with relief to have her back. Until she muses, arching a curious eyebrow, "Do you still like him though?"
I think about the question, pondering it over and over in my head.
Do I still like Edward?
I hardly ever see him these days. I have been spending so much time with Dominic that I have ditched my two best friends. The last time we were together was when he came over to our house to bake cookies for the twins and I. At the time, I knew that I still liked him. When he smiled over at me and my heart fluttered in my chest, I knew. As he carried my brother on his shoulders, running around with him silently laughing, I knew. My lungs immediately went haywire when I laid my eyes on the scene.
"I don't know." I shake my head. "The only way I can tell that I still like him is if my lungs give up on me and I can't breathe properly when I look at him."
"Okay, then it's time to find out if you still like my boyfriend."
"What?" I suck my bottom lip in and watch her with confused, widened eyes.
She does not respknd verbally. She simply points over at something behind me on the stands.
Spinning around painstakingly slow, a feeling of foreboding attacks me until I see him. His eyes are conveniently on us, watching us curiously. He grins at us and waves, but I don't return the gesture. I merely stare at him. He is still that perfect boy in my eyes, his golden brown shaggy hair mopping the top of his forehead. His pale skin which makes his deep blue eyes stand out more. He's just so handsome. Under the sun hitting him, he is like an angel fallen from heaven.
My eyes flicker and that is when my breath catches in my throat.
I turn back to Taylor with a surprised look on my face and she's waiting for me to answer the question she has asked. Waiting to hear if I still have a crush on her boyfriend, on Edward. Her fingers are jittery, and I can clearly see the impatience playing in her eyes when I just keep staring at her with a bewildered expression. I'm surprised that she hasn't grabbed me to shake the answer out of me.
"Well?" she finally cracks and demands.
"Yeah, my... they did."
Her face drops in disappointment. "When you looked at him?"
"No," I reply, shaking my head and a panicked breath leaves my lips.
She frowns in confusion.
"When I looked at him." I move away from her view and allow her to see the person I'm referring to.
Her eyes scan the stands, but there are only two other people on the stands with Edward. When she figures that it can't be the girl, her eyebrows arch up. "Are you shitting me right now?" she snaps in shock, eyes bulging out of her skull.
Trust me, I am feeling just as horrified as she looks right now. Reluctantly, I shake my head to answer her question, but also from my disbelief. "I am fucked."
"In the arse, mate," she adds, grimacing in sympathy.
* * *
"So, let me get this straight," she starts, looking over at me with questions in her eyes.
She is sitting on my studying desk which is normally below the window that Dominic almost fell out of. She has pushed it a bit to the left lest she also falls out.
"You lost the memory card which contains your videos and your sketchbook, but then you told me that you found it and that was a lie because Dominic was the one who found it?"
Check.
"Then he used them to blackmail you into helping him to get the girl he likes to like him back and that's why you two were spending so much time together? That's why you couldn't tell me the truth about why you were always with him, because then he would expose all your secrets to the world?"
Another check.
"Then you came up with a plan which now got him the girl he likes who I'm going to assume is Jodie from the million selfies they take with one another. Then after that he broke his promise and photocopied your love letter to Eddie and stapled the letter all over the school noticeboard? After that he also created a YouTube channel to post all your videos?"
Also check.
I nod at her from my sleeping position on my bed. "Yeah, that sounds about right. You've basically summed everything up."
"Oh, and let's not forget the infamous drunken kiss you both shared in the restroom which is highly unsanitary by the way," she adds, frowning at me in an irked manner which causes my cheeks to flame up in embarrassment.
I avert my gaze to the ceiling light. Maybe I should have left that minor detail out.
"I cannot believe you, Seong Jin. I mean, even after I told you not to fall for the guy, you completely ignore me and kiss him."
"Technically, he is the one who kissed me. I didn't even reciprocate the kiss... at first," I defend myself, sitting up and laying my head on the headboard.
She does not seem to be sated from my response.
So I continue adding more things to sedate her reaction of irritation, "Besides, we talked about it like mature teenagers and we both agreed that it was just a drunken mistake."
"We or you?"
"What?"
"Did he actually say that it was a drunken mistake on his part?" she muses, crossing her one leg over the other by her knee and arching the well known, all-knowing eyebrow.
My brows flick down in confusion. This is usually my role where I reprimand her heavily, but it seems that the tables have turned drastically. The past couple of months have been weird, really.
"Because you tend to make your own misconception on things."
"I don't make my own misconceptions on things. Why would you say that?" I argue, but she rolls her eyes in an unconvinced manner. "And to answer your question, yes, he did. He came over to the diner and told me that he was sorry for kissing me."
"He said, I'm sorry for kissing you, Seong Jin. It was a mistake. Is that what he said?" she enquires, trying to imitate Dominic's monotonous, deep voice and failing miserably at it.
"Well, he doesn't call me Seong Jin, he calls me by my nickname for some weird reason and his voice is bit more monotonous than that—"
The glower which thins her eyes on me dangerously, makes me cut myself off and go a different route with my words.
"He said that it was inexcusable and uncalled for, I think. I don't know; I barely remember the events of that night since I was half-panicking most of the time."
"And a mistake?"
"Why does that matter if he called it a mistake?"
"Because it does."
As I let out a deep sigh, frustration builds up inside me and I try my hardest to recall the parts of my memory that have already faded away. I quickly skim through the picture of Dominic apologising to me on the day after his birthday. I vividly remember the remorse in his voice as he admitted to me that it was wrong of him to kiss me because he genuinely liked Jodie and did not want to ruin his relationship with her or setback our progress.
However, in that moment, it was me who stopped him and called it a mistake.
Realisation hits me like a ton of bricks. Dominic did not actually call the kiss a mistake, he simply agreed with my words. Is that why he was acting strange after I declared that our kiss was a mistake? Because, really, he did not agree with me?
"He was… he was going to say something else, but then I interrupted him and I… called it a mistake." I bite my lip in apprehension and avert my gaze from Taylor's chastising one.
"Why would you do that?"
"He looked uncomfortable, Taylor. I would never allow someone who isn't accustomed to apologising to apologise to me, someone he resents with his entire being. I had to put him out of his misery."
"Oh, you sweet, naïve boy." She kisses her teeth, glancing at me with a sympathetic look that I do not understand.
"I am not naïve."
My eyes bounce over from side to side cautiously when she jumps off of the desk and starts approaching me in a predatory manner.
"You're too nice for your own good, Seong Jin and you need to learn that the world isn't filled with rainbows and unicorns. The world is a menacing, crushing, denouncing place that eats nice boys like you for brunch. Everyday. Bit by bit."
"Okay. Dark," I comment with enlarged eyes.
She doesn't respond to my little comment and instead inserts, taking a seat beside me on the bed. "What are you gonna do?"
"About?"
"You said that you couldn't breathe, dramatic," she rolls her eyes, "when you looked at him which means that you like him, right?" she says.
I nod reluctantly.
Deep down I am actually praying for this to be some kind of sick joke or a nightmare I have yet to wake from. I don't want to have feelings for Dominic, not again. Not when I don't stand a chance with him. Actually, not when I don't stand a chance against Jodie. She is everything I am not. More beautiful. Adventurous streak. Bigger boobs too. It would be nice if he did choose me over her but I know that's not how life works; not for someone with a string of bad luck following them around.
"Then… are you going to tell him?"
"Are you crazy?" I exclaim looking at her with bafflement covering my entire expression. "One, he has a girlfriend who he has liked since God knows how long ago. Two, he's probably not into guys. Three, he is the same person who used me and then broke his oath of giving me my stuff back. He outed me to the world, Taylor."
"You say that like you're a homosexual who was forced out of the closet," she points out and I just stare at her dryly. "Look, do you really think that Dominic would do something like this?"
"Yes," I press adamantly, nodding at the accusation I'm making. "Okay, you don't know him like I do. Dominic is evil; he's like the Iago to my Othello."
"I don't get that analogy. I haven't started reading that book."
"You really should. We're going to be writing about the whole play in the final exams. Have you at least started reading Life of Pi?"
"I'll just watch the movie."
"That's the exact opposite of what they told us to do. The book and the movie differ in a lot of ways. Like Pi's mum is religious in the movie, but in the book, the whole family, besides Piscine of course, could care less about their religion."
"Aargh! When you speak school, you make me so tired."
I stare at her with a flat look. "He's my Voldemort."
"Now that I get."
"He's just pure, satanic evil; anti-Christ type of evil."
"You're thinking with your head. What is your heart telling you?"
"My heart? My heart doesn't know anything. I mean, it made me fall for Dominic twice; a backstabbing guy who outed me."
"Seriously, stop saying that. You're making it seem like you was forced out of the closet," she states exasperatingly and this time I narrow my eyes on her for not taking this situation as serious as she should. "But seriously, Seong Jin, do you honestly believe that in your heart Dominic would do this?"
"You know, I'm starting to think that you're on his side with this situation and the whole hating him thing was just a façade."
"No, I still despise him wholeheartedly," she declares adamantly, bobbing her head up and down, "but the same way you want me to be happy with Eddie is the same way I want you to be happy and if that means you have to be with that gay douche to be happy then I'm gonna fight tooth and nail to get you that gay douche."
"He's not even gay or… bisexual or whatever."
She rolls her eyes as if she's tired of convincing me that he bats for the opposite team.
"Then he shouldn't have kissed you."
When I process her words, I realise that she has a point.
An amused smile stretches over my lips and the action is reciprocated on her face. I feel all sorts of weird and warm and uncomfortable from her previous words. As I have mentioned before, Taylor and I don't like the whole mushy, saying nice words to each other act so when these rare moments happen you have to swallow your barf and appreciate your friend's nice words.
With a stiff smile, I say, "Thanks Taylor, but I don't think I'll ever be able to trust him again."
She lets out a heavy sigh of defeat. "Would you rather live with the knowledge that you genuinely don't know if he put your shit out to the public?"
"Well, obviously not, no."
"Then I think you should go and talk to him. You don't have to tell him about your feelings, but just ask him, sincerely, did he really throw you under the bus like that. It is always better to have an open conversation with someone and to clarify any misunderstandings."