Underage
[30] it's Complicated
She loves him. I love him. Does he love her? Does he love me? Questions circle, spinning so quickly around my mind I can't keep up.
Grace loves Cooper. Grace is in love with Cooper. It's hard to wrap my mind around it. My best friend, who has kept all the boys before at a distance, has fallen in love with Cooper, of all people. Why him? Why now? Why, after all these summers and flings and boyfriends, does she decide now is a good time to fall in love? Is she even really in love?
I thought I was in love once. How wrong I was. Maybe she's confused. Maybe she doesn't know what she's feeling right now. Maybe... No, she's in love. She wouldn't have that look on her face if she wasn't.
She's staring off into space, her eyes wide as she absentmindedly takes bites out of her pizza. We've been through an entire box already, and are now working on our second. Neither of us is paying any attention to the movie playing, or the sounds of Grace's family downstairs.
It's a shock when my phone beeps twice. For the last hour, it's been Grace's phone. Cooper's been trying to get in touch with her non-stop. Ethan probably told him of the 911 and he's worried. But, now, he's moved on to trying to get a hold of me. Grace, who has now turned her phone off, reaches for mine.
"How is she?" Grace reads off the screen of my phone. "Why is he so nice to me? It would be so much easier to think of a reason to break up with him if he wasn't so nice and worried about me."
"Grace."
She holds her hand up to cut me off. I roll my eyes, but I don't say anything.
"I know. You don't want me to break up with Coop." I've never seen my best friend act like this before. It's a completely different side to her. The confident girl is nowhere to be seen. The fitness freak has eaten about an entire pizza by herself. The girl who never breaks up with a summer boyfriend before summer is over is trying her hardest to come up with a reason to dump Cooper.
Cooper is hands-down the nicest boy she's dated by far. It's why he's always been friends with Ethan. They level each other out. Where Ethan jumps at the first offer to break the law or get in trouble, Cooper makes him think twice about it. Cooper has always been there to question Ethan about whether he really wants to do something, like spray paint a train. But, if Ethan is insistent and still wants to do it despite what Cooper says about it, Cooper will go with him and make sure nothing goes wrong.
"Ethan told me to tell you at the beginning of the summer not to break his best friend's heart. Cooper really liked you before you even asked him out. If you tell him you love him, he'll probably say it back."
"Because he would feel obligated."
"No," I say. "Because that's how he feels. Cooper wouldn't say he loved you if he didn't. I think you're more afraid of having him say it back, than not at all. If you tell him that you love him and he doesn't say it back, then you can break up with him and have an actual reason, instead of just leaving him in the dust."
"I love him and hate him at the same time."
"I think that's generally how it works. Look at me and Ethan, for example."
Grace stops chewing mid-bite as she turns her head to look at me. Her mouth is open, giving me a perfect view of her chewed up food. Her eyes are searching my face, looking for something. "What did you just say?"
"What?" I ask her, not understanding.
"You love Ethan?"
Look at me and Ethan, for example.
I look away from my best friend. I throw the half-eaten piece of pizza into the box. She's still looking at me. I can feel her stare burning through the skin on the side of my head.
"You actually love him?" she asks. "I came to you because I thought you loved Scott. I know you like Ethan, but I didn't know you loved him."
I take a deep breath. "I thought I loved Scott, I really did. I wanted to love Scott. He was so nice to me and such a gentleman. We never fought. So, I went to Ethan. I knew he loved Julia, so I asked him what it felt like to be in love, and he explained it to me and I realized that night that I didn't love Scott, I never did. Scott is a good guy, but he was too nice for me. Every day that went past it seemed he only got nicer—and I like bickering. With Ethan, there's the reckless dates. With Scott, it was boring and safe. I would rather be in a complicated whatever with Ethan than in a relationship with anyone else."
My best friend sets her pizza down and turns towards me, giving me her entire attention—even though this 911 was meant for her. "You need to tell him."
"When you tell Cooper, I'll tell Ethan."
"Pinky promise?" my best friend asks.
She's holding out her smallest finger to me. I give her a flash of a smile, and, while wrapping my pinky around hers, I say, "Pinky promise."
Grace gets a look in her eyes, a sudden flash of determination. This makes me instantly regret my words. Grace is willing to sacrifice her own relationship with Cooper just because she wants me to tell Ethan how I feel. The thought of saying those three words in front of him, out loud, scare me more than anything. Will he simply stare at me? Will he laugh? Will he not say it back to me? Will he let me down easily? Will he say it back? Will he say that I'll never be like Julia? He loved Julia, but could he love me? I'm scared of the answer.
"You have nothing to worry about, Thea, I know he loves you."
"I can't tell him."
I've never broken a pinky promise before. Not when Grace broke her arm in seventh grade and made me promise not to tell her mom. She lasted eleven days before her mom noticed and took her to the hospital to get a cast. Her parents had told us not to go on the four-wheelers, but we went anyway. We crashed into a tree. We stowed the broken four-wheeler in the back of the garage with the other ones, and hid her broken arm from her parents.
I didn't break our pinky promise when she got her period at the end of eighth grade year and didn't want her mom to find out. I had to bring her pads from my house because she was too embarrassed to tell her mom she needed some.
I didn't even break our pinky promise when we stole candy from the candy shop in town. We were ten, and she made me pinky promise that if she stole something I would, too. Grace stole a pack of Starbursts and I grabbed a pack of Pop Rocks. To this day, no one knows.
It didn't matter how stupid the pinky promise was, or what its was for. We've never broken one. And, even though we're almost adults in college, I don't want to start now. Pinky promises are still as good now as they were when we were ten.
"And why not?" asks Grace.
"We're going off to different colleges in September."
I can't even ask him about school in the fall because he freaks out. I let the issue hang above our heads like a rain cloud. I know that if I push the subject too hard he'll back away and I'll lose him. So, instead, I take what I can get, and right now that's everything but any talk about the future; about our future.
"You don't know that Thea. He was accepted into Wepner."
I snap my head towards my best friend, who looks immediately like she regrets her words. "How do you know that?"
Her lips flap open and close, like a fish held out of water. She tries to change the subject. She even tries shoving a piece of pizza in her mouth. I patiently wait for her to swallow before I ask again, "How do you know that? Did he tell you?"
All she gives me is a shake of her head. I can feel the slight burning sensation of tears building up behind my eyes. "He told Cooper."
The look in her eyes is all I need to know the answer. "Did Coop tell you everywhere he got accepted?"
She nods. "I think I'm just going to go home now."
I don't want to cry right now. I don't want to feel anything. I want Magnus, and I want to go to sleep. I want to pretend Grace never let that slip. I want to go back to being ignorant.
Of course, he would have heard something back from the colleges. I just assumed he was keeping it a secret until a big reveal party, where he chooses where he wants to go. I didn't know that Cooper would know, and that Grace would know, and that they would keep it from me. What harm is done if I know what colleges he was only accepted in to? Just because he was accepted doesn't mean he's automatically going there. He couldn't even tell me. He wanted so badly to keep me out of it.
It boils in my stomach; the anger, the sadness, the hurt. If Grace and Cooper know, my parents probably know as well. There are no secrets between Valerie and my mom. Just like I thought there were no secrets between Grace and me. I guess I was wrong.
I stand from the couch, my vision blurring. Grace grabs my hand and pulls me back down onto the couch. "I'm sorry, Thea, I wasn't supposed to tell you. I promised Cooper and Ethan I wouldn't tell you."
"So, Ethan pulled both of you aside and listed out the colleges that accepted him, and yet he couldn't tell me? We're together all the time, he couldn't have stopped and just told me?"
"It's complicated," she says.
I pull my hand from her grasp and give a dry laugh. I'm starting to hate the word complicated. For once in my life, I want something to be simple.
"Everything in my life is complicated. This isn't. I thought we didn't have secrets. I thought we told each other everything. Ethan and I are complicated, you and I aren't. You could have told me and I would have never told him I knew. You know that, and yet you kept it from me—he kept it from me. Hell, you all kept it from me."
"For your own good."
Her words feel like a backhanded slap right across my mouth.
"My own good?" I shout, a single tear escaping. I hastily wipe it away and return to my feet. "This wasn't for my own good. This was for Ethan's own good. He's so scared of talking about it. He doesn't want a future with me, and I keep telling myself that maybe he does. Maybe the boy I've been in love with since sophomore year actually loves me back. And maybe he wants to be with me even if we do go to separate colleges, or the same one. But it's all just a lie. This game we've been playing is stupid and a waste of time. What's the point? What's the point of loving someone who won't ever love you back? What's the point of being with someone who can only give you the summer? What's the point?"
I don't stay to hear what she has to say. I don't stay to finish the pizza I so badly want to take with me. I don't stay to talk it out. I don't even return to grab my phone I left sitting on the couch. Right now, I don't care. Right now, I can only think about the lies and secrets. I would rather be told the brutal truth to my face than have someone keep a secret behind my back because they think they're saving my feelings. Did they not want me to get my hopes up for Ethan going to the same college as me? Is that what she meant? I have no hopes for anything past this summer. I won't let my hopes get up.
I take a minute when I'm in my car to rest my head on the steering wheel. I try to keep my tears inside, but they fall down my cheeks anyway. I roll my bottom lip into my mouth, biting against the skin. I can taste the salty tears but I pay no attention. I take a deep breath and turn the key. The car rumbles to life.
I notice the curtain pull back in Grace's room. She's staring at me with a phone pressed against her ear. I don't want to know who she's talking to. I don't care. I pull the car into reverse and pull out of her driveway, wanting to be anywhere but here.
I may be overreacting, as I've come to do quite a lot. But I can't bring myself to care. Grace has kept this secret from me for the entire summer. And, Ethan? Who knows how long he's kept it. I can barely make out the red circle of light at the intersection as I come to a stop. The tears are flowing down my face now, making it incredibly hard to see. So, when the red circle of light turns to green I take a second to make sure it's safe to cross, and then I head in the direction of my house. I want to lock my doors and my windows, and I want to lie down with Magnus, and I want to sleep.
I want to pretend I haven't been lied to these last few weeks, months. And I just want to sleep. But when I get back to my apartment, my door is wide open, and Magnus is nowhere to be found.
[author's note]
And more drama. Do you think Ethan had a good reason for not telling her?
Let me know!
Now the most important question: Do you think Magnus is okay?
I have my first ever fantasy book available for FREE on Radish. I didn't want people to have to pay for it, if it turned out to be shit. I didn't post it on here because it's kind of werewolf, but not really, and Radish has a fantasy section. I just feel like that suits my story more.
It's called 11:11 | Time. The description sucks, but give it a chance.
If you go check it out and you like it, let me know because if you want it on 抖阴社区, I'll bring it to you guys. Just let me know.
Question of the Chapter:
Have you heard Harry Styles' new album?
Like it? Love it? Not so much? Let me know.
I like it. I thought it was going to be different, but it's not horrible. I feel like it's one of those things that will grow on me because my sister is a big Harry Styles fan. She wanted tickets to his show in Georgia, because he's not coming to Florida, but his tour sold out in 60 seconds.
Did anyone manage to get Harry Styles tickets? Let me know!
As always the edited version is on Radish. You know this by now. All the chapters through the 35th are free, if you want to find out what happens.
Leave your thoughts below.
Comment and vote!