Darling Charming: Finally Extraordinary

16. Shakespearean Tragedy

I'm pretty sure that being in the boys' dorms at this time of the night is against the school rules, but friend crises are friend crises, regardless of the gender of said friend.

When I arrived at Luke's, he didn't answer the door. His roommate, Dallas MacBeth, did. Dallas, whose destiny is to be the title character in the Shakespearean tragedy MacBeth, is used to dealing with Luke's drama- he's his closest guy friend, and the drama doesn't phase him. However, for some reason I still didn't really understand, Luke would choose me over him in a heartbeat. Dallas liked to call him a traitor and a player, jokingly, because he knew this fact as well. I would shake my head at them. Dramatic, Shakespearean boys.

Tonight, Dallas paid no mind to the fact that I was breaking school curfew rules. It's Saturday, who cares, right?

He took off his headphones, which were blasting classic rock so loud I could hear the Beatles from where I stood a few feet away. His eyes were pleading. "Fix. him," he hissed, gesturing to Luke's side of the room.

"I've got this," I told him, "don't worry." The truth is that I had no idea what I was doing. I've never had to help a guy through a breakup with a girl I knew wasn't right for him.

Dallas nodded hopefully and popped his headphones back in before disappearing into either the bathroom or the closet, presumably in retreat from the reverberating sound of Luke's blubbering.

"Luciano I-don't-know-your-middle-name Montague, why are you crying so hard over this?" I demanded when I caught sight of him. For some reason, this kid is still attractive when he's snotty-nosed, red-faced ugly crying under the covers.

Damn it.

I passed him a tissue, with which he wiped his face and then blew his nose into. "It's Leonardo," his cracked and unstable voice piped.

I pressed my palm to my forehead, shook my head and put my hands on my hips. "That wasn't the point."

"The point is Anna dumped me," Luke complained.

He threw the dark blue covers over his head. "Stop looking at me like that."

I knitted my eyebrows. "Like what?"

"Stop looking at me in general," he said, muffled, from under the blanket.

I ignored him and his face that was concealed anyway. "What happened with Anna?"

The sound of stretched sniffles came from his direction, like he was trying very hard to keep from breaking into sobs again. He dropped the blanket, and somehow his face had almost returned completely to its natural olive tone. His eyes were clear and dry. Rather blankly and clearly, he said "I don't know," almost as if he'd never been crying.

I sighed in exhaustion. What was Luke doing now? He was so hard to follow. You don't break up with someone so suddenly and not know what you did. That's how I'd assumed breakups worked anyway. Due to always living home and having a real penchant for independence, I'd never been in a relationship before, but my oldest brother had been in plenty. I tried to learn from his mistakes so I wouldn't have to make them myself. Some mistakes couldn't be avoided by living through my brother. Daring had never been a princess who'd disobeyed her father and slain a dragon, for obvious reasons. That hardly counted as a mistake anyway.

"Did you tell Annie, Ailie, and Bella yet?" I asked him.

"No."