Break Free Roselle

Chapter 2 - Smitten

~this symbols means this chapter is from Rhiannon's POV~

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       I am very aware of the smile on my lips as I type on my phone, and I purposely keep my eyes on the screen not only to make sure I don't make an absurd and extremely humiliating typo, but also to avoid the scrutinising and mocking looks from my friends. Without taking a peek I can guess the kind of expression they are wearing as we all sit at the library, studying. That tight grin while they push their chins against their necks —double chin and all— and looking at me like they know exactly what I'm doing, which they find infinitely amusing, their eyebrows high in their foreheads as they wait for me to look at them.

It's perturbing how similar they can look, and even if they are not related, it must be because they've been all their lives together. Seriously, how do they not get bored of each other? Or why don't they just date?

I keep my eyes on the screen even as I wait for an answer, although this might take a bit, but I just don't want to face my friends right now when I can't control my own foolish smile.

Considering my fingers aren't moving anymore, they assume I'm done texting and the teasing begins.

"Awww, isn't our Rhiannon the cutest when she has a crush?" one of my friend sing-songs with a falsetto that kind of hurts in your ears.

"First off, Charles," I make emphasis in his name, knowing he doesn't like being called that. "I don't have a crush, and second off, I'm always cute." To make a point, I actually look at them this time, putting my phone away and propping my weight on my elbows as I cup my own face in my hands, batting eyelashes and doing my best puppy face.

"That's true," Ella, my other friend, supplies. "Unless she's in the lab then she's scarily precise. And when Rhi is opening bodies? Then she looks like a serial killer in those crime show, but oddly that suits her."

It's not like I hear that for the first time, so I just shrug and flip my curls in a nonchalant gesture, like saying, 'what can you do?'

Ella, Charlie and I have been friends for a few years, since we met in our freshman year in uni, the three of us going into medicine. They have known each other since like forever and it was evident from the first time I saw them they came in a pack. You just couldn't separate them, but they weren't closed off, they just approached everyone together. Many thought they were dating but they've always said that's incest and to please stop revolting their stomachs with ghastly comments like those.

I don't remember exactly who talked first to whom. At some point I was just in friendly terms with my classmates and then someday I was always by Ella's and Charlie's side, somehow being adopted by them, getting to know them as I let them help me heal from past scars.

Our friendship is a fifty percent support and love, and the other fifty percent is just bullying, but fond bullying.

We've been through a lot already, from the stressful life of being a uni student, with the pressure to do well and graduate on time, to those heartfelt moments when we've shared our secrets and exposed those scars that still hurt.

Charlie is afraid he'll live under his family's shade forever and won't even succeed without their help.

Ella is afraid she let go of the love of her life and that she might never see him again.

I'm afraid of losing someone I love again, incapable of saving them.

When we have one of those days when you're more scared than usual, when the world seems unbalanced and fragile, like as if you touch something it'll break apart... in those moments we have each other and I'm really grateful for having them as friends now.