How to Date a Nerd

Chapter 18 - How to Be a Nerd

I forced back a smile. “If I’m mad, you’d probably be tied up, gagged and inside my closet right now.” Which was probably true. To keep her for myself.

“You won’t do that,” she retorted, a bit too defensively.

“How sure are you?” I chided, intently meeting her eyes and locking gazes until she was the first one to look away. “You don’t even know me.”

She flinched, looking a little scared that I might just start to do what I said. “I d-don’t. But… I feel like I do. And you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. I’m just sure of it.”

“Okay,” I muttered with my hands up. “I was bluffing. Freddy’s going to kill me if I do that. And I’m not mad. Just annoyed.”

“Because I went out with Matt?” she asked, looking at me like she was measuring my response.

“You went out with him?” I echoed with a bitter chuckle. That bastard. He said he’d take Sarah straight home. Now, I’m mad. I thought sourly. “Talk about news flash. Of course you did.”

Sarah just smiled shakily, like she was expecting me to explode or something. “Well, he’s not so bad after all. We just talked and I just remembered that we were actually friends from kindergarten. Isn’t that weird?”

Okay. So what now? She’d tell me they’d get married? And live happily ever after? Without me. Go on, Sarah. Just rub it in. I’m a rock. Nothing can hurt me. On second thoughts, kill me now. Nodding, I just scanned through the pages, trying to tune her out for once.

“What do you think of me,” she went on. “…going out with him.”

I couldn’t respond to that. So I just stared at the incomprehensible words in the page I was pretending to read. I pretended to busy myself reading. That’s it. I’m busy. I didn’t hear it. She fell silent for a while but asked again.

Caught in a mouse trap. Choked to death. Pinched.

“What are we talking about again?” I said, my voice going up a notch. My fingernails dug into my palms but I somehow managed to force a smile when she creased her forehead. Sarah might’ve noticed that I wasn’t paying any attention. “Uh… I’m not Becky, you know. Or a girl.”

“I have two eyes,” she muttered, pouting. “I can see that. But I’m asking for your opinion because it’s what best friends do. So… what do you think about Matt?”

I sighed deeply, feeling the neurons in my brain shutting down one by one. A miraculous development that I even knew what neurons are. I opened my mouth to let Sarah know that I’d be happy to see Matt Adams burn in hell. Instead I mumbled, “Well, he’s got a full six-pack… Just too bad he doesn’t have the plastic thingy that holds it all together.”

Sarah bit her lip and stared at me for like three seconds. Before it got any awkward, she started laughing. Then we were both laughing. It was a sight to see her laugh, with her voice sounding to me like those private performances. Few and awfully expensive.

We talked and talked for hours. About the past two years. I’d done a little editing, avoiding any topic about me and her being together. Which was hard. Eventually, we invented a little game. I’d tell her three things she’d probably forgotten and she had to guess which of them was made up.

“Which is false? One—on your sixteenth birthday you can’t stop crying like a baby when I gave you my present,” I started, smirking crookedly when she let out an irritated groan. “Two—on your eighteenth birthday, you got mad at me because you got really jealous of my personal assistant. And three—you learned how to drive.”

Narrowing her eyes, she muttered, “Cheater! There are two false answers.”

I already gave her all the clues. How thick could she really get? Maybe she was in denial. Of course. Why couldn’t she just admit to me… to herself that she loved me back?

“Just answer it!” I snapped back.

Startled, she replied, “T-two. You don’t have a personal assistant.”

I just nodded vacantly. It was hopeless. Maybe I’d make her drive one of these days and let her crash on a wall or something. Just to make her believe.

“During our Junior Prom,” I said sullenly, looking at her, measuring her reaction. “You didn’t want to go because, first, I had to go to LA, meaning you won’t have a super awesome date. Second, Becky set you up on a date with someone else. And third, you wanted to go to an amusement park instead. With me, of course.”

She seemed to consider it for a while, eyes shifting everywhere around the room. Then with a sigh, she whispered, “It… It must be really fun, huh? Having you as a best friend, I mean. At least I could bully or blackmail you to take me to the prom.” She laughed softly, hesitantly looking up at me. “And I-I could drag you to the movies but all you can do is complain. Then, I’d make you buy me ice cream on the way home. Maybe, do something… everything together.”

Looking down, Sarah hugged her knees as she watched my finger drew invisible circles on the rug. I couldn’t help but stare achingly at her. Did that mean that she wanted to be with me too?

After a while, she shook her head, her eyes going blank again. Like that time I first saw her in the hospital. Confused and broken. Searching desperately for that missing part of her.

“Is it wrong, Leon? Is it wrong to have all these thoughts inside my head?” she asked with a distant look. “Because I just invented all of them. Nothing’s real. And all I could think about is that I’m hurting everyone around me. Becky. Mom. And now, y-you,” she murmured with a harsh voice.

“Then let’s do it,” I said with a soothing smile, putting an arm around her. “Everything you want to do. Let’s do them. Together.”

She cringed under my touch, but then rested her head on my shoulder. I knew she was doing her best not to cry. Curled next to me, all I wanted was to kiss her hair. Tell her about us. Tell her that everything would be alright. That I had our future together all planned out. That we’d always be like this. But there was no us anymore to begin with.

But I wanted to make this girl realize that she was meant for me. Make her understand that I’d rather be hurt over and over again because of her than to live without her smiles. I wanted to fill in the missing parts.

So I said, “You don’t have to invent old memories, Sarah. We can make new ones.”

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Hey there! It's been a LONG time! Two weeks to be exact. And I hope you're still there. Someone? Anyone? *mic feedbacks and rolling dustbunnies* Okay. It's been hard for me to write this because of my currently morbid and unhealthy disposition. I'm trying to regain my 'fun mojo' and let's hope I do by next week. I really love this book. I guess, I'm now in a burnout phase when I knew exactly what would happen but don't know how to translate my thoughts into words. And now, I'm just ranting. So enjoy reading and see you (hopefully) soon. I just made a Twitter account *at last* so here... http://twitter.com/Simply_shim

~shim :J