Meet You At Home

Leap of Faith

I lay on my bed, and as my body relaxes I realize how sore and tired I am from walking around the mall all day. I close my eyes for a second, and there Nolan was. I couldn't escape him. Sometimes when I was alone, I wondered how long I could keep this going. How long I could pretend he was just my friend, and keep hanging out with him every day; keep watching cartoons at his place on Saturday mornings, and eat lunch with him at school, and get picked up in the mornings for a ride, and fall deeper and deeper without a word. I couldn't do this forever without breaking.

Just as I'm about to drift away, there's a tapping at my terrace door. I lift my chin up and twist my body to see who's standing there, and see a red faced Parker, looking like she's just been on a jog.

"Miss me already?" I tease as I slide open the terrace door.

"I have bad news." She steps into my room. "Do you want mine or yours first?"

"Oh no." Although I'm anxious to hear what's happened to me, I want to show her that I care about her more than myself. "Yours, what happened?"

She lifts her phone screen to my face, and I see Iris Hampshire, one of the prettiest girls in our grade, smiling at us through Parker's screen. I take the phone to get a better look. It's a Comrade Chat post, she's taken a selfie of her looking happily at the camera.

"Read the caption." Parker says seeing that I still haven't gotten to the bad part.

I read it out loud: "So happy to be going to prom with Jackson Grace."

"Who announces something like this on social media?" That was for some reason the first thing I thought to say.

"Reyah."

"Sorry. I can't believe this. I was just talking to him like 20 minutes ago. He didn't say anything about-"

"This is exactly why I can't be with him." She says looking at the floor with eyes full of tears. There are two things I have never seen Parker do. Cry, and talk about her relationship with Jackson; and I was on the cusp of witnessing both. I did not want to ruin it.

"Why Park?" She's quiet, and I think I've already lost her.

"He could never settle with one girl. I could never trust him enough to actually date him; and I can't compete with girls like Iris,"

"Parker, you're way prettier than her, and we both know that Jackson has problems with how he handles his relationships. It's not about you." I didn't think that any words could get through to Parker at that point.

"I still have to tell you your news." Her face changes as she says this. She's looking at me with completely different emotion now, like she wasn't just about to cry.

"Okay... What is it?"

"Scarlett told me she's going to prom with Nolan."

Of course.

I could tell that Parker was nervous about being the messenger of that bad news.

"Oh." I say.

"Boys suck." She concludes.

"They really do."

I was trying to play it cool, but on the inside, there was a fire burning behind my rib cage. Parker was usually pretty blind to the emotions I was trying to hide, not like Jackson who I couldn't keep a thing from. I felt so defeated, like I had wasted so much time pining over a boy who would never see me that way. Pining over a boy who was thinking about other girls the way I thought about him; and that thought, sent a pang running through my chest, sinking down into my stomach.