Lie Until You Laugh

35- Stella

I roll my eyes at myself and decide that I’m becoming a hopeless romantic, and that’s terrifying. I can play matchmaker with Brian and Mason and even Sienna and Penn, but I am really terrible at playing matchmaker with myself. I don’t like having boyfriends because I’m convinced that it’ll just end up being painful for me. Not even my own brother could stand to be around me after a while- what makes me think that somebody who isn’t obliged to be around me will want to for a long period of time?

On my way back to campus, I remember that I haven’t eaten all day but I don’t feel like going out, so when I park in the parking lot, my first stop is the food court for a California Chicken Salad. I don’t think that I’ll miss Drew, but I’ll sure miss the attention that he gave me. I’m not an attention whore or anything, but being the first thing on somebody’s mind for a little while- it does feel pretty good. I’m going to miss that a lot but I’m still proud of myself for breaking things off with him. Maybe that means that I’m starting to like, respect myself more or something. That’s cool.

“Stella?” I hear Anthony call my name as I’m munching on my salad in the pretty much empty food court. It’s three in the afternoon, so there’s not a lot of people in there eating since it’s evenly between lunch and dinner.

“What do you want?” I ask my stupid brother as he joins me at my small table with no invitation. He just sits across from me as if we’re best friends or something and we’re just not.

“You look upset,” He explains.

“Do I now?” I snort.

“Look,” He sighs. “I’ve told you a billion times that I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to do here, Stella. I’m just trying to be a good brother.”

“A good brother?” I wonder incredulously. “Were you being a good brother when you told James that I had the clap?” When he first started dating Gianna, I had this boyfriend (James) and it was like a loyalty test to Gianna to get him to break up with me. We’d been together for five months but when Anthony told him that I had an STD, he broke up with me and I was pretty much heartbroken. No- not pretty much- I was extremely heartbroken. He’d thought that I cheated on him and I obviously didn’t, but he believed Anthony over me. Another reason why I think that it’ll just hurt me in the end if I try to get involved with a real relationship.

“You’re still hung up on that?” Anthony wonders exasperatedly. “That was forever ago, Stell.”

“It was right after the Carmen thing,” I recall, referring to my old best friend who he dated and then dumped and she left school because she was so broken up about it. “And if you want to talk about more present events, you almost killed one of my best friends.”

“Are you talking about the pool thing with Red?” He asks. “Stella, I was there the whole time. Obviously, I wasn’t going to let her die, okay? I just wanted to scare her a little bit.”

“Well it worked,” I snapped. “She was pretty fucking scared.”

“I didn’t know that she couldn’t swim,” He tries to justify even though her swimming abilities had nothing to do with it considering they tied her feet and hands together. I’m sure nobody can swim in that circumstance. “And I tried to say sorry to her. Really, I did.”

I shake my head, trying to get myself not to cry because I’ve had a bad day but I don’t want to cry. Especially not in front of Anthony. “I don’t want to do this right now.”

“Seriously Stella, are you okay?” He asks before I can stand up from my chair to leave the food court and get away from his endless stream of apologies that I’m not interested in.