The Extraordinary Emotion Between You And Me ⚣ ✎

[00] Ryker: "Crush."

[00]: "Crush."

It all started with a wedding.

Not mine, obviously.

I was only seventeen, still a senior in high school—well, almost a senior since the school year was scheduled to begin tomorrow—so things like getting married were not in my radar for a minimum of ten years.

That didn't mean that I didn't believe in true love, though. It's just that I didn't believe in getting married too early, no matter how much you loved that person. In my humble opinion, there was no harm in waiting a few years until the two of them were settled comfortably in their adult lives, and mature enough to be actually ready for that kind of commitment. But then again, the people who were getting married tonight were only eighteen, so I wasn't about to go around proclaiming my opinion to the guests who've already started to fill the garden.

Anyways, back to my point. One of my two straight best friends, Gideon Kincaid, and his arch-nemesis—or so he claimed—were getting married today. And nope, it wasn't because they had finally gotten over their pretend hatred, fallen in love, and had been in too much of a hurry to prove their undying devotion to each other that they couldn't wait.

No. It was a marriage of convenience.

Let's not get into why, because that would take a long ass time to explain.

"How do I look?" Lyle Thornton, my other best friend, appraised himself in the mirror after fixing the tie he'd been messing with for the past twenty or so minutes. He met my eyes in the reflection, and although he tried to keep up the confident mask he wore in the company of others all the time, his gaze betrayed a hint of vulnerability.

I could clearly see the worry in his eyes; the self-doubt and the genuine frustration of whether or not he looked good enough. A third person might've laughed out loud or said that he was fishing for compliments if he had asked them that question because, to be honest, the guy looked like a freaking model. But I knew him too well to blame him. Years of bitter experiences from the past were sometimes impossible to get over.