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Chapter 42

"He doesn't dislike you," I said. We had just arrived at their house. That's when I saw the swing on their porch.

Mali-Koa and I walked up the steps to the porch. We sat down, and I dropped my duffel bag with a relieved sigh.

"Long story short, my mum's unstable, and I'm still here to make sure Calum is okay."

I smiled sadly. "You really do love Calum, don't you?"

"More than anything," Mali-Koa said.

It reminded me of Ben and Jack. Gosh, I miss them so much. I need to call them.

"You need to tell me your story," Mali-Koa said with somewhat of a smirk on her face.

"Okay," I mumbled, rubbing my hands together. They were starting to sweat. "Er, I met him online about two years ago. It was nothing really serious at the start. I suppose we were both just feeling lonely, and our company seemed to satisfy ourselves. He became my best friend. I knew his secrets, he knew mine. We know each other like the backs of our hands, even though we didn't know each other in person."

"Were you afraid," Mali-Koa asked, "that he wasn't as he made out to be online?"

"At first, I was. I was reluctant to give him my name. I didn't give him my full name because of that. I saw all of his selfies. I was still skeptical about it, sure, but when we started to post videos, I believed that he really was a teenager like me. Don't even get me started when we FaceTime'd for the first time. I was nervous as hell."

Mali-Koa hummed, a small smile playing on her lips.

"I had my problems, and he had his. I would always go to him for comfort, and he would do the same to me. When we were first friends, we promise each other that we would be there for each other no matter what. We promised that we would try to help each other with our own problems, and if we couldn't help each other, we would just listen, because we both knew that we couldn't keep things bottled up forever. He was like my life source. He was my support, and eventually, I knew that I couldn't live without him.

"I know it seems stupid. I was seventeen, and I couldn't depend on a boy eight thousand miles away from me to help me with my problems. But he was all I had. I couldn't tell my parents, I couldn't tell anyone at school, I was too afraid to seek counseling, so he was the only person I could go to. And he did help, in a way. Sure, my problems may not have gone away—I was too cowardly to face them. But he did make me very happy, and he made it seem as if those problems never existed.

"Then came something not so good. Are you aware of the term 'shipping'?"

Mali-Koa furrowed her eyebrows. "Is that the thing in which you create a stupid mashup of two people's names?"

"Er, basically, yeah," I said with a small nod. "Anyway, I was 'shipped' with some girl in high school. Her name was Rylee, but that's kind of irrelevant. Continuing, so many people were 'shipping' Rylee and I. They even called us 'Ryluke'. So many of my high school classmates were saying that she and I should get together. I guess I gave into the peer pressure, because I started to believe that I actually liked her, even though I didn't.

"So a couple of months passed by, and my so-called 'infatuation' for Rylee seemed to grow stronger. Again, I was blinded by the peer pressure of my classmates—I didn't actually like her. I then came up with the craziest idea of asking Rylee to be my girlfriend. I told Calum about it, of course, and eventually told my classmates. Calum said that I should go for it, and...some other stuff. Anyway! I eventually mustered up the courage to set up a date to ask Rylee to be my girlfriend. I remember it so clearly. I was sitting down, thinking of how it would be like to have her ask my girlfriend, and then it hit me."

"You were in love with my brother," Mali-Koa said.

"I was in love with your brother," I confirmed.

"What happened exactly? How did you know, just like that?"

"I remember telling a couple of my classmates that I was going to ask her out. Then we were sitting to eat lunch. I started to daydream on what it would be like to have Rylee as my girlfriend, except it wasn't Rylee. I was actually dreaming about making out with Calum..." I chuckled. "Now that I think of it, it's very weird telling your boyfriend's sister about your relationship goals with your boyfriend."

Mali-Koa laughed. "So what happened after your realization?" she asked after recovering.

"I stopped," I told her. "I forgot about Rylee completely. For the next month or two, I was completely set on your brother. I was having so many daydreams about Cal—hey, don't laugh at me!"

Mali-Koa continued to laugh, covering her hand with her mouth. "I'm sorry!" she said threw her fits of laughter. "It's just that you're so in love with my brother and it's so fucking cute."

I scrunched my nose in mock-disgust. "I'm not cute," I sneered.

"Calum would beg to differ, now, would he?"

I glared at her playfully. "I don't like you Hoods."

"Well, Hemmings, you're stuck with us."

I smiled. Calum's already perfect, not to mention he has a sister that matches his perfection. I bet their parents were perfect, too. I wonder what happened between them...

"Anyway! I was madly in love with Calum and trying to muster up the courage to tell him."

Mali-Koa squealed. She repositioned herself on the swing, crossing her left leg over her right. She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her palms. She looked like Calum, but she was a girl. Anyway, she was just as adorable as her brother.

"Okay," she said, the most adorable smile on her face. "I'm ready. Tell me everything."

I could feel myself blushing crimson. "Um, well, it was a daily conversation between us."

"Uh huh," Mali-Koa said, her position not changing.

"We were talking like we normally do."

"Uh huh."

"He was saying something about not liking to see me hurt."

"Uh huh."

"Then we started diverting the conversation."

"UH HUH."

"And I made a How I Met Your Mother reference."

"UH HUH."

"Then he said the dream was to make out with Leigh-Anne Pinnock and the fact that he can't is the biggest struggle."

"UH H—well, he really does love Leigh-Anne Pinnock."

"And then I said that liking a boy who doesn't like you back is the biggest struggle. That boy was him, by the way."

Mali-Koa squealed again, and he covered her face with her hands.

"Then he asked me who this boy was."

"UH HUH."

"And I told him the boy was him."

"UH HUH!"

"And I asked him to be my boyfriend."

Mali-Koa screamed. She got off the swing and started jumping around the porch. I was afraid she would break threw and fall, but she didn't seem scared. She was squealing and saying incoherent things that I couldn't understand, and then someone opened the door.

"Oh, my God, Mali, are you okay?"

Mali-Koa suddenly stopped. She looked at the figure standing under the threshold, and she gestured to me. "Yeah, I'm fine, I was just talking to Luke over here—"

It was him.

He was staring at me.

Oh, my gosh, he's staring at me.

Calum slammed the door, leaving me and Mali-Koa absolutely bewildered.