Straight Circle

chapter twenty-eight

"Not enough. One year," Elijah comments making me widen my eyes in horror.

"No way! I can't do that!"

She puts her elbows on the table and leans her back towards me.

"When's the last time you had vacations?"

Her question completely catches me off guard as I stare at her, dumbfounded. If I think about it, I never had a real vacation since I was thirteen. When I started modelling because of my mom, I was always somewhere to make money while children at my age were having fun doing nothing.

As far as I can remember, I never took a whole month off. At this thought, I bite my lips and looks at the couple who are waiting for an answer.

"Six months, it's either that or nothing."

They both give me a bright smile at the same time and the synchronization scares me. I swear there's a high chance that they're just one person divided into two bodies.

"It worked !" Elijah says happily and they do a high five.

Did I miss something? I juggle my eyes between them and frown in confusion.

"What?"

Jack smiles at me, "We expected you to say two months but six months is even better."

All of the sudden, I realize something.

"You manipulated me!"

"Because we care about you and I don't want you to go back to the hospital. You need to enjoy your life while you're still young and beautiful. We did the same tactic with Lisa and she took eight months of vacation," Elijah chuckles talking about her little sister.

I know that Elijah is the most devilish and manipulative woman I have erer met – even though I love her – I had hoped that Lisa wasn't that naive. I guess Elijah is good at making solid excuses because I also fell into her trap.

"What am I gonna do for six months? Nothing? That sounds wonderful," I say sarcastically.

"Spend some quality time with your friends and family? I thinks that sounds amazing," she retorts with a grin.

"But everyone's busy! You work all week."

"Lisa's free," Jack suggest me and takes a sip of his beer while I throw him a glare.

I know how this is going and I'm not going to spend six months clinging on her. Elijah told him that Lisa and I had a huge fight before her bachelorette party because I didn't accept her sexual orientation right away. Even now, it's kinda weird for me to see her dating Somi. From what I saw, Lisa seems to be happy with Somi so I guess, I'm fine with it.

"She has Somi and I'm clearly not interested in a threesome."

"Everything's good between you two?" Elijah asks me with a worried look.

Lisa is her little sister that she loves to death and I'm her best friend so she wants us to get along. I sigh and and bite my lips. After our business trip in Las Vegas, we hung out... a lot. She would come at my house at night even if I wasn't pleased about it. I got used to see after the fourth visit.

And then, she started dating this girl and that's when we grew distant. Everything has happened naturally. We didn't not fight at all and she knows that I'm fine with the idea of her dating a woman. If I have a problem, I can call her and she would be there to help me. I will do the same thing if she gets into troubles.

But, something has changed between us. These past few weeks, I feel like something broke between us. When we look at each other, I don't feel the closeness we used to have... I feel like I'm seeing a stranger.

We didn't argue one single time these past four months We just gradually stopped talking to each other while at the same time, supporting each other.

"Yeah, totally. We had a diner last week with Jisoo and Chaeyoung. It was nice."

"You're okay with her relationship with Somi?" Jack asks.

Somi is a nice girl and she makes her smile. I can settle for that. Lisa is good at picking loyal and kind partner. Her former boyfriends were always charming and fun to hang out.

"At first, it didn't felt natural to me but I'm starting to get used to it. I like how they treat each other with respect I guess."

I realized that all I needed was time to accept Lisa. I went through the principal stages of life : denial, anger and acceptance. It made me question my beliefs and the more I think about it, the more I think it was the right decision.

"Other than that, I'm glad you're more open minded when it comes to bisexuality," Jack smiles at me.

"Are you trying to tell me smoothly that you're bi?" I joke and he bites his lips before looking at Elijah who bursts out of laughing.

I let my mouth open while he scratches his neck nervously.

"I don't like putting a label on me but I won't deny the fact that I dated both women and men."

From now on, I'll stop joking around when it comes to that topic.

I turn my head to my best friend, "You're bi too?" I asks her.

Jack never showed me he was interested in men and I would have never guess it. If he had came out to me six months ago, I would have taken it in a bad way.

"No I'm straight dumbass," Elijah says and laughs.

"You're always checking me out, it could have been possible," I add and they laugh.

Suddenly, Elijah's starts to ring. She lets out of a small groan before answering.

"Lisa baby, what's up?"

Her smiles disappears making me frown in confusion. I look at Jack but he is as lost as me. For unknown reasons, Elijah hits the table causing us to jump, especially me.

"Stay here, I'll go get you."

After that, Elijah gets up and puts her phone on the pocket of her jean. I know that look. She wants to murder someone and I'm curious to know what is going on.

"Explain," I say.

"Imma kill that Somi bitch," she casually states but it's enough for us to understand one thing : Lisa is in danger.

I grit my teeth and stands up, "I drive."

She nods at me and we walk towards the door. I don't know what Somi did but from the tone of Elijah's voice, I know she did something bad. We enter the car and before we go off, I hear Jack.

"Wait!" he says with a jerky breath and slips into the back seat. "We'll need this," he shows the baseball bat in his hands.

We smiled at each other before I turn my attention to the road and start the engine.

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What did Somi do? 👀

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