Losing Grip

Chapter 28➷ Am I Stupid or Something?

"Ouch!" Bradley said, and Brooklyn scowled at him.

"Not now." Jayce elbowed him in the side.

The guy couldn't catch a break today.

"So, you were playing with me?" Arson asked, and hurt flashed in his eyes.

He tried to turn around, but she held on to his left wrist.

"Arson, you don't get it," she said.

He turned back around. "No, I think you don't. Listen, Brooklyn." The name made her flinch as if she had never heard her name pronounced this way before. "I don't deserve to be led on. Neither do you, for that matter. You know perfectly well how I feel about you—or at least I think I made it clear enough. You could have just been honest with me. I have been from the start."

"Wait—"

He looked down at her hand holding his wrist and gently removed it. "I think it's best we leave it at that." He walked away from the entrance of the cafeteria without saying another word.

Brooklyn turned to us and gave us her best attempt at a smile. "I completely forgot you two were here. Go ahead, you can say it. You did tell me it would end this way."

Neither Jayce nor I said anything.

"He's right," she mumbled, mostly to herself. "I'm an idiot. I hurt his feelings by trying to protect mine. I ruined everything."

"No, you didn't. It's Arson. He won't hold it against you... for too long. I'll go find him," I told her, as Jayce pulled her into a hug.

It didn't take long to find Arson. He was in the gym, struggling to dribble with his left hand, like yesterday.

I quietly sat down on the bleachers. I didn't know what to tell him. Even after all these hours of reading, I still struggled with words.

I liked to think that just being here was enough, but I anxiously waited for him to say something.

I knew he noticed me, but he didn't speak for the next fifteen minutes. His shots missed the hoops, he couldn't catch his dribbles, and he couldn't seem to focus.

After he finally exhausted himself, he fell down next to me, sitting on the floor and leaning against the seats.

I racked my brain for something clever to say.

"I didn't think you would skip lunch for anything," I joked. Immediately after I spoke, I wanted to bang my head against something because that was the last thing anyone should say at a time like this. "You know, since you... well, uh..." Could someone shut me up?

He didn't laugh. "I'm not hungry."

And this would be a normal response for anyone else, but this was Arson. He was always hungry.

"Am I stupid?" he suddenly asked, spinning the basketball between his hands.

"No, of course not."

"How did I not see it? I mean, Brooklyn's blunt and spontaneous. That's one thing I like about her. Why would she lie?"

"I'm sure she has a good explanation," I said because that's the only thing I could come up with.

"You're kidding."

"She really likes you." When I realized that didn't make any sense, I continued, "She probably didn't want to face her feelings for you because they were—" Words. Think words— "too real."

We loved illusions. They protected us from pain. They were a defense mechanism that we forged around ourselves to guard us against the truth.  Truth made everything real... too real. And we didn't like "real". We were drawn to lies like moths to whatever light they could sniff out.