"So, let me summarize this. You went on a coffee date with Matt. One of the guys who bullies you at school and forces you to do his homework almost everyday but you just hung out with him?"
Emily was sitting on her bed and drew something while listening to him ramble on about the afternoon he'd had. He nodded.
"And you don't think that it seems slightly weird?"
He shrugged. "He seemed kind of nice actually."
"Which is precisely why every single one of your alarm bells should be going off right now." She put her sketchbook next to her onto the duvet and flicked the pencil against her knee. Daniel continued to fumble with the carpet. It was blue and soft like most things in Emily's room. He looked up at her after a moment.
"But what if he actually means it? What if it's fine and he really just wants help. Like actual help with understanding the homework?"
She shook her head.
"Listen to me, Daniel. There is no way, no way in hell, that someone does a 180 turn like that within a few days. This does not seem right."
"Why can't you be happy for me? It could be fine. I could actually be friends with him again."
She backpaddled a bit. "I'm sorry, I'm just a bit worried to be honest. It seems so strange to me that he is nice to you like that all of a sudden. I mean, don't you agree with me? It is rather weird."
Daniel nodded. He shared her concerns but didn't want to admit it. The possibility of regaining his old friend was too enticing to him and he wanted to believe. If there was a chance, any chance at all, to make their friendship work again, no matter how small that chance was, he was willing to give it a shot.
"But why else would he want to hang out with me?"
"I don't know. But I don't like it."
"Are you jealous?" he teased and before he could move a pillow hit him in the face.
"You wish," Emily laughed. Daniel forced a smile onto his face but she saw through it immediately.
"There is something else?"
He nodded. "I'm so stressed out right now. You know, with exams and preparing for university, getting all the grades and extra course work and extracurricular stuff."
"And then you added hanging out with Matt to that, which is more stress?" she assumed and couldn't be more wrong. Daniel sighed.
"No," he said, "hanging out with Matt is fine. I can do my own homework in the meantime as well and explaining it to him actually helps me with studying. You know how it is said how only if you can explain something you actually know it. I think that's true. So it's a good exercise for me, too."
She nodded and continued to flick the pencil against her knee. "Then what is the other thing that's bothering you?"
He shrugged. He wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about it but maybe he should. It had been bothering him for a while now.
"It's why I'm here so often."
She suggestively raised an eyebrow and he threw the pillow back at her.
"No. It's about my parents."
"Oh." Maybe he shouldn't be talking about this. She was a friend not a therapist. Maybe it would bother her to hear about it and it would most likely ruin the mood if he hadn't done that already by talking about his meeting with Matt.
"So, what is on your mind?"
"They are always fighting and yelling at each other."
"Ah, you told me about this before. I can imagine that it is hard to deal with."
"It's only gotten worse since Adam moved out." Adam was his older brother. He had moved out a few years ago and their parents' fighting had only become worse and more frequent. He wished he could do something about it, and to some extent he even felt like it was his fault even though he knew that it wasn't.
"I wish I could do something more helpful than just listening," Emily said and squinted her eyes, something that she always did when she was thinking about how to help someone out. Daniel smiled. This time it was genuine.
"Thank you. Just listening to me complain about literally everything is already super helpful."
She laughed. "I'm glad."
They sat there and Emily listened while Daniel told her about the fight that his parents had had earlier that had prompted him to leave the house and hang outwith her this evening. Somehow Emily managed to make him feel better about it even though she didn't say much but in the end both of them found themselves laughing so hard it hurt. Daniel leaned back against Emily's bedside table while they were catching their breath.
"What do you think I should do?" Daniel asked suddenly. Emily raised an eyebrow and looked at him in confusion for a second.
"About your parents? There is not much you can do. And it shouldn't be your problem to begin with."
"No, I mean- I mean what do I do about Matt."
She clicked her tongue,clearly not happy.
"I really want to try. I really want him to actually be interested in being friends with me again," he explained.
"Why? I don't understand. You said that you hadn't really been friends any more since some time in primary school. He changed. And you should accept that."
"But what if he didn't?"
She sighed.
"I know, I know," he muttered quietly.
"I'm sorry," Emily said finally. "I just hope that you'll be careful. You really can't know for sure what his intentions are here."
Emily was still sitting on her bed after Daniel had left. She was biting down on the end of the pencil, a habit that she had vowed to stop but that was still making its way into her daily sessions of self doubt. She wasn't sure if she trusted Daniel's judgement of the situation. To her it didn't seem like he was thinking it through but rather that he was blinded by his hope for friendship, even if it was friendship with someone who had treated him like shit for years. She couldn't wrap her mind around it. But maybe she didn't understand because she didn't know much about the friendship that Matt and Daniel had shared? She had never asked about it before and Daniel had only mentioned it casually here and there. What would that be like? Losing a best friend? She had never experienced that before. Luckily. Sure, she had lost contact with a few friends since elementary school but she still hung out with everyone she considered to be among her best friends.
"I shouldn't judge him, I guess," she sighed and put her sketchbook and the pencil next to her on the mattress. Friendship was a weird thing, she thought and reached for her phone. For a while she scrolled aimlessly through social media, just opening and closing the apps without really paying attention to any of them. Like usually she ended up with her finger hovering over the chat with her friend Allie. They had met a little over a year ago during a sport's camp. Emily loved playing football and had pestered her parents until they signed her up for the camp. With Allie it was almost the opposite. She didn't like playing sports and had been more or less forced to go by her parents. Emily caught herself grinning and shook her head.
Hey, what's up?
Hum, just learning lines. What about you?
I'm bored...
Almost immediately her phone started vibrating with the incoming call.
"Hey," Emily laughed. "Didn't mean to interrupt your line-rehearsal."
"You are never interrupting." Allie's voice was soft and more high-pitched than Emily's. It sounded amazing when Allie sung.
"Pfft, stop," Emily huffed and fidgeted with the pencil again. "How is the theatre club?" she asked.
Allie laughed. "Good. We are practising at least once a week now."
"Sounds like a lot of work."
"Hum, yeah, but it's fun work so it's all cool."
"When is the performance?" Emily asked and grabbed her calendar from the desk.
"Towards the end of the year. Should be in December but our teacher hasn't settled on a specific date yet."
"Ah, okay. Let me know when he does. I wanna come."
Allie coughed suggestively.
"No, Allie," Emily stuttered. "I meant... Not that kind. Stop."
She made the pencil dance between her fingers again as she felt herself blushing while Allie laughed wholeheartedly. "You are supposed to be the innocent one."
"Pfft, why would I be the innocent one?" Allie asked and Emily could picture how she would raise her eyebrows in played judgement.
Emily thought of the blue dyed hair that usually flowed over Allie's shoulders in slight waves all the way to her butt, how her red lipstick would accentuate the curves of her lips, or how she often wore ripped skinny jeans or shorts that where honouring their name.
"Because you have the voice of an angel," she finally answered and slung her free arm around her knees. Now it was Allie's turn to be flustered.
"Oh shush, you are just exaggerating," she said.
"Then sing for me and prove it," Emily joked. Even when Allie tried to sing badly for comedic purposes it still sounded wonderful. She just couldn't not hit the right notes and make every song sound like a master piece. Her voice came through the speaker of the phone singing a few verses of a children's song. It reminded Emily of a sunny day on the beach, with ice cream, and a light breeze playing with her wet hair.
"You are just proving my point," she murmured and smiled to herself as she listened to Allie finish the song. It was wonderful.
And so was she.