Hate That I Love You

“You’s two know each other?” Alex scoffed, with a mouth full of food

“Well, you could say so…” Bryan blankly replied, he didn’t make any effort to show any emotion, his face was expressionless. He wouldn’t look at me longer that necessary

“How?” Alex inquired, usually she didn’t care about my friends, but she acted differently when she found them attractive.

“Its not important” I shrugged, glancing around the room, keeping my eyes off Bryan.

“Tell me..please?” Alex turned to Bryan, with her ‘puppy dogs eyes’, she believed that she could win anyone over with those eyes, but not me.

He glanced at me and smiled.

“Me and Rory go way back.”

“Wah?” I coughed, signalling the fact that o had no idea about it. I kept my mouth shut, I would have out my foot in it otherwise.

“Really?” Rory!? You never said anything about Bryan!?” she looked ay me wide-eyed.

“But… its… I… no!” I sighed, they weren’t listening to me, not that I would have made any sense if they were still listening to me.

“Yeah…we decided to stay friends.” Bryan’s eyes caught mine, he winked and looked back at Alex. He was purposely doing it, terrorizing me, it wasn’t very far either for I had nothing to get him back with.

“Rory!” why didn’t you keep him, I would’ve?!” Alex boasted, rubbing his thighs, he didn’t show any attention towards it, I supposed he didn’t really care.

Yes, I know you would have kept him, I pondered to myself, they were floating on their own asteroids, so they had no care in the world for me at this point, not that I wanted any.

“…he’s lying.” I quietly whispered to myself, I think maybe the dog heard me, not that he could understand me.

I gave up, I just sat there and listened to everything those two spoke about, fashion, hair, even their own sex lives. Every now and then Bryan would sneal glances at me, and when he caught my eyes in a stare, he would wink.

Dinner lasted for a while….

“Hey, guys…” Alex spoke, arising from her seat at the table. “I have a non-important phone call to make.” I zoned out at this point, she was only doing it to impress Bryan, she was failing miserably too.

“If I don’t see you before you leave Bryan, ill talk to you later.” She winked at him before leaving us in silence.

I wished she winked at me too.

Silence enveloped us, it was that uncomfortable silence that doesn’t seem to leave, it just hangs around like a bad smell.

“Well, I had better get going, the guys are probably worried about me.” He wiped the crumbs from tea off his shaped thighs,

“Thank you for tea… I’ll see you around..” he cringed. “…Maybe?”

I looked at him, unable to reply.

“…I think I’ll show you out.”

I walked Bryan to the end of the footpath, which lead out onto the dark silky tarmac. Beside our footpath was the bright yellow mail box that stood proudly in the garden. I stood beside the gate and watched Bryan approach his car, he paused as though he wanted to say something.

“…Bryan.”

It took a while for him to turn to me.

“Rory, I’m sorry…I-” he began to explain, until I rudely interrupted him.

“Bryan, I would like to be the band’s personal hairdresser.” I blurted out.

Yes, it does sound very lame, but you have no idea of who many girls would love to have some form of contact with attractive band members.

“Really?” he seemed surprised, and happy at the same time. His happiness was coming back into his dark eyes. To begin with, I was expecting a barrage of abuse from him, about how I should have told him before, but he seemed content with me like he wasn’t angry at all.

“Uh… Yeah.” I subconsciously rubbed my upper arm, a thing I did when I was nervous or excited.

That awkward silence came between us again and we didn’t know what to say to each other. Thankfully his phone broke the silence. Bryan looked at me surprised, pulled his phone from the confinements of his pocket. He glanced down at the phone and the displayed number.

“Its Max, I got to take this.” He turned from me to answer his phone. I wasn’t sure if that was goodbye or not, so I stood there.

“Hey! No… I’m on my way home now, Max…. Yes I know… Wait, can you hold on for a minute?” Bryan pushed his phone against his chest, hiding Max from what he was about to say to me.

“Alex gave me your number… I should be able to contact you later.” He hurriedly spoke and went back to his conversation with Max before getting in his car and ready to drive off. His voice faded out as I turned and walked back into the house.

Hey, wait, I thought you weren’t allowed to drive and speak on the phone?

Oh well…

I entered the house, to have my ears ringing with Alex’s laughter. She was obviously still on the phone.

I relaxed into the couch, relieving my feet of the stress they were under. I subconsciously watched a disturbing talk show about a woman’s sex life, not that I was really interested. It was only keeping me awake.

And it didn’t take me so to fall asleep.

I had Thursdays off, Thursdays and Saturdays and on a special occasion. Sundays.

The sunlight streamed into my room, illuminating the entire space, waking me from my sleep.

“Rory!” Alex bashed on my door, even if I wanted to go back to my peaceful slumber, her battering on the door made sure I wasn’t going back to sleep.

“Ugh… What?!” I croaked, slipping backwards and forwards from consciousness.

“I’m going out…” was all she said. She didn’t even wait for my reply. In the blink of an eye Alex was out the door, in her car and racing down the road

“Goodbye…” I said, to myself obviously.

I slowly got out of bed, a little upset about it but I was going to live. The cool wind attacked my bare limbs as they left the warm surroundings of my bed. I stumbled into the kitchen, still in my pajamas, and attacked the fridge for food I eventually settled for porridge, a past favourite. Jinkies barked at my feet, waiting to be fed.

Yes, Jinkies is the dog, and he was called that because he had this obsession with sneaking up on the housemates, and scaring them, hence the name Jinkies. He is my beautiful black Pomeranian, but you don need to know much more.

The house was relatively clean, Alex made my life a lot easier when she cleaned.

I wonder where Alec went?

She was always moving, she couldn’t stay in one spot for too long, only when she was sleeping. I barely saw her, she was a party animal, if there was a party there was a possibility she was in it, somewhere. As for me, I wasn’t a party animal, I liked my solitude and I felt a little uncomfortable about sharing sweat and other bodily fluids with people who were probably off their face on some form of drug, or even alcohol, the situation made me uncomfortable. Yes I did suffer from a small portion of Paranoia.

Not a good thing

I sat in from of the T.V, not on the couch but on the fluffy carpet that covered the disgusting brown floor-boards. I had my art book opened in front of me, and I was ‘doodling’ on a page, drawing random patterns. I didn’t consider myself an artist but my friends told me I was talented. But isn’t everyone?

I was calmly humming to myself, floating on my own asteroid, when a funny vibration feeling spread across my thighs.

“…Ah!” I yelped, jumping from my position on the carpet. The hair on my arms stood up on end. I hurriedly patted my thigh, searching for the source of the feeling. Once I found the object I turned bright shades of red, I glanced around to see if anyone had visualise my scare. The object was my phone.

“…God” I cursed at myself.

I pulled the phone from my pocket and glared at it as the object flashed an unfamiliar number at me. I was a message.

Who the hell?

I opened the message, not a very bizarre one, but I had simply forgotten how the composer got my number.

Hey! Its Bryan, Meet me outside your house.

That’s right, Alex gave him my number, didn’t she?

I glanced up at the window, which was hidden by a translucent curtain hanging lightly on a bar above the window. Bravely, I walked over, and pulled back the light-weight curtain to find Bryan standing near the Mail box outside the gate.

What was he doing?