Drop Dead.

“So when are yeh seein’ Andrew again?” Oliver asked one afternoon while Melanie was in the shower. We were playing Super Smash Brothers on the television. The way he said Andrew’s name made a shiver crawl down my spine, but not in the good way. Not the in the way it crawled when Oliver said my name.

“Um, I’m not sure,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the video game in front of me. “He hasn’t called yet.”

“Well why don’t yeh call ’im?” Because I don’t want to hear that egomaniac speak ever again.

“I dunno.” I shrugged, but Oliver looked at me as if he could see right through me. “What?”

Then he sighed. “I know yeh didn’t ‘ave fun last night, Char.” There was that shiver again. Before I could open my mouth and ask how he knew, he answered my unasked question. “Yeh not that ‘ard to read.”

I kept my jaw from falling open. If Oliver could read how unhappy I was last week, could he know about my feelings for him? No, I thought with a mental shake of my head, there’s no way he could possibly know. I haven’t made anything obvious, except, apparently, to Tom.

Oliver sighed again, diverting my attention back to him. “Why didn’t yeh just tell us yeh didn’t like Andrew?” I paused the game and set the controller down on the coffee table. Oliver mimicked me.

“Because I knew yeh two were just trying to help,” I muttered. “And I didn’t want to offend yeh. And ‘e’s yeh friend and I just…I didn’t wanna…”

“Char, it’s fine. I should have warned yeh that ‘e was a little…full of ‘imself.”

I scoffed. “A little? All he talked about was himself!” Oliver chuckled.

“All right. I’ll make yeh a deal. Next time Mel and I ‘ook yeh up wiff someone, we’ll go wiff yeh two jus’ to make sure nothin’s awkward. In return, yeh gotta go out wiff every guy we ‘ook yeh up wiff.”

I pondered that for a moment. On the plus side, I would see Oliver at dinner and see how he and Mel interacted when they were out. On the negative side, I’d be with someone who wasn’t Oliver, and Oliver would be there and automatically know when I wasn’t having a good time.

However, I found myself nodding my head and agreeing to his deal. What did I get myself into?

It was two days later that Oliver and Melanie hooked me up with another of Oliver’s friends. His name was David, and he was Irish. His hair was dark, like Oliver’s, but his eyes were a bright forest green. He was downright beautiful but he was still not Oliver.

The four of us went to a casual pizza parlor, although Melanie had gotten a little too spruced up for it. While I settled for a nice pair of skinny jeans, blouse, and flats, Melanie was decked out in a dark red cocktail dress and silver heels. I bit back my bubbling jealousy when Oliver’s eyes raked over her body.

It was times like these that Melanie really made me feel worse about myself. The fact that she could squeeze her body into any size dress or pair of jeans was astonishing, and the fact that she pulled off even the makeup-less/sweats combo was irking. She looked good in anything. Compared to Mel, I felt like an alley cat, a stringy, dirty mess who everyone bypassed because there was something better beside me. Maybe that was why she was friends with me. Since I wasn’t as good-looking as she was, she used me to boost her physical appearance.

No, I thought with a quick shake of my head. That was just cynical me speaking again. Melanie loved me; she was my best friend. She helped me choose my outfit for that evening. But if she wanted me to look good, why did she enhance her outfit to something more formal? Did I look too good and Melanie needed to one-up me? Was she on to my feelings for her boyfriend?

I needed to stop thinking so negatively of my best friend, but that last thought really had me worried. What if she was and she was dressing this way to show Oliver how much better she was for him than I was? What if she knew and she was doing this to show me up, to make me look worse in Oliver’s eyes?

No! I yelled at myself. This crush on Oliver was seriously beginning to make me doubt my best friend’s intentions. And it needed to stop – all of it, this ridiculous high school crush on Oliver, this sudden doubt of Melanie. It was ending tonight.

David was a hundred times more entertaining as Andrew had been. The best part? He preferred not to hog the spotlight. While he spoke of his family, job, and past, he blushed the entire time, and I was suddenly thrilled to learn that he was shy around the opposite sex. This, ultimately, boosted my confidence and I even began to flirt a little.

David and I were laughing and joking around, lightly touching each other, and at one point, he grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together underneath the table. A blush warmed my cheeks and Melanie raised a questioning eyebrow at me from across the table Subtly, she looked beneath the table and saw our clasped hands, smiling in satisfaction. Oliver was completely oblivious to her smiling, although he was intently watching the exchanges between David and me.

The best part about the date, aside from David’s modesty, was that, not once, did I compare Oliver and David. Maybe this crush wouldn’t be so hard to get over.