Severed Feelings

Imilee’s first serious boyfriend happened to be a boy named Trevor, and he wasn’t like the boyfriend I’d imagined her to have. He was a quiet boy. He was polite. In fact, he was perfect in nearly all aspects from an external view.

But she was not like that.

Imilee was loud; she was a little crazy; she had her flaws and knew that she had them. Something about Trevor caught her off guard, and, in many ways, I think that was part of the reason they’d lasted as long as they had. She could never quite figure him out, the ways in which his mind worked.

She always was attracted to a different type of boys: the funny ones, the ones who were kind of assholes to be completely honest. She liked to be outgoing, and she liked boys who were her equal. Trevor was not that kind of person.

He was a bit broody at times, a bit moody, but I guess in retrospect he was a spectacular boyfriend. Despite his flaws, he always treated her right, with respect and that was all any girl, friend and parent could want. And it wasn’t long after they’d met that the relationship I’d had with Imilee started to dissipate.

Not entirely, but the excitement and plans we’d once had every weekend had started to dwindle, as it seemed practically natural in friendships when someone got a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

I didn’t care, but Imilee was the type of person that felt sympathetic and guilty so easily. And once she noticed that my weekends were opening up and that I had resorted to actually studying and doing my homework in great depth and detail, she took it upon herself to find me something – or rather, someone – to occupy my newfound freedom.

I’d been sitting in the library, focusing on writing my essay on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment when I felt the distinct edge of an unsharpened pencil bounce off of the very top of my head.

I didn’t have to glance up to know who had been the culprit, but I faced those familiar green eyes anyway with a scowl. "You shouldn't throw pencils. You could poke somebody's eye out," I grumbled before huffily returning to my half-finished thesis to scrawl out the sudden string of words that had popped into my head.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her slouch over the library table and smirk.

Imilee was impossible to miss most days, and that particular day hadn’t been an exception.

She had a red knit sweater on, one that she’d somehow managed to slice the sleeves off of without completely unraveling the whole mess of it. It matched the beanie sat atop her bleach blonde hair too perfectly for it to be a coincidence and the cut off denim she had on her lower half seemed to just barely scrape by the minimum length requirement.

Put together, Imilee looked like a glorious mess – all skin and bone, all legs, all a mixture of textures and odd angles and randomness.

But that was Imilee, and no one could ever change her.

When she said nothing, and when I could no longer take her smirking, I felt the last of my patience snap. “What?”

She only shrugged, coy smile never leaving her face as she twirled a strand of her cropped hair around her finger. “So I was talking to Trevor about your dilemma...” she started, sounding too nonchalant for this to be any good of a conversation. My “dilemma” was my boyfriend situation, or rather my lack thereof. “He has a couple of single friends I could set you up with…”

I felt myself shutting down the instant she opened her mouth about boys. I wasn’t interested in having a boyfriend. I wasn’t interested in the dating scene. I wasn’t interested in kissing, or holding hands or hook ups or any of that.

Unless it was me doing all of that with one boy and one boy only, and he was off limits by all standards.

“Not interested,” I felt myself stating flatly before picking up my long abandoned pencil and returning to my college-ruled paper.

I could sense her start to protest, but the library doors opened with their distinctive heavy, dragging sound against the carpeting, drawing both of our attentions away from the conversation to glance at the newcomers.

John and his friend - whom I vaguely recognized as a boy named Jared - walked inside, mumbling to themselves about something that seemed pretty in depth and pretty secretive.

I watched from beneath my eyelashes as the pair noticed us before veering directly to their right to avoid any confrontation that Imilee most definitely would have in store for them. But the typical siblings in high school together unwritten contract claimed that just because you had to ignore each other when at all possible didn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t watch them and check in on them.

John glanced back at the two of us only once, but once was enough for me to make eye contact with him and feel the rise of a flush in my cheeks before I buried myself into my writing in a furious, feverish kind of rage.

“…or not…” she stated, with that all knowing kind of tone, as if she knew so much and I didn’t. Most of the time, that tone was pretty accurate at the things it insinuated, but it still made me mad to know that she could read me like a book.

“What? What does that mean?” I was frustrated. I was frustrated because Imilee possessed some sort of hold over me, I was frustrated because she was trying to set me up with her boyfriend’s stupid friends, I was frustrated because I didn’t want to talk about anything boy related because I knew that no matter what happened that something would always hold me back from being able to be with John in that kind of way.

All I wanted to do was to bury my feelings in my essay about Raskolnikov’s motives for killing two women.

She tapped her fingernails twice on the table top. “It means that you have your eye on someone else already, and he just so happens to be my brother…” she stated, smug laughter filtering into her voice as she whispered it across our table.

“I do not.”

But I did. I really, really, really did but I was fine with being a mere admirer from a not so far distance. I was content, and just because I sometimes wanted to be more than that didn’t mean that I needed to be in a relationship with him.

Besides, I would deny it until the day I died that I had a hopeless crush on him.

It was too embarrassing to admit to, and I didn’t want to risk the thought of losing my best friend over a stupid infatuation with her brother of all people.

“You so do,” Imilee stated.

“You so do, what?” John asked, suddenly standing right beside the table we were seated at. In an instance my face reddened. Thoughts raced through my head: What if he heard? What if he was listening in on the whole conversation?

Imilee looked like she was about to burst at the seams with pure joy at the situation at hand.

She knew. She knew that I liked him and was okay with it. She knew, but I would still vehemently deny any and all accusations.

And this was her perfect opportunity to start setting things up. I could practically see the wires snapping in her head.

I watched in pure horror as John and Jared pulled up chairs and sat beside us.

“Oh, nothing really…” Imilee stated, cradling her pointed chin in the palm of her hand. Her green eyes flashed to me and a wickedly witty smirk crossed her lips. “We were just discussing Savannah’s plans for Friday night…”

“Really…?” Jared asked.

Obviously her statement had caught both of their interests mostly because they were a crucial part of the party scene in the area, and the prospect of having another person to add to the mix - no matter my high school status - was always appealing.

“Yeah…” Imilee drawled. “Savannah’s got herself a date with Trevor’s friend, Maverick…” she said, winking so inconspicuously to me that I almost didn’t catch it myself.

And I knew in that very moment, staring at the boys’ are you serious? expressions and Imilee’s grinning face, that I was completely and utterly fucked.