Severed Feelings

John’s alleged first and very serious girlfriend happened to be a girl name Louisa Henley and they just so happened to become a serious “thing” just as Maverick and I started becoming serious. She was a really pretty girl - the type that didn’t have to do anything and still made an impression.

I guess we all should have seen it coming. Louisa Henley was about the nicest girl in our school, but I guess none of us imagined that John went for girls like her. After all, he wasn’t exactly a saint. He drank almost every weekend, he smoked cigarettes he managed to bum off of some of his senior friends and he was always off - doing whatever pleased whenever he wanted. Louisa was the focused-type, the girl who planned everything, including her future which included plans to attend a local, private college after high school.

They were really perfect together too. I couldn’t walk down the hall in school without seeing them holding hands as he walked her to class. It seemed like the second they started being that cutesy couple that everyone in school was buzzing with the news. Everyone was happy for them - myself included.

Had it been any other time of my high school career, I’m sure that I would have been silently devastated that the only boy I’d wanted was taken, but that was before Maverick waltzed in, all coolness and high school jerseys.

I was happy for John - but I was happier for myself. For me, a relationship wasn’t an everyday thing. And to have a boyfriend that actually seemed to be genuinely interested in me, I was too giddy and too infatuated to be consumed by anything else.

The only one who seemed upset was Imilee, to be completely honest. She hadn’t counted on Louisa coming into the picture and she definitely hadn’t considered the possibility of Maverick and I actually becoming a couple. Her plan to make me her sister by marriage hadn’t worked out and Imilee couldn’t stand it when the universe messed with her plans. She got restless, she got agitated.

“What’s wrong?” Trevor asked, kissing her cheek as he sat beside her during lunch.

Imilee sighed, eyes rolling in her head before stabbing at her greasy cafeteria pizza. “I don’t know what you’re talking about...” she said nonchalantly.

I raised my eyebrow at Trevor, waiting for him to make his next move. It was quite possible for him to say one wrong word and be on Imilee’s shit list for the rest of the day or she could be completely mild about the whole thing.

Staring seemed to be the safest and most effective device when she was in a grumpy mood and Trevor seemed to know that because she broke down in a matter of seconds. “Fine, if you must know it’s that. That is my problem.” Imilee lifted her fork, pointing it over my shoulder toward her older brother and his newest hip-attachment.

“What?” I found myself asking. “I think they’re kind of adorable.”

Imilee didn’t like my comment. If her frown wasn’t enough of an indicator of that, then her dead-blank stare was. “Please - please do not tell me you just said that…” she glowered.

For a split second or two, I thought she just might plunge that fork straight into me, but she dropped her weapon resorted to pouting to Trevor.

I was about to open my mouth, to tell her that I was happy and that her brother was happy, and that was the only thing that mattered, but I felt someone’s shoulder brush against mine as they sat beside me.

I almost fell off my chair when I realized that it was Maverick.

I hadn’t seen him that morning in the hallways or lingering outside by the flagpole where he and his friends usually took their positions, but judging by the look on his face, I knew exactly why I hadn’t.

Our relationship was complicated at most. We were in that weird phase where it was hard to socialize with each other with our very different crowds of friends. The most we did was make flirtatious and subtle faces and gestures toward each other in passing. It made things fun, exciting, and yet it made things so incredibly depressing at the end of each day.

Because if our school peers couldn’t see us together, what did that make me? Some hideous temptation of his that he was embarrassed of?

But he had a single flower twirling between his fingers and a grin on his face that told me that our relationship based off of secrets was officially over.

And I couldn’t help the blush that crossed my face and the grin the blossomed when it all sunk in. I was so happy and excited that I didn’t even notice the silent hush that fell over the cafeteria when I felt myself taking the simple red rose from him and wrapped my arms tightly around his neck. I could feel him grin against my cheek just before I buried my nose in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

When I leaned back, I laced my fingers with his and studied the rose. “What’s the occasion?”

“Do I need an occasion for this?” he asked, smirking with that gorgeous half-smile of his.

“I suppose not…” were the only words I could offer him. I was too shocked, too overwhelmed, by his surprise to think of something witty so it was only natural to lace my words with sarcasm.

“Is it okay if I sit with you?” he asked, playing with my fingers

“Yeah… Of course…” Even if I didn’t want him to or if I’d seen the dark look Imilee was shooting my way, I wouldn’t have been able to deny him that. I was on a cloud, a huge, fluffy cloud that was filled with rainbows and sunshine and single red roses and nothing could take away the happiness I felt in the moment.

Maverick flashed me one giant grin before releasing my hand and standing up. “I’ll be back then,” he said, backing away toward the food station that he had yet to stop by.

When I turned back to Imilee, I expected the worst. I expected a red face from restrained anger and a death stare. I expected seeing her fists clenched into tiny, boney little balls and gritted teeth.

Imilee had a real way of surprising people though.

When my eyes landed on her, when my blush was finally contained, I was met with her grinning face.

She read my mind. Pointing casually over my shoulder, she answered the obvious question I had as to why she was suddenly practically beaming with joy.

When I glanced behind me, I saw John staring openly, not looking pleased in the least by the scene that had just unfolded before everyone’s very eyes.

“The game’s still afoot,” Imilee hissed across the table, grabbing my arm with that infamous knowing grin adorning her lips.

Young, incredibly naive, and quite frankly stupid when it came to knowing the certain knowledge that Imilee understood best, I hadn’t quite grasped what she meant. All I knew was that was whatever Imilee had mapped out in her head wasn’t completely ruined by the new predicament that John and I had found ourselves in.

We were still her pawns. We were always just her pawns. I hadn’t known if that was necessarily good or bad.

I still didn’t - and couldn’t - know.