Let's Play Pretend

The next day, a worryingly cold Monday morning, Alex drove his bike to the corner of the street to meet Austin as usual. He sped away from the curb as soon as the brunette looked half-stable, bad mood evident in his expression. Inside his head, amongst the jumbled mess of thoughts, Jack’s taunting voice seemed to be stuck on repeat.
As the dark circles under his eyes proved, he’d had little to no sleep the night before, slipping in and out of consciousness and plagued by weird nightmares. Alex didn’t quite understand when his life became so irrationally complicated. The entire drama of teenage romance wasn’t something he’d experienced before and it wasn’t something he was keen to relive.
When they arrived at school, their group of friends was waiting by the large tree a few feet away from Alex’s parking spot. Besides the blonde and Austin, there was a boy named Travis whose wild ginger mane resembled that of a lion, Lights with her barely-there outfits and gentle Canadian accent and the brothers John and Stephen who were easily distinguishable by the former’s manic curly hair.
They were an interesting group to be involved with, full of personalities that clashed horribly yet still worked out. In the high school hierarchy, sure, Alex had stepped down a few pegs, but it was anything if not an easy sacrifice; the loss of his peers’ approval to gain an uncomplicated, freedom-filled social circle wasn’t exactly something to be upset about.
It was custom for them to arrive at least half an hour before the bell rang on Mondays to catch up on the weekends events and copy one another’s homework; that day was no different. As Austin walked, grinning, over to his friends, punching Travis on the arm lightly and fist-bumping Stephen, Alex trailed behind, expression irritable.
“Who crapped in your Cornflakes?” Lights laughed breezily, hugging Austin.
“Jack Barakat,” Alex scoffed. “Have any of you… have you noticed Ant spending a lot of time with Christofer Drew, hippy freshman? Stinks of weed?”
The whole group knew the entire story of Andante and Jack. It wasn’t hard – Alex had talked about the pair near-constantly for the first couple of months – and they’d listened, for which the blonde was grateful, giving advice when necessary. At that moment, however, he received only shakes of heads from everyone besides John, whose brow creased as he thought about the question.
“He gets off the bus like three stops before us,” the brunette bit his lip. “I swear to God… bro, you have to have seen them?”
Stephen looked from his brother to Alex, blinking. “Uh, maybe? I don’t really…”
“Yeah, yeah,” John insisted. “She’s got long, long, blonde hair? Super pretty? Looks kind of angelic, really pale? The kid’s skinny, he Sharpies his knees all the time, you must have, holy shit.”
“Maybe,” Stephen repeated.
“Helpful,” his brother hit him and a play-fight erupted. Once they were done acting like children, hair tousled, cheeks pink and dopey smiles on their faces, John sat down next to Alex. There was the slightest tint of white frost to the grass, evidence that winter hadn’t quite left Baltimore.
“Do they look… close?” Alex hesitated.
“Closer than the first couple of times,” John played with the belt loops on his jeans. “If you’d have told me earlier I would’ve paid more attention, I don’t know, he’s like a lovesick puppy and she loves the attention – laughs really loudly and all that. They’re weird.”
“Right,” the blonde sighed.
“Why’d you ask?”
“Just a comment Jack made yesterday… he thinks they’re… he thinks they’re fucking, but Ant would never be that stupid, even for attention, she doesn’t even like guys, I don’t get it.”
“Maybe she likes feeling wanted,” John shrugged. “I’m sorry, man, it’s a shitty situation, but you have to let her make her own mistakes.”
Alex didn’t like the sound of that. Letting Andante make her own mistakes sounded a lot like letting her go off and fuck herself over and no matter how bad their friendship was damaged, she’d always be his best friend. Behind the carefree exterior that appeared away from her parents’ watchful eyes, she was still a teenage girl, desperate for a fairytale love life and what Alex had always assumed would be a charming princess.
There was always the possibility, of course, that she’d only been curious all along, her feelings a mess of hormone-induced confusion. Alex just wished she’d have talked to him about it, instead of running off to Chris and intensifying his guilt by miles. Still, maybe John was right. Seventeen-year-old girls don’t need their best friends to be trailing around insisting they talk about their feelings.
When the bell rang, Alex shifted the strap of his backpack to his other shoulder and followed the group inside.
He sat in the room under the stage alone throughout the first two periods, slumped on the floor with his thin legs stretched in front of him. The sofa had bad memories stitched into its’ fabric, now – bad memories that were once so, so good. Being with Jack was like breathing a different type of oxygen to everyone else. It was intoxicating, somehow better and more special given the secrecy involved.
In a way, then, Alex supposed, being without Jack was like being an addict made to quit cold turkey. His drug of choice had turned on him and now what was he left with? An ex-best-friend/fake-girlfriend who could possibly be banging the hippie freshman that worshipped the ground she walked on, an ex-best-friend/class-skipping-partner-in-crime and a serious loathing for a piece of living room furniture.
Choking a laugh, the boy stood, brushed off his jeans and headed to chemistry.
The sight of the two-seater was making him sick.