It's Simply Complicated

Aliza looked at his big, brown eyes with a scowl and crossed her arms. Of course, she could stay mad at him. It was quite easy. All she had to do was thinking about how he cheated on her friend, Rose; how he lied about his relationship with Alexis; how he lead Thanh into thinking that he was interested in her; his short-lived, forbidden yet creepy romance with Angela; and, of course, how he locked Jeremy out of the house when he went to party and was coming back after curfew.

Other people aside, all she had to do was remember the guy who wasn’t there for her when she needed him. She just had to remind herself—of the, not one, but two times—that he flaked on her. Aliza just had to recall that he constantly tried to make her feel safe, secure, and that he always had her back but really, he’d only let her fall. He was the type of the guy that would tell you to play with fire because everything would be fine. Nothing could possible go wrong because he was there; however, when everything went wrong and you caught on fire, he wouldn’t even spit on you to put it out. So, as for not staying mad at him, it would have been easier for Aliza to do rocket science.

“Why am I here?” She started harshly.

“I don’t know. Why are you here? Because you want to be here, I guess? If you don’t know why you’re somewhere, I think you need to figure that out.”

Jeremy stood a few feet behind him, sitting on the arm of the couch and stifling a giggle.

“No, I’m here because someone decided to play on the phone and act like a child.” She spat out sharply.

“Oh, you cannot blame me for this,” Evan started, brushing her off.

“Then, who do I blame? Who was on the phone making a practical joke? Was it not you? Please inform me. Go get him; I’ll wait!” Aliza’s voice rose.

Aliza felt her jaw clench as she stared up at him with furrowed brows. She knew every gasket and vein inside of her forehead and neck was about to blow out of her face. She gritted her teeth and exhaled sharply through her nostrils. Her arms were still crossed over her chest as she shifted all over weight to the right side of her body, sitting on her hip.

“Oh, come on!” He laughed. “You can’t be serious. You kept talking to me. You were going along with it. If you didn’t want to, you should have said something!” He reasoned with shrugged shoulders and outstretched arms. Meanwhile, a smirk played on his lips as a wink threatened to surface.

“I DID!” She exploded. “I SAID I WAS TIRED. I SAID I WAS CRANKY. I SAID I DIDN’T WANT TO BE BOTHERED AND THAT I JUST WANTED TO DROP SOMETHING OFF AND GO TO SLEEP!”

“Well, whatever,” he shrugged her off as he went over to the couch and sat down. Jeremy had moved from the arm of the sofa to a different seat. He was trying to a find a good view of the smackdown that would soon ensue between his friends.

Evan sat down and leaned back nonchalantly on the loveseat, resting his head on the back cushion. Aliza still stood opposite of him, on the other side of the room.

“Would you like to sit?” He offered.

“No,” she said abrasively.

“Well, then, suit yourself.”

Aliza looked him over once before sitting down on the sofa behind her. She glared at him still as she just looked up at the TV, mounted on the wall. She was sending a death stare so severe his great- great- grandchildren would feel it etched and burned into their skulls generations from now.

“So, how’s school? Your senior year?” Evan piped up, still looking at the TV. Perhaps he felt the intense heat and hatred radiating from Aliza.

“It’s fine, not like you care.”

“Well, I was just asking and trying to make small talk. You see how mean she is?” He turned to Jeremy with a smile.

Jeremy, from his chair situated between them but behind a coffee table, finally spoke up but it was in agreement with Evan.

“I’m mean—you play pranks on the phone only to drag me out of my house at eleven o’clock at night when I say that I don’t have the time and energy to deal with the nonsense and you have the audacity, the nerve, the chutzpah to call me ‘mean?’” Aliza challenged.

“Jer, obviously, someone learned a new vocab word,” Evan joked, disregard Aliza.

The two burst out laughing and Aliza felt the heat rush to her cheeks. It was, indeed a vocab word, but one that she had learned a couple years prior. Regardless, the point was that Evan was in the wrong and he worked so that Jeremy could side with him. Frustrated, Aliza slipped off her shoe and hurled it across the room, only to find it instead hit a cup on the edge of the coffee table and land nowhere near Evan McAlister.

This slip only forced the two hyenas to continue laughing. With one shoe missing, she went into the kitchen to find paper towels to clean up the mess she had made. She came back to find Evan holding her shoe.

“You’ve got small feet, Aliza,” he started. She placed the paper towels over the spilled drink on the floor and let them absorb the mess.

“Put my shoe down,” she said as exhaustion began to overtake her. She was tired of arguing with Evan and had managed to find herself at his feet, cleaning the floor. She picked up the paper towels and retreated to the kitchen to throw them away. She gathered more on the way back to get the last remnants of the beverage from off of the floor.

Evan hadn’t listened to her, however, and was still holding her shoe. It was one of his hands as he just twirled his wrist, examining it: the color, material, size, and style. He eventually put it next to his own foot to see the size difference. “Jer, look at this. Her feet are tiny!”

Aliza wiped up the last of the drink before throwing the last paper towel away. On this second trip back to the kitchen, she tried to grab her shoe from Evan, but his managed to pull it out of her arm’s reach. After throwing away the paper towel, Aliza returned and stood in front of him.

“Give it back,” she demanded.

Evan looked up at her and scoffed, “You shouldn’t have thrown it.”

“But, I did, and it’s still mine, so give it back.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, tucking the shoe between his arm and the cushion. Another one of his playful smirks danced on his face. All of this was a twisted cat-and-mouse game to him and he was whatever animal was winning at the time. Aliza, though furious, gave up on the game and raised her hand. She struck him on the cheek and glared at him.

“Give it now.”

“Oh, now, I’m really not going to give it to you.”

Aliza lunged at the shoe and tried to pry it from his grip. It went only as well as it could go with Aliza’s petite 5’2 frame going against a 5’10 behemoth. Evan managed to wrestle with her over the shoe enough to get her on the couch. Her entire back was on the couch and he was over her. The shoe was the only barrier between the two.

“Let go or I’m going to bite you,” she threatened.

“Just so you know, I could hit you right now and call it self-defense,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Like anyone would believe that,” she spat out. “Besides, you wouldn’t dare hit me.”

She knew Evan would never hit a woman, no matter how upset he got. To start off, he was never a fighter, anyway, but he was even more so never a fighter towards the female persuasion.

“You hit me in my head,” he argued.

“If you’d given me back what was mine, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Promise not to hit me again.”

“Let go.”

“Only if you promise,” he negotiated as his grip on the shoe tightened.

“I have no reason to hit you if you give me back my shoe,” Aliza tried to reason with him calmly.

Hesitantly, Evan let go of her shoe and got off of her. She sat up on the couch and slipped the shoe back on her foot. She smoothed out her clothes and stood. “I’m going to go home,” she announced to Jeremy. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’m going to walk you home,” Evan volunteered as he stood up.

“What?” Aliza said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms again.

“I’m going with you,” Evan repeated.

“I don’t need you,” Aliza said defiantly.

“It’s nearly midnight. Do you really want to walk home by yourself?” Evan challenged.

Aliza knew he was right, for once. It really wasn’t safe for her to walking the city alone at such a late hour. Though, it was only a block away, there had been a recent crime spike in the city within the last couple of weeks. She dropped her arms to her side as an act of surrender and sighed loudly. “Fine, let’s go,” she agreed as she started towards the door.

She saw, out of her peripheral vision, Evan stick his hands in his pocket and shrug to Jeremy on the way out. She led the way, though he knew just as well how to get back to her house.