AVERY
There was a difference between putting effort into something, knowing that there was going to be a positive outcome, and flat out knowing that you were wasting your time.
It had taken me five days to come to the conclusion that I was wasting my time with Caleb.
We had gone out twice. The dates were okay. Nice. Fine. Just that. And that was exactly my problem with it.
The dates were really good. He was attentive, paying attention to every single thing I said and did, and to top it all off, he seemed like the supportive sort. I even found some of his jokes funny.
But he still didn’t fill me with that fuzzy feeling. I didn’t get nervous or excited at the prospect of us going out, I only felt anxious whenever it was a few minutes to the stipulated time for us to go out.
Plus, I still had feelings for Cyrus. Huge ones.
It bothered me that he wasn’t human and it also bothered me more that knowing that he wasn’t human, didn’t affect my feelings for him one bit.
I saw the way he killed those people. How ruthless he was when he was angry, and he already said as much that the beast came out when he felt anger. What if he got angry at me? Would the beast also come out and attack me?
Somehow, I didn’t think that. I didn’t anything about the beast-other than what he had told me-enough to be able to judge, but I didn’t believe that the beast could hurt me. Cyrus wasn’t that kind of man. Even if the beast wanted to, I was sure that he would stop it and even at that, Cyrus didn’t get angry at me. I couldn’t even picture him staring at me with anything other than tenderness or lust on his face.
My mind flashed back to last night when Caleb had dropped me off at the university gate. He didn’t come down to open my door for me-I doubted a lot of guys still did that other than Cyrus, so I didn’t take it personally. He had leaned over to give me a kiss. I wasn’t sure if the destination was my cheek or lips, but I subtly turned away just incase and his kiss ender up landing on my cheek.
And I didn’t feel anything. At all. I didn’t experience any tingling in my cheek, I wasn’t out of breath, nothing of the sort. In fact, I think I had been a step away from being completely under the grips of anxiety.
The anxiety I felt whenever I wanted to go out with him, the fact that I felt guilty because inside me, I knew that I was stringing him along and there was no way we were going to be in a relationship, coupled with the fact that I was still hung up on Cyrus, had me wondering; What exactly was I trying to do?
Was I trying to prove a point? And to who? To Mariah that I wasn’t hung up on Cyrus?
It didn’t make sense that I should be stringing an innocent man along with the intentions that more could happen between us just because I wanted to prove a point to my best friend.
It wasn’t fair. To him and to me. And also to Cyrus.
Where the hell was he anyway?
Guys were so annoying. How could he simply get out of my life like he had never been a part of it before? Or maybe he had simply cleansed me out of his life like I had never been a part of it before.
Just because I had told him to not reach out to me in the heat of the moment, he had taken it seriously. He shouldn’t have! I had been under the pressure of everything I learnt that night. I hadn’t been able to focus on anything other than the fact that he wasn’t human. So, personally, I felt like I was allowed to go off.
Even if he hadn’t outright lied, he had lied by omission by not telling me what he was. And that pissed me off! I was pretty sure that was the only reason I had asked him to not reach out to me anymore, along with the fact that he was the reason I had been getting attacked.
As for the creature he claimed was inside him, well, I still didn’t fully believe it. How did a person have a beast inside them? Was it like how a woman was pregnant with a child? Did the beast eventually leave? Or was it going to be inside them forever? And how did they work? It seemed to me like they communicated, so how?
He had also mentioned something about immortality.
Was he immortal? How was that even possible? Everyone died eventually. How could he say that he was immortal? That meant that he was undying. It just wasn’t possible.
I had a lot of questions to ask him, and a lot of things he needed to prove. But in order for me to ask him these questions, I had to see him first.
So where the hell was he?
Sometimes, girls didn’t mean the things they said when they were angry, hurt or betrayed. I asked him to not reach out to me anymore, and he did just that. Not a single call or message from him. He hadn’t even tried to come to the bar to see me in person. Sure, I would have made things hard for him. Ignored him like he wasn’t even there, dish a few words out to him, but that was how it was supposed to go!
He was supposed to be punished for lying to me! He was supposed to reach out to me again! Why hadn’t he reached out to me?
I grabbed my phone from where I had dropped it on my bed, with every intention of calling him. I guess it was up to me anyway. After all, it had taken him years to admit that he had feelings for me. It had taken two weeks and then me giving him attitude to get him to admit that he wanted me. And if everytime we had issues, he was going to need me to be the one to address them, then I was going to tell him how I felt about that.
I went through my contacts, looking for his number. There was no stopping me. I was going to give him a piece of my mind. If you wanted something, you fought for it. It was that simple.
If he truly wanted me, he should have fought for me too.
I finally saw his number, and the name saved with a red heart emoji beside it, had fresh pain washing all over mr. I stalled for a bit, double thinking everything, but then I shrugged the feeling off and I was just about to press dail, when the phone forced out of my hands.
I followed the hand immediately, “Hey, give that back.”
It was Mariah, and she ran to her bed before I could snatch the phone back out of her hands.
“Give me my phone, Mariah.” When she shoved it between her boobs, I snapped, “Now.”
“Nope.” She shook her head vehemently, “I am not going to let you make a mistake.”
I was so angry that I stomped my leg on the ground. Hard.
“It’s not a mistake! He’s the one that I want.”
Her stern expression sobered a bit and she looked at me with sad eyes, “Are you sure about that, Avery?”
“Yes!” Thoroughly pissed and frustrated from everything that has been going on, I yelled. “He’s the one I want. Not Caleb or any other guy you might want to set me up with. No one else, but him. Cyrus.” My shoulders slumped and I finally allowed the heartache I had been feeling for the past week to weigh me down. “I want Cyrus.”
Mariah pulled me down next to her on the bed and threw her arm over my shoulder, hugging me to her. We stayed like that for a while as she tried to comfort me as best as she could.
“This is the second advise I told you I was gonna give you.” Mariah said after a while. Our heads were still next to each other, our eyes trained on the floor as we stared at nothing in particular. “If it’s worth it, go for it no matter what. This shouldn’t be a new thing, you know that I hate anything related to school work.”
I nodded.
“Have you never ever wondered why I keep doing it even when I don’t like it? Why I keep pushing myself to achieve my goal?”
I nodded again.
She smiled. “It’s because I know that at the end of the day, it’s going to be worth it. Therefore, I am not allowed to give up no matter how difficult it might be.”
She finally pulled away from me, bringing one leg up on her bed so that she was facing me directly. The shape of my phone in her bra made her shirt stand out at such a weird angle, I almost smiled.
“If you know that Cyrus is who you really want and you’re absolutely sure of that, then go for it. Doing anything that your heart is not in, always makes whatever it is, end up in a bad shape and later on, you will regret.” She pulled my phone out of her shirt, dropping it on my hand, “Sometimes, we only get to experience love once. Don’t let that pass you by just because of something as silly as ‘we’re not meant for each other’.”
When she said that, I somehow knew that she was talking about the ex-boyfriend she had told me about. The words were so sad that I couldn’t let us end on such a note. So I decided to lighten the mood.
“Did you really think keeping my phone between your boobs was going to stop me from getting it?” Grinning, I added. “In case you’re forgetting, my hand has been in there several times already.”
As expected, she burst out laughing.
Great. Now, I just had to call Cyrus.
Hopefully, it would be as easy as making Mariah laugh had been.