Motherfucker!
“She’s going out with him, Johnny,” I snapped, losing my patience with the shoelace I was attempting to tie. “She’s going the fuck out with him!”
“Yeah, Gibs, I know,” he replied calmly, stooping down in the corridor to tie it for me. Something I was clearly incapable of doing these days. “You already told me a half dozen times, lad.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing,” he replied, sounding distracted, as he glanced at the screen of his phone before sliding it back into the pocket of his school trousers. “You had your chance, lad. You let her go.”
“I didn’t let her go,” I argued, coming as close as I ever had to blowing a head gasket. “I’ve never let her go a day in my fucking life.”
“I told you this would happen.” He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. “I’ve been telling you for months, Gibs, but you wouldn’t listen.”
I narrowed my eyes in disgust. “Spare me the I told you so spiel.”
“I did,” he urged, holding the door for a group of second year girls to pass. “I bleeding told you to pull the finger out and lay your cards down.”
“I wasn’t ready!” I’m still not.
“But you’re more than willing to lay your cards down with Dee.”
“I never laid a thing down with that woman.”
“You’ve laid plenty on that woman,” he corrected before rehashing his earlier statement. “I told you Claire wouldn’t wait around forever.”
“That—” I pointed towards the office “—was a situation that suited me, Johnny!” I gestured wildly around me before adding, “This isn’t suiting me one bit!”
“Well, then, maybe you’ve finally gotten a taste of your own medicine,” Lizzie interjected, joining us in the courtyard. “Serves you right.”
“Did I ask for your opinion?”
“Oh my God, I love it,” she replied with a smirk. “Seeing you squirm. It gives me the utmost pleasure. He’s taking her out tonight, you know? They’re going on a date, and I pray she makes it official with him. It’ll serve you right for being such a waster.”
Deep breaths, I mentally instructed myself, not about to take the bait she was casting out to me.
Turning to Johnny, she asked, “Have you seen Shannon?”
“She’s with Joey,” he explained, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the car park. “Over in the car park.”
“Cool.”
“Why are you civil to her?” I demanded when the viper had swanned off in the direction of the car park. “You know she’s the devil in a Tommen crest.”
“I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here, Gibs,” my best friend admitted with a sigh. “She’s my girlfriend’s best friend.”
And you’re mine.
“Look, Gibs, I’m just trying to keep everyone happy here.”
“Uh, hello?” I held my hand up. “I’m not happy.”
“What am I supposed to do about that?” Johnny shot back, sounding flustered. “I gave you the right advice and you didn’t take it.”
“Well, you obviously weren’t very good at getting the point across, now, were you?”
“Excuse me?” Johnny gaped at me. “Are you honestly blaming me for Claire going out with another fella when I told you it would happen?”
“Yes,” I replied, unblinking. “And now, for your penance, I’m going to need you to spy for me.”
“Spy for you?”
“Yes.” I nodded enthusiastically. “You heard the viper. Claire’s going out with that prick today, and we’re in a fight, so she’s not going to tell me shit about how it goes.” Grimacing I added, “all the juicy, homicidal-inducing details will be doled out to her other bestie.”
“Shannon,” Johnny sighed, quick as a cat.
“Shannon,” I agreed, eyes gleaming with mischief. “And it just so happens that Claire’s girl bestie happens to tell my boy bestie everything.”
“If you call me your boy bestie again, I’ll have you committed.”
“You have to spy and report back to me.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“Ah, yes, you fucking will,” I huffed, hands on my hips. “Do I need to remind you of all the icepacks I supplied to your broken bollocks back in the day? Or the million favors I’ve done for you.”
“I can’t be spying on my girlfriend, Gibs,” Johnny groaned, looking pained. “We don’t keep secrets.”
“See, that’s the thing, you won’t be spying on Shannon,” I tried to coax. “You’ll merely be relaying information to the other person in your life who you’ve never kept secrets from.” I eyeballed him. “Do this for me.”
“Gibs.”
“I’ll beg,” I threw out there. “Do you want me to beg, Johnny?”
“No, Jesus Christ, don’t beg, ya eejit.”
“So, you’ll do it?”
“If she brings it up,” he begrudgingly conceded. “But only if she brings it up. I’m not digging, Gibs.”
“You’re the best.”
Johnny shook his head in dismay. “So, this is the teenage bullshit I chose to partake in instead of the pros.”
“I know.” Grinning, I clapped his shoulder. “Good decision or what, huh?”
“Or what,” Johnny muttered under his breath.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“No, Gibs, Shannon didn’t tell me anything about their bleeding date,” Johnny snapped in an exasperated tone from his perch at his desk, where we had been since school ended two hours ago. Instead of doing something fun to kick off our midterm break, Brains had decided we needed to get all of our homework out of the way. “Nothing’s changed since the last time you asked,” he added, glancing at the screen of his phone. “Ten minutes ago.”
“Not that,” I replied, trying and failing to make sense of his notes from accounting class. Giving up, I closed the book and sprawled out on his bed instead. “I was going to ask you how it felt.”
“How did what feel, Gibs?”
“When you first kissed Shannon for the first time.”
“It was a disaster,” he muttered, scribbling furiously into a copybook. “I couldn’t have handled it worse.”
“What about the first time you were with her?” I questioned. “How did it feel?”
“If this is another one of your weird conversations, then strike it out, Gibs, because Shan’s name isn’t up for discussion. And especially not that kind of discussion.”
“Ah, calm down, will you?” I grumbled, pulling myself up on my elbows. “I’m not asking you to give me intimate details about her—”
“Gibs!”
“All I’m asking is if it felt different with Shannon than say Bella, or any of the rest of them,” I huffed, flopping back down. “You know, because of the feelings.”
“The feelings?”
“Yeah, Johnny, the feelings.”
“Hold up.” His head snapped up and he set down his pen. “Are you fucking Claire—”
“No,” I snapped, not liking him saying her name and sex in the same sentence. Jesus, karma was a bitch. “And don’t say the words Claire and fucking in the same sentence.”
Johnny grinned. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“It’s worse than I thought.” There was a knowing glint to his eyes when he rolled his chair towards the bed and folded his arms across his chest. “Alright, Gibs. Ask your questions, lad.”
“When you and Shannon were together,” I repeated, rubbing the back of my head. “Was it different?”
Johnny nodded. “It couldn’t have been any more different.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, lad, really,” he replied. “Feelings change everything.”
“Meaning?”
“Feelings make you a whole lot less concerned with how you feel in the moment than how she is feeling.”
“Break it down for me.”
“It’s like, you know that mad, desperate feeling to get there?” he explained, continuing when I nodded. “Well, it kind of switches up into a mad urge to get her there.” He scratched his jaw as he thought about it for a moment. “It’s like everything you used to care about switches into something deeper. Like your needs go on the back burner because your focus has switched to her.”
“Jesus, that sounds terrifying.”
“It is,” he wholeheartedly agreed. “And it’s not just a mental thing either, lad. It runs deeper. It expands beyond the mental and emotional to the physical, and then, because she’s good, it’s better than it’s ever been before.”
“So, for you, being with Little Shannon is the best it’s ever been because of the feelings?”
“Because of the feelings,” he confirmed with a smirk. “Messed up, huh?”
Sighing heavily, I folded my hands across my chest and stared up at his bedroom ceiling. “Yeah, so I think I have a similar affliction.”
Johnny chuckled knowingly. “You’re only figuring that out now?”
“What can I say?” I sighed heavily. “I’m a slow learner.”
“Nah, Gibs,” he mused. “You’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
“Clearly not,” I argued. “Considering she’s going out with someone else.”
“Then do something about it,” Johnny urged. “Change the narrative.”
“Change the what?”
“Go get your girl, Gibs!”
