Oof. Ouch. Yikes.
She scrunches her nose in what must be a colossal summoning of courage, then blurts out–
“But I think I want more. Well, I know I want more. And I think you might too, and I won’t know until I ask, and I feel like we’ve been dancing around it, and I thought maybe I should take it into my own hands, so–” she rambles off at lightning speed.
“So here we are. I like you, Griffin Hart. Like,like youlike you.”
I’ve imagined, dreamed,hopedfor this moment a thousand times over. Hearing her say those words is the brightestjoy I’ve ever felt–like fireworks and lightning bugs and Christmas lights wrapped in the sun.
I stand there like an idiot, desperately trying to find the words to convey how much Ilike herlike her back.
“This is a really bad time to decide to finally shut up,” she says with a nervous laugh.
I manage to get my brain working again, stumbling over my words I’m so fucking excited to tell her how I feel. “Eleanor, I’ve wanted to–”
“Damn it bro, of course you got it done right at the last minute,” David interrupts with a shout. “You better use my hundred bucks to take her somewhere nice.”
My heart stops. My breathing stops. Time stops. Everything stops.
I didn’t fall into a dream–I fell into my worst nightmare.
Jack punches David square in the chest, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen him. David’s grin drops as he looks from me to Eleanor.
I quickly turn back to her, opening my mouth to try and explain before it goes any further. But I can’t get a word out before she slowly asks,
“What is he talking about Griffin?”
David tries to interject, but Jack silences him with a sharp look (and a hand over his mouth).
“Okay I know this is going to sound bad, and it was only a joke for like five minutes before we actually got to know you, but I swear…”
My sentence trails off, and my chest cracks open as her face shifts from confusion to hurt.
“I was a joke to you?”
“No, not a joke, Eleanor,” I say desperately. “You hated me so much, and David made this stupid bet that he’d give me twenty bucks if I could get you to be my friend–”
“But he said a hundred. What changed it from twenty to a hundred?”
I’ve never felt desperation like this in my life. How can I make her understand that it was never actually a bet to me?
“Eleanor, I swear it was never about that for me, it just gave me an excuse to–”
“Why did it change, Griffin?” she demands in a cold, firm voice that I’ve never heard from her.
I have no choice but to tell the truth, even though it’s the last thing I want to do right now.
“Because you want more than friendship now.”
This is the most awful scenario I could have imagined. I knew David might do something stupid, but I didn’t expect it to go so wrong so fast.
“So I was a bet to you. You’ve all lied to me from the very beginning.”
I can see her lip trembling as she looks at each of us in turn. Jack’s pained face shows more emotion than I thought was possible from my stoic best friend, and it makes me feel ten times worse.
David looks horrified, and even though I know he didn’t mean to do it, anger burns in my chest and at this exact moment, I don’t care if I ever see my oldest friend again.
They both stammer out protests, please, explanations, but she lifts her hand to cut them off and they fall silent immediately.
