Page 49 of Don't Love the Boy Next Door
She looks at me for what feels like hours, then averts her gaze. “You probably don’t watch my channel, but I’ve been getting some hate. A group of people have been harassing me.”
Of course I know this, but I can’t tell her that. So I keep quiet, letting her continue.
“I thought they were you and Thad and your football friends.”
I just gape at her. “What? You thought they were me and my friends? Why?”
She’s quiet for a little bit before saying, “I don’t know. I mean, one guy’s name was TheTman and he was calling me crazy and Thad called me crazy the night he ditched me. And thenumber of trolls is the same number as the guys on the team.” She shakes her head. “But I was wrong. The trolls gave me crap again while I was live streaming during the game last night. I realized they couldn’t be you and your team.”
“We’d never do anything like that,” I say. “The guys are good people, despite how low you think of us.”
She’s quiet again. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I wrote the report without you.”
“Why would you think I’d harass you online?”
She shrugs. “We’re enemies. My channel is very important to me and you wanted to hurt me.”
I shake my head. “I never would.”
“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions without doing research. I just thought Thad was so mad about what happened between us that he wanted revenge or something.”
I laugh lightly. “I doubt something like that would bother him. He doesn’t hold grudges.”
“Oh.”
Quiet. I look at her, but she’s glancing around the room like she’s never seen it before.
“Right, so I came to apologize and I did that.” She turns to me. “You’re…you’re not so bad. You’re a decent dude.”
“Thanks?”
“The parts you added to the report were pretty cool.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
She rolls her eyes playfully. “Holden was obsessed with it. Like, she couldn’t shut up about it. I bet that’s why we got that A+.”
“Nah. I wouldn’t have been able to add my part without yours. It was a solid A+.”
She doesn’t say anything and we sit in silence again.
A few minutes tick by before she says, “And I want to, um, thank you for saving me during the presentation. I don’t know why I froze. It never happened before, but you swooped in. So thanks.” She averts her gaze again.
“It was no problem.”
Quiet again.
She glances at me and I look at her. Then we break apart, her biting her lip and me squeezing my eyes shut.
I feel like a jerk. She’s here apologizing for something she did wrong and I’m hiding a huge secret from her. A secret that will most definitely upset her to the extreme.
“So…are we okay?” she asks after a bit of silence. “I mean, we’re still enemies and everything—”
“Do we have to be?”
Her mouth clamps shut, eyebrows furrowing.
“Because I think I’d like us to be friends,” I add, feeling like a complete fake and a jerk. How can I be friends with her when I’m pretending to be someone else online?
