Apart

the girls

Nobody knows her better than me. She's been by my side since God knows how long. I know everything there is to know about her. The one thing I don't know is what she thinks of him.

I see them together sometimes. Not together, as in a relationship, but friendly talks. She'll smile and so will he but it doesn't seem like anything romantic. But the way she acts. She clearly thinks of him as something more. The way she looks at him... you can see that she looks at him more than just a regular person.

I always knew he was special to her. When I mentioned his name, she'd somewhat brighten up. She'd smile but she wouldn't look at me and smile.

I've always wanted to know what she thinks of him. She never talked about him to me. Then she stopped smiling when I said his name. I wondered... what happened? I prompted her.

"Him? Oh we were just friends. That's all."

I knew she was lying. I didn't understand why she lied to me. We would always tell each other everything. If she liked someone, she would have told me. In fact, she wouldn't shut up about him. So why was she hiding him away from me?

"Really? Just friends? Stop lying to me."

She looked at me rather strangely. She sighed.

"Fine."

"To me, he was more than a friend. He's helped me. He's... changed me. For the better. He's always there for me and yet I know I can count on him. But... I don't know. I used to think he was sympathetic but I felt like I wasn't talking to him. That I was talking to some robot who was programmed to say the things I wanted to hear.. and not what I needed to hear. So, he said what I needed to hear. It doesn't matter anymore."

She looked away.

"I don't care about him anymore."

the boys

I didn't know him for that long but I got to know quite about him in the past few years or so. He was an incredibly intelligent person. I personally wondered what was going on in his mind. I kinda always wondered.... a guy like this... did he ever think about.. you know.. girls?

In one of our classes, he sits in front of a girl. Her. The two of them talk quite a bit but underneath it, you could almost feel as if something more than friendship was brewing. The way she looked at him. The way he made her laugh. It seemed like they had something special.

I was curious. I didn't think a cold-hearted, emotionless guy like him would ever like a girl. I asked him one day about her.

"What? She's just in one of my classes."

I was semi-appalled by this. Just in one of his classes? Not from what I saw. I pestered him more and I think that made him snap.

"She's nothing to me alright? She just likes this weird idea of me but it's not me. She thinks that this filtered image is all there is to me. There's so much more. I don't understand why she doesn't believe that I can't be unfiltered. She can't seem to understand that that's like asking someone to be impolite on purpose. And then she asked me to be honest? So I was honest to her. I told her that I don't love anyone and that I probably won't anytime soon."

I didn't exactly know what to say next. There was something definitely brewing but turned to be one sided.

Ever since then, they went cold. The thing that was brewing? It's clear that it died. I seemed to be wrong about him. But I guess it doesn't matter. I asked once more about her, just to see if anything had changed and I wasn't surprised by his answer.

"I don't care about her anymore."