Alice is popular, boys love her, and even girls love her. And so does her best friend, Irene.
....friends to lovers angst with the pressure from overbearing parents to self discovery
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Irene's only ever kissed one person. And that was during her Freshmen year. It was weird, and it was something Irene wanted to do, up until it actually happened. Once she did it, she decided she was going to ignore it. Now, she wouldn't go out of her way to avoid it, but she wouldn't seek it is all. Her first kiss was... Not the best anyway.
She was hanging out with someone, other than Alice, a friend she had for a while. His name was Adrian. Adrian was really nice, and he made Irene laugh all the time. He wasn't popular, at all. He was quite the opposite. Irene didn't really know why though, he was fairly nice and didn't annoy people. Irene supposes now that it was because he was quite a geeky kid n' all. But he was Irene's best friend at the time. Earlier that year, when Irene just hung around people and didn't have any definite friends, he just came up to her. He asked her questions and he was good to talk to. He would always ask to hang out and Irene would say yes. It's easy to say they ended up being really close, really quickly.
Adrian had lots of other friends too. Some of them were pretty cool people, some were labeled as "weird kids", and some just used him for homework and whatnot. But he treated them all nicely and Irene admired that. Irene hung out with him and his friends sometimes, but she had only been friends with him. He invited her to more and more places and would get her gifts quite often as a friendship, gratitude token.
Irene was so happy that she had finally found a real friend, someone she could talk to. She told him everything at one point. About her parents, about her grandparents, about how she saw him as a really cool person, everything. And he would listen, and say really good things back. He was sort of the opposite of Alice in a way. They're both good people but he was just a lot of things Alice isn't.
Alice is "popular", even if she didn't see it, Alice is gorgeous, and while Irene didn't think Adrian was ugly, per se, just incomparable to Alice. Alice is flirty and touchy, while Adrian was just really supportive and keeps his hands by his sides. Alice is quiet, and only ever keeps Irene by her side, and she always talks about crushes and dating. Whereas Adrian was super extroverted and left that kind of stuff to himself. They're different.
He ended up confessing. Irene had never had someone confess to her before, and he was so nice about it. She ended up agreeing to a date.
The date was nice, they went to the movies and didn't have to talk as much as they normally do. And he offered to walk Irene back to her house, she agreed. This, this was the one time they were silent. Irene thought Adrian would say something, ask something. But he just fiddled and looked kind of nervous. He never held Irene's hand which, Irene was perfectly fine with but it was still off.
Adrian was so nice, and Irene wished more people had given him a chance because he had so much to offer. He was the perfect friend in a lot of ways. And Irene couldn't understand why he didn't have girls flying after him all the time.
And yet, when he leaned in to kiss her she just stood.
She didn't move back or anything. Irene thinks he noticed because he took a step back and they awkwardly stared at each other for a moment.
