Eye for an Eye

Chapter 19

S,

The night before they left back to New York...

simba looked over at the door as arielle left up to ajiri's room and he quickly got dressed and went to the store down the road to grab a bottle of liquor. he didn't have anything else better to do so he decided to drink his problems away, like he's been doing for the past month.

after arielle got into with nicki at the club, simba hasn't been doing the greatest and he blamed himself for everything that went down. he knew arielle was gonna be at that same club because he had her location, so he decided to call up nicki and ask her to come up with this extravagant plan to make arielle jealous and in the end, it resulted in a fight that he didn't expect nor want to happen. nicki talked his ear off the next day and now, they weren't really speaking to each other.

although, he honestly couldn't care less. they had this deal that if he convinced harry to rat out delano for her, she would retrieve more information about arielle for him. so technically, he would only be speaking to her if it's about arielle and he also had a tremendous amount of dirt on nicki so if she did decide to not uphold her part of the deal, he knew he could take her down with what he had alone.

simba first met arielle in middle school and the first time he laid eyes on her, he's instantly became obsessed. she was in his 7th grade class and she always sat in back, making jokes among her friends, never doing her work and always interrupting the teacher when they tried to teach. most people thought she was rebellious and annoying but to him, he loved it and wanted to befriend her even more. she was also chubbier back then and she wore a pair of bright pink glasses everyday and all he wanted to do was push them against her face every time they slightly dropped down towards her nose.

he never really had the courage to go up to her being that he was extremely shy and feared rejection, even in a friend way. he would only wave at her if she was alone or give her a small smile from time to time and she always returned the gesture and that made him feel special, like he was seen by such a goddess that he put on this high pedestal. also, this was before his transition and everyone still knew her as scarlet and not simba so everyone looked at her as the tom boy that always hung out with guys and never made any female friends so she knew that if she became friends with arielle, she would automatically be labeled a "lesbian".

over the course of the year, he was fully convinced he was in love with her and even began to stalk her. he found out that she lived in brooklyn and her dad would drop her off and pick her up everyday from the bronx for school so he would make sure to arrive early and leave early from his classes, just so he could watch her hop out her daddies mercedes benz with a bacon egg and cheese or watch her leave for the day, waving bye at her. she never asked him his name or even started a conversation with him, just smiles and waves for the rest of the year.

once 8th grade graduation came around, he found out that she was transferring back to brooklyn to attend this performing arts school that she got into and simba felt like his whole world had collapsed. she also started dating a guy that she met and he was attending the same school as her and that ignited a fire in him. he begged his mom to sign him up for the preforming arts school but she refused, saying it was too far and too expensive to take him everyday. she didn't understand why he wanted to even go there but he never explained his reasoning so he thought of a new plan.

when highschool rolled around, simba spent his afternoons taking the train to brooklyn, just to see arielle and he would catch her leaving school. he would continue the waving and smiling and she did the same but she never approached him and he couldn't figure out why. when he finally transitioned into simba, he couldn't be happier about it because a.) he was finally comfortable in his body and b.) arielle had no idea who he was so this was even a greater chance for him to get to know her more. that was short lived though when one day, he decided to take a train down to her highschool and saw her leaving the school, hand in hand with a girl, most likely a new relationship she was in and he suddenly felt a sense of betrayal and he wanted to rip his head off his body and feed it to the sharks.