The Perfectly Imperfect Project

Chapter 19 - Yolanda

Seeing him for the first time since we last met up for the project was weird. Especially now that the word is out that he and Elle have broken up. Penelope and I stalked their socials the other day, while watching a movie in her dorm and eating goldfish. It's true. They've removed each other from everything.

I refused to look any longer. Seeing Elle in her cheerleading and dance uniforms, going to expensive places in her shiny dresses, makes me hate my life. Here I am, struggling to pay college expenses with my own job while she gets to spend her parents money and doesn't have to pay the price. It's rude of me to assume her life is perfect on camera and I don't know what she's going through personally, but still. Everyone loves her.

Penelope and I walk back to her dorm after what we saw walking back from dinner. I've still been ignoring Ava and to be honest, it's killing me. I usually see her everyday, know what she's doing at any given time, the things she eats. Now I don't even know where she's at exactly.

"What's the thing with you and Dogulas," she asks, folding her laundry. I'm laying on my side, on her bed watching her. I shake my head. "Nothing."
She looks up from what she's doing. "Are you sure?"
I nod.

"You were laughing and talking before we came across them, and now you're silent. You haven't said anything since we got back so I've just been ranting about my classes and how I don't get to see my boyfriend until Christmas break."
"I don't have anything to say," I say. But that's a lie, and I know she knows it. I'm usually always talking to myself out loud to her, but I don't know what I'm feeling right now. Maybe anger because I thought he felt the same way? Or that I care about him so much to the point where I know he's not happy with his life and I want him to change that?

Whatever this feeling is, it doesn't make me feel good. Because it all reminds me of how he will never, ever feel the same way about me.
She finishes folding a pair of baby pink sweatpants and crosses her arms. "Yeah Cause I saw your face when you looked at him. And I don't blame you. He's got the looks you know? Strong jawline, big muscles......"

I throw a plush pillow at her and she gasps. It lands on the floor. "Pick Chuck Norris up right now!"
I snort. "You name your pillows?"
"It's not a pillow. It's a panda pillow."
I nod, thinking sarcastically. "Ohhh okay. Well Chuck Norris can sleep on the floor today." I lay back onto her bed, relaxing. "I'm taking over."

Penelope rolls her eyes. She finishes folding her clothes and putting them in her small drawer near her dresser, and jumps on the bed next to me.
Now we're both laying down side by side. I can smell her familiar perfume.
"Do you have feelings for him?"
I turn my head to look at her. "It's complicated." I let out a long sigh. "It's complicated, and weird."
"Weird how?"

"Weird, because everyone has always known him for being the 'hot football player with good grades and a sexy girlfriend,'" I quote with my hands. She nods, agreeing. "He's been a dick to everyone and definitely me. And when those girls showed me the video of him talking about me, telling me that we're nothing, and just partners, it made me feel so stupid."

I bawled my eyes out in the bathroom stall at the cafe to piano music playing through the speakers. Penelope ran after me a few minutes later and found the stall I was in. She kept asking to open it, but I refused until I was done crying. When I let her in, we hugged for what seemed hours while she played with my hair and told me that everything was going to be okay.
Our food and frappuccinos were cold when we got back, and our waitress was nice enough to go and warm them back up without any extra charges. She told me that she heard about the video, and that she's sorry.

Penelope puts her hand over mine, her yellow blonde hair brushed to the side. "Hey, look at me."
I turn my head, feeling the tears come back up after thinking about that day and what happened tonight.
"You're not stupid. He's just a cornball like you said, who is so self centered and has the biggest ego I have ever seen."
I can't help but crack a smile.
"What?"