diary of a teenage girl

Chapter 15: Romantic Gestures (Iris' pov)

I drag Tia inside and watch out of the window next to the door to see if he has left yet. "What are you doing?" Tiana says, putting her hand on my shoulder and standing on her tippy toes to see out of the window. "Well I want to go dress shopping but I can't have him seeing me leaving to go dress shopping the second he asks me to prom," I explain to her. "Well I wanna go to a dress shop with you but I don't have a date, so it would be kinda depressing." She says.
Hikaru walks through the door. "Hey, what's up?" He says, as we back away from the window. I hurriedly close the door behind him. "Nothing. Hey, do you have anything to ask Tia?" I say, holding his arm and looking at him, hoping he knows what I'm getting at. "Ohhh," he says, nodding. "What?" Tiana exclaims.

"Well . . ." He says, pulling his shirt with the letter O off. We watch as he pulls his second shirt with the t-shirt, and I stare at the floor. He takes it off, and makes a face and then feels his bare stomach. "Oops, just a sec." He says, pulling his second T-shirt out from under the first. He puts his t-shirt on and continues. He clears his throat. "Oh, right." I leave the apartment, and see James and one of the people in the t-shirts talking with him.

"Hey, what's up?" The girl says. She has an accent, maybe from the south, I guess. "Umm I was just going to take a walk." I say, lying. "Oh, fun. So you live in the apartment?" She says. I guess she doesnt recognize me as the girl James was asking out. "Yeah. Have you met my boyfriend?" I say, hooking my arm in James. I don't know if I'm saying this to clarify that I'm the girl, or if I want to clarify that he's my boyfriend. But either way, I kind of like this girl, and she's very pretty. So pretty that it makes me nervous, or jealous you could say.

"Ohh, you're his crush." She says. I notice that she switched the term girlfriend to 'crush'. James clears his throat. "Girlfriend. Can I join you in your walk, Iris?" James says, correcting her. "Sure. Do you wanna come," I pause. "Amaria." She tells me. "Yes. Do you want to come, Amaria?" I practically spit her pretty name out, desperate to get it off my tongue. "No, that's okay." She says.

She takes off the t-shirt, with a question mark on it. "do you want this back?" She says.I scan every dip and curve of her body, and examine the wide open space of her stomach. She wears a high cropped long sleeve black shirt that cuts off at the rib cage. She wears jeans baggier than the ones I wore on our first date, that fall at her hip bone. She has a piercing on her belly button. Her big fluffy Afro is out, and in her soft black eyes I think for a second that I see a little white shine in the shape of a heart. She has a flat, wide small nose and big lips.

Her waist is small but her stomach protrudes a little, and she has a little tummy like those of Sabrina carpenter. Jealousy lights my insides as I look at what must be perfection in female form. I bring back into my head all those years of looking in the mirror, telling myself that I am perfect as I am. That I should love myself. I hate to hate what I would love to be. What I wish I could be. What I don't need to be to be pretty. I keep telling myself that last one. James loves me a lot, I know it in my heart.

Love has no expiration date, I tell myself as we walk around, and James' grip on me stays firm. I eye the distance between him and Amaria. I notice that Amaria is on my side, opposite of James. I notice her soft, gentle and kind voice. I notice how she brings me into conversations. How her conversations with James often include me. I notice that the intentions beyond her voice are not malicious, but rather friendly and kind. I didn't think liking a boy would make me so jealous. I always judged men and women in relationships who had bitter envy of those who were intimidating.

But now I understand. The only thing I don't understand is how to stop doing it. "Everything okay, Iris?" She asks, holding my arm lightly. I look at her red almond shaped nails out of the corner of my eye. I have been looking at the ground this whole walk, lost in thought. When they have been talking to me, I answer with my mouth, but my mind has been elsewhere. I finally looked up. "Yeah, thanks." I say, hoping I sound as nice as I'm trying to be. "Want to go to the bookshop?" She asks me, her two toned lips smiling brightly at me, her white teeth sparkling in the light of the sunset.