Well, it's Complicated...

Chapter 5 - Amber

Chapter 5 – Amber

“Don’t tell me what?” Emily said, looking Dan straight in the eye.

Dan dropped his gaze, finding sudden interest in the floorboards. She rolled her eyes, took me by the wrist, and walked down the hall into the lounge.

Once we got there, she closed the door partway, leaving it slightly open. “Okay, what did you do?”

I shuffled nervously. Did she hear us? “Wh-what do you mean?” she asked nervously.

“Okay, allow me to rephrase the question. What did Dan do that made you shout, ‘DANIEL JAMES HOWELL, HOW DARE YOU!?’ so loud that Phil and I could hear it from the kitchen?”

Well, that’s one question answered. “Oh, that. Well, he leaned in to try to kiss me, and I stood up and yelled at him.”

“Then what happened?”

I told her the whole story, not getting into very much detail. When I told her Dan kissed me, she cursed and pulled out her iPod. “That bloody idiot. Dan, how could you be so stupid?”

She scrolled through her playlists, tapped on the one she wanted, and put it down on the table. The song wasn’t one I recognized right away; I looked at the song and artist displayed on Emily’s iPod screen. Apparently it was Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood.

Emily grabbed a karaoke microphone off the coffee table and held it up to her mouth as the intro ended and the lyrics started.

She sang along with the song pretty well, shaking her hair around a bit during the chorus. Unless it was my imagination, she seemed to glare in the general direction of Dan’s bedroom at some points in the song.

When she reached the second chorus, I thought I detected movement out the corner of my eye. I glanced at the door, and saw Dan peeking his head around the door. He was too busy looking at Emily to notice I was looking at him, and Emily was too busy glaring towards Dan’s bedroom to even realize Dan was there.

“♫♪I might’ve saved a little trouble for the next girl, because the next time that he cheats, ohhh you know it won’t be on me. Nooo, not on me!♪♫” Emily sang that part out with passion, maybe a bit too much passion for Dan to handle. He backed out of the room nervously as Emily sang the end of the song.

As that song ended, the next song started playing. Emily grinned almost wickedly, seeming to recognize the song immediately. I glanced at her iPod screen; Picture to Burn by Taylor Swift. She sang this song with as much passion, if not more, than she sang the last song.

As she sang the lyrics, “♫♪And if you’re missing me, you’d better keep it to yourself/’cuz comin’ back around here would be bad for your health!♪♫”, I thought to myself, Should I be worried?

Nah, it’s just a song. She wouldn’t harm Dan in any way, shape, or form. I reassured myself.

The next song—which, according to Emily’s iPod, was Should’ve Said No by Taylor Swift—sounded a bit less angry. For about the first 10 notes.

She belted out Should’ve Said No about as loud as ever, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the lyrics. I felt guilty about telling her about the kiss, and also about not telling her that I actually liked the kiss.

3 break-up songs in a row? I thought, trying to keep my mind off my guilt. “What playlist is this?”

She didn’t answer right away. Just when I was about to ask again, there was an instrumental break and she had time to say “Revenge,” before the lyrics started up again. Well, that makes sense.

The next song on the playlist—Here We Go Again by Demi Lovato—seemed to be toning down the angst factor. Nevertheless, Emily belted it out.

The next song after Here We Go Again I actually recognized. It was Toxic by Britney Spears. Now what was that doing on a playlist titled Revenge?

Emily must have been thinking the same thing I had, because she stopped dancing around, a confused look on her face. She picked up her iPod, paused Toxic, and looked at me. “What the hell would Toxic be doing on my Revenge playlist?”

“Don’t look at me; it’s your iPod.” She scrolled through the playlist—wow, there were a lot of songs in there—and the last song in the playlist was Toxic.

“The hell is that doing in there?” Emily wondered aloud. She shrugged, plugged in her headphones, and sat down on the couch, listening to Toxic.

The 3 minutes of silence gave me 3 minutes to think about how guilty I felt. I had told Emily about the kiss, but I hadn’t told her that I kissed back or even that I liked the kiss!

By this point, Emily had stood up and was walking out of the lounge. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“To go talk to Dan.”

I apologize for the terrible quality of this chapter; I wrote 90% of it late last night, and my writing is pretty crap when I'm tired.