Three Cheers for Sweethearts [Frerard AU]

PART II: Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9 – THE DULLEST LIVES

A/N: One thousand reads?? This is insane; I didn't expect this to get so much attention so quickly! Thank you all for your comments and your feedback this far - it really does help!
Now, enjoy the end of Part II...

Throughout the rest of the day I was thinking about the show that was upon us. I would have to pretend to fall in love with Frank.

I let myself imagine it. And really, it wasn't as hard as I expected.

I didn't believe in love at first sight, as in the said Shakespeare play, but it was no secret Frank and I hadn't known each other very long. Still, Frank was objectively attractive. Yet I didn't think anyone could fall in love with someone whose personality was still a mystery to you – that's lust, not love.

But still I found I had this overwhelming desire to know what Frank was like. To learn who he was. Was that like love? 

Too far. Leave it alone. You don't have to fall in love with Frank, you just have to pretend to, I chastised myself for letting it get to that point.

Finding myself unable to shake the possibility of really thinking of him like that, I gave in enough to my own mind to say I'd start more conversations. That was the only way I'd know for sure, right?

I knew that conversation had a fifty-fifty shot of going two ways, if I was in it: remarkably good or horribly bad. And usually, I was okay with not taking that risk. I was friends with Frank now, I thought; I just wasn't sure if he thought so.

I asked Ray once. "Honestly, I don't know if Frank and I are friends. He'll talk to me at lunch, never failing to say 'hi' right as I sat down and everything, but he never starts conversations with me in other classes. Even if I try to talk to him, he gives me a one-word answer at best. I think we're friends, but all this basically-a-stranger-except-lunch thing is doing is making it awkward."

"Oh, you're friends," Ray said, as if that decided it. I looked at him expectantly, waiting for more. "I mean," he continued, "maybe you should be more persistent. You know, have a deeper conversation or something. Or bring up another class during lunch!"

I nodded, but his advice wasn't perfect. He turned at the end of the hallway, and that was all that that conversation had to give me.

Like I always say, conversation never was and never will be a gift of mine.

All I wanted was to become Frank's friend. So why was that so hard to do? Shoot, did he secretly find me annoying and just didn't want to tell me to stop talking to him because he was too polite? He seemed like the type to keep that to himself. I'd never heard him complain.

I wanted to be his friend. We certainly had been, at least for a while. The fact that we'd started to drift apart was bothering me now; I had to try to fix it.