Project Equality

Just Us

Amilia

I was rearranging my folders for my second semester schedule, when my laptop pinged with a notification from my email. For a reason I then regretted, I'd turned on the Chrome notifications for a few websites, and I had no idea how to turn it off, so I on occasion got assaulted with things that apparently were happening. This time, though, it was just letting me know that Hazel had shared a document with me.

A Skype call came in from her before I could open it, so I answered. "Hey, moirail."

"Hello, did you get it?"

"Yes, I literally just got it," I said, opening the browser back up and pulling up the doc file. "What is it?"

"My first ever crime novel," she explained, in the middle of doing her makeup. "I'm trying to figure out just how passionate I feel about the idea of being in the FBI, so I'm doing this. I was hoping you could read it and edit? The only other person who knows about it so far is Lisa."

"Oh, yeah, sure! I'd love to. On a separate note, any plans for Valentine's Day with your girlfriend?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. I haven't asked her yet. I don't know if that's a thing we do or not. Is that a thing we do?"

"I don't know, ask her."

"What about you and Jacob? Your second Valentine's Day since getting back together, any special plans?"

I smiled. "Yes, we're spending time together that day. It's going to be lovely. We both have little things planned for each other and it's going to be great. We almost never hang out anymore."

"What the fuck are you talking about, you just went on a date yesterday," she pointed out. "You two always are hanging out, you're practically a fucking stranger nowadays."

"Really?" I asked. I hadn't realized it, but she may have been right. He was sort of consuming all of my focus. As I discovered my artistic side, he became my muse, inspiring passion in everything that I painted. I was enjoying painting, so being around my muse was a reasonable pass time. I hadn't realized I was becoming scarce around my other friends, though.

"Yes. You two always have plans. I guess we're all sort of like that, though. I'm with Andrea, you're with Jacob a lot, May and Lisa are inseparable, Ely and Lauren have always been like this, and Lynn's on Skype with Viktor as often as possible. We never see each other anymore outside of Club, it seems."

"Oh, god, what about Jen?" I realized.

"She makes due," Hazel promised. "She's still got Lynn around when Viktor's too busy, which is most of the time. Ugh, long distance is some scary shit, dude. I could never. Unless with Andrea. Unless I'm on a different continent. What a fucking terrible reason to break up, though?"

"I think I'll just stay as close to Jacob as possible and avoid that long distance thing, because it could put a real strain on what is working so well for us," I said.

"Babe, you can't avoid conflict with him forever."

"Watch me," I argued. I knew she was right, that everyone was right, but I was going to try and keep things smooth for the longest time. It wasn't like we really had anything to fight about, anyways, so there just wasn't any cause for conflict.

The truth was, even over a year later, I still felt like I'd only just gotten him back. Maybe that was because time was flying by so damn fast, but nonetheless, I didn't want to do anything to ruin things with him. I pulled up an old (like, eighth grade old) file that Jenna and Lynn had made concerning the phases of a relationship, and how long they should probably last.