Sick of Losing Soulmates

11

So How Do We Win

Maribel's heart was about to explode. She found herself doing homework with Lilliana one night and she didn't know how to bring up the fact that her new girlfriend wanted to have dinner the next night. She still kind of maybe had feelings for Lilliana and she didn't know what to do about it. She tried to bottle them up and push them aside, thinking that it was best to just not feel that way about her best friend. So when Gracie offered to make dinner for the three of them, Maribel agreed right away. But now, she faced the dilemma of actually asking Lilliana to go to dinner and she didn't know how to bring up the topic.

"Hey, what did you get for number thirty one?" Lilliana asked, breaking Maribel out of her state of nervousness. Maribel looked up and felt her face get hot. She hadn't even completed ten of the problems because she had been too busy worrying.

"Oh," she cleared her throat, "I actually didn't get up to there yet."

Lilliana raised her eyebrow, obviously surprised. Maribel was ten times smarter than her. She normally would be on question fifty at that point. "Okay, what's wrong?"

"What?" Maribel was taken aback.

"You've been sitting there for the past twenty minutes looking all nervous and I'm starting to get scared.

Maribel sighed. She had to bring it up. There was no turning back now. "Gracie wants us all to have dinner tomorrow night."

Lilliana was shocked. Out of all the things she expected her best friend to say, this was not one of them. Lilliana felt a pool of jealousy build. Ever since Maribel had started dating Gracie, she rarely had time for her. She wasn't used to the fact that her best friend wasn't completely hers anymore. But Lilliana masked that jealousy with a smile because she wanted to be a good friend.

"Oh, wow. That should be fun." Suddenly, Lilliana thought of something so horrible she couldn't believe that she was about to say it. Yet, she did anyways. "Hey, why don't we make it a double date? I could bring Aiden."

To say Maribel was shocked was an understatement. She hadn't heard that name come out of Lilliana's mouth in the past few days, so she was surprised that she brought him up all of a sudden. She was for sure that they had broken up by now.

"Aiden? I thought you guys were on a break or something?" Maribel asked, actually wanting to ask why they hadn't split up for good yet.

"No, we're good actually. I admit, we had a momentary crack in our relationship, but we're totally fine now," Lilliana replied, actually wanting to say that she hadn't spoken to him in awhile now, and she so badly wanted to break up with him, she just didn't know how. She wanted Maribel to just agree because the last thing she wanted was to third wheel her best friend's date.

Thankfully, Maribel did agree. She was still shocked, but if Aiden made her happy, then who was she to get in the way of that. "Cool, I'll text Gracie now and let her know."

And so the next night, Aiden and Lilliana was walking up the steps to Gracie's apartment. It was silent and awkward, considering the two of them hadn't spoken in a few days. Aiden was immensely surprised but happy that Lilliana had reached out to him. He thought that everything was fine and dandy. Little did he know that Lilliana's secret motive was to use him to make herself feel more comfortable around her best friend's girlfriend.

"I'm really happy you called, Lils," Aiden said, smiling as if everything was okay.

"Yeah," Lilliana fake smiled back at him, trying to seem as if she really did want him to be there with her. The last thing she wanted was for him to have an outburst in front of Maribel's girlfriend.