RIVALS | sean lew

xxi.

It was the second day of Buildabeast, and Julian and Sapphire spent hours since 9am to work on the routine they'd be doing tomorrow.

But it was clear that Sapphire wasn't completely focused and her mind flew elsewhere, and Julian just had to break the ice with her after she messed up the first few seconds of the routine for the nth time.

"Okay, Saph, what's up?" Julian sighed, slightly getting fed up with the girl who was trying to keep up the happy exterior.

"What?" Saph asked, her voice soft and confused.

"You've been keeping up this fake facade since Tuesday rolled along, and it pains me to see you having a huge struggle to fake this happiness." Julian exploded. "Talk to me, Saph, talk to me. You don't have to pretend."

Saph was shocked to hear the words that left the boy's mouth. She knew that she wasn't that good at pretending, but she hoped that nobody noticed how forced her laughs and smiles were.

But she just doesn't want them to see how much she isn't okay; she wanted to show them how she was fine even after all that went down just because she wanted them to see that it didn't matter to her, even though it did.

But she couldn't keep it all in for too long, and she knew she needed to let it all out some time.

"I think I'm in love with someone I shouldn't be in love with."

And it was true. The boy her heart started to grow used to rejected her.

Yes, the situation wherein the boy turned her down seemed too silly to be reacted upon like this. Yes, the boy chose someone else to spend the day with without telling her. Yes, it seemed too little of a reason, but for some reason, it hit something inside her that made her like this.

And that reason was this: she realized that she finally found what her heart was looking for, and that was the boy who she hated most of her life.

"I'm so fucking in love with him, Juls," she said, almost as if she was just realizing now all of this, "I'm so fucking in love with him, that I think this is all so, so wrong because everything happened in the wrong moment. But I can't deny it, Juls. He hurt me. And I'm being like this because I'm fucking in love with him."

And that was the first time that she said those words out loud, and it relieved her. It relieved her that she finally said the things that were like big boulders on her shoulders.

Flashback

Sean and Sapphire finished half of the song but they couldn't help but drop dead on the garage floor because of immense exhaustion. This was only the 5th day: the day after they went to David's class, and also the day after they ditched all of their friends to talk over ice cream and milkshakes.

"I don't know why I'm tired, but I'm really tired." Sapphire said, taking a deep breath. "Are you tired?"

"No, I'm as up and running as Josh on Red Bull." He sarcastically muttered, making a face at Sapphire.

The girl was too lazy to come up with a response, so she just scoffed and rolled over to her side to face the boy. Sean did the same, coming face to face with the girl.

"Favorite food to eat, aside from milkshakes and vanilla?" Sean randomly asked.

"Oatmeal." Sapphire answered almost instantly. "Definitely oatmeal, and Reese's buttercups, too. You?"