Hacker

Chapter 3 - Between Two Evils

The long awaited weekend was here. How nice.

I wore a deep blue blouse and a black hijab. Chanting words of encouragement for myself in the mirror, I later opened the door and walked out.

This morning, Zack had sent me a conversation between me and Ed. Except that it was not me. It was him pretended to be me. He talked like I was still interested in that guy and asked him out. I swear to God that's 100% not me. But did I have other choice besides to play along?

The waiter had walked away from taking my order when my phone rang.

Zack. The screen showed. Seriously I had no idea when he made this phone saved his number. I picked it up.

"You okay there?" he asked.

"Sure." I replied half-heartedly.

"Your lips are pale. Did you even use lip balm or something?"

My brows furrowed. "How did you...?" I looked around and noticed a hoodie guy sitting at the corner of the café.

"He's like 10 minutes away. You still got time to go to the ladies' room." He eyed me and smirked.

I ended the call without breaking eye contact. I disliked being ordered very much. My hand dug my purse for a lipstick and I later applied it with the reflection from my phone. Glanced his way afterwards, he was still curving a half-smile.

It was almost an encouraging one but before I could over-analyze it, a voice interrupted my thought.

"Lyn," I looked up to see a hot looking Edward.

My voice caught up in my throat. I coughed a bit. "Hey." I stood and smiled.

Ed smiled back. Damn. How can someone be this hotter in just a few years? He sat in front of me and I followed suit. I noticed he let out like a small breath of admiration which made me blushed unwillingly. The effort of putting some makeups didn't go to waste, after all. My little heart leapt a bit.

Silly, Raelyn. Get yourself together!

The waiter came to take our order, indirectly gave me extra time to calm down. Once he walked away, Ed looked back at me with that stupid attractive smile of his.

Controlling my breathing, I finally got into character and had a nice conversation with him.

**

Ed and I went back separately. Well, he kind of insisted to drive me but then Zack called and told me to act like I was talking to a friend who wanna meet me at the café afterwards so Ed had to go back while I stayed.

And Zack picked me up. I kind of refused because being alone with a guy, in a car? That wasn't really my thing. But being a Zack he was, he threatened me to hack my phone so that I can't call any Grab or Uber.

I swear this guy was out of his mind sometimes.

He drove rather calmly and slowly as if we got all the time in the world. The radio was connected to his phone, playing soothing music. It was much appreciated by me as I really needed to relax from the pressure before. We were both silent for like half the journey.

The car stopped at the red light. From the corner of my eye, I could see him glancing at me. I thought he was about to ask me something but the silence stayed until we arrived my college.

I was counting to 5 before getting out of the car to give him a chance voicing out his thought. 1... 2... 3...

"Does the feeling just get stronger after meeting him?"

I faced him with my brows furrowed, "What?" That's pretty much true.

He sighed. "You were not meeting him to cherish back memories, Rae. We got things to do here."

"You got things to do here, not really me."

When I caught up with Ed just now, I found out he's running some kind of programming business. Then I thought maybe he could help me get out of Zack's grip.

He was quiet before asking a question I didn't expect, "Do you not want to know why I'm doing this?" He looked me in the eye.

"Should I?" I asked him back. Out of all people, it's Edward. And out of all people, it's me. Of course I wanted to know. But would the information benefit me or burden me?

He leaned back at the driver's seat, as if contemplating if he should really tell me. "It's a big thing." He said. "Edward had done something, and that success you heard is achieved by a filthy way." He's obviously being vague. "I know what you're thinking. Running back to him and stuff. But if I were you, I'd give this some more time. Because right now you can't see which one is the worse evil here, Rae. You've probably heard many things about me at the rate I didn't have to introduce myself to you that night, at the rate you followed my instruction without questioning. And you often being cold to me because you think I'm heartless," He uttered the words like they're written all over my face. I was speechless because those were exactly, what I was thinking. "But at the end of the day, I still do have a heart and I'm still just... a human."

Zack looked at the glass in front of him - no more into my eyes - as the drizzles dropped on it one by one.

Came to think about it, I had been jumping into conclusions so much. I didn't even try to see if people were wrong and if this guy in front of me was actually not who everyone thought he was.

I mean, we all have our masks sometimes. Or else we won't be having secrets.

"I'm..." His eyes darted to me as I spoke. Our eyes met, "I'm sorry." That's all I could say.

He stayed in his neutral expression. Didn't look glad nor taken aback. I couldn't predict what he's thinking.

He then looked away and sliding his chair backwards, reaching for something.

"Here, wear this." He handed me a raincoat, "Sorry I'm not really an umbrella kind of guy. It doesn't work when the rains heavy. This is better." He stated with a tight-lip smile.

I took it. "Thank."

The rain was getting heavier when I stepped out of the car. He didn't wait for me to go inside, before driving away.

My curiosity increased. And I thought, I did need to know.