Started With a Tube

Started With a Tube - Chapter 10

Started With a Tube - Chapter 10

It's a few weeks later when the drama starts up again. It's all quite funny actually; how I thought my life would suddenly be smooth sailing. In fact, I should have realised it would be anything but.

Peter, my friend who I've known for two years, the person who knows possibly the most about me, tells me that he loves me. Now, in any other normal circumstances that would be fine. I mean, I'm not attracted to him and I'm in no way obliged to be, but that's fine. I could tell him as such and then we'd hopefully be able to forget it and move on. However, now I have the matter of Alec. We both agreed to not say anything about us to other people seeing as he's only been here a short while, because that would probably both make us look kind of bad. And so nobody other than my friends really knows about our relationship.

That made telling Peter I'm not interested pretty difficult.

You see, we have an odd friendship. I mean, I love him to pieces, but I'm not interested in that way. We fight too much. I can have a pretty good conversation with him for around roughly twenty minutes before we're at each other like rabid animals. Jamie says it's because he's sexually frustrated, but I just think it's because we're too alike for our own good.

This whole argument between us seems to stir a lot of things up though, and soon enough all of my friends are involved. Well, 'all' being Jamie, Grace and Olivia. That basically is all anyway, but that's besides the point.

You see, I have a feeling Grace likes Peter. I don't know why, I just reckon she does. And with Olivia and I both having substantial boy-attention, I think she likes the idea of having a boyfriend too. I guess Peter's a pretty good choice because he's interesting enough, but also wants a relationship so much to the point that he'd probably date his cousin if it came down to it. And Grace, as bad as it sounds, is pretty desperate.

But even though I think Grace likes Peter, she still gets mad at me when I turn him down.

"What did you say to him?" she asks as we eat our lunch in the school canteen, sitting in our regular seats at our normal table.

"I just said I was seeing someone else," I shrug.

"But are you actually?" she asks and I send her a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, Grace."

"Just checking," she says. "But anyway, that's a little rude, don't you think?"

"What? Not cheating on Alec because it's mean to not like Peter?" She just gives me a blank stare.

"I don't know, Cat, it just seems like you're ditching him for Alec."

"I'm ditching him?" I repeat and I honestly can't really believe what I'm hearing. Sure, Peter and I were close before this whole argument thing, but not close to the point where we were stuck by each other's sides the whole time. I mean, we talked outside of school most nights over text, but I guess that's about it. And so my spending time with Alec really hasn't distrupted that.

Grace plainly shrugs and nobody else makes any attempt to say that she's wrong and I'm left wondering at what point all of my friends began to hate me.

*

"So Peter loves you?" Alec asks and I reply with a nod. "Bullshit."

"What?" I laugh.

"He's not in love with you," Alec states.

"And why do you reckon that?" I ask, toying with his fingers which are clasped through mine on my lap. We're lying on the sofa in my living room. It's Friday night so we decided to chill out and catch up with each other after our week at school - and with the few days I've had, I really need a chill.