Not giving up on you [BoyxBoy]

Chapter 7

Oliver's POV

I hate how my heart starts beating everytime my phone rings, even though I know it isn't Glen. Usually, it's Leo. He's every bit as nice as I thought he would be since the day I met him. We stick together in school and it somehow elicits even more insults from our beloved schoolmates than when we were suffering it separately. But I don't care anymore... well, you can't really not care but I'm not so crushed as I was before... I guess it's because the whole bullying is different, now that Glen never joins in. He's always talking to Abigail or reading something, as if he grew tired of it. And that makes all the difference in the world. I can't quite explain it... it's as if their insults didn't really touch me anymore, as if they stopped a few inches from me and dropped harmlessly to the ground.

I answered Leo's call and told him I can't talk because my uncle's family came to visit. Our house is average-sized and you wouldn't believe how small it gets when you have five years old twins running around, their tolerant parents who let them do pretty much everything and a teenage daughter, Padma, all inside our house. Although, honestly, Padma is pretty great. She's the miracle child in our family, having twice as much extracurricular activities as me and nearly all of them related to church. She's the reason my parents signed me up for violin.

Just as I was about to go down to the living room, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find Padma there.

"Ah, hey," she smiled.

"Hi. I was about to go back, it was just a friend, nothing urgent," I informed her.

"I'd rather stay in your room, you know," she admitted uneasily.

"Are they talking about you again?" I joked.

"Yeah," she sighed with a relieved smile.

"Ok, sure, we can stay here," I let her in and closed the door.

"So what's new?" she asked, sitting down on my bed.

"Umm, I don't know... my violin lessons are finally going to start. Miss Lisnner came

back from US yesterday."

She smiled. "You're so lucky. My violin teacher is old and grouchy."

I smiled back. "And I fractured my ankle about a month ago, did you hear about it?"

"Ah, yeah, I think dad mentioned some evil guy throwing something under your feet while

you were running?" she chuckled.

"Well, I guess mom might have told him something along those lines but it wasn't really

like that."

"I suspected as much," smiled Padma. "So what happened?"

"Nothing special, Glen's – um, that's my classmate – his hoodie fell on the

ground without him noticing. I think I'm pretty much the only one to blame since I wasn't

looking where I was going," I explained, sitting down on the chair by my desk.

"Glen? Isn't that the guy that... umm, that guy that-"

"Bullied me?" I supplied.

"Yes! Is he? Then maybe he did it on purpose," she suggested with one eyebrow lifted,

which reminded me painfully of Glen.

"No, he wouldn't do that," I replied with absolute certainty.

She frowned. "But didn't he-?"

"Yeah, but he's changed."

"Oh, really?" she asked sceptically. I wouldn't believe her too if it was the other way around because people like Martin and Julian don't just change. I didn't know how to explain to her that Glen was a different kind of bully. He was underestimated, intelligent, witty, handsome kind of bully. I sighed.