Lights, Camera, Action

Conflicted

SEVEN - CONFLICTED

ALYSSA’S POV

When I got back to my own apartment, I quietly unlocked the door and stepped inside, in case Aubrey was asleep on the couch. She was on the couch, but she wasn’t sleeping. Instead, she was watching Netflix while enjoying a bowl of cereal.

“Feeling better?” I asked, taking my booties off and grabbing a bowl so I could have breakfast too.

“Yeah, I think it’s just a cold now. How was your crazy night?” I poured Krave into my bowl and frowned.

“Crazy night?” How’d she know?

“Well you’re just now getting home and you’re wearing the same exact thing as last night. I can only assume that it was interesting. So, what happened?” she questioned me. I poured milk into the bowl, grabbed a spoon, and joined her on the couch.

“Well, a lot of things happened,” I began, knowing there was no way I could keep any of it a secret.

“Wow, that explains everything.”

“Easy there, sarcastic. I went to the club, saw Alex, then Mark. Mark thought Alex and I were a thing, got jealous and danced with some girls, found out Alex was gay, danced with me, and then we left,” I summarized.

“And you went…?”

“To Steak N Shake to grab some food and we took it back to his place.”

“And…?”

“I think you can probably figure it out, Aubrey.”

“Well you spent the night there, obviously. Are you insinuating that you guys…”

“Yes. We did.” A huge smile formed on her face.

“Holy shit! That’s…wow. So are you two a thing, then?”

“I don’t know. I kind of just left this morning. I mean, I said goodbye and everything, but I didn’t know what to do. I’m not a one night stand type of girl, you know that.”

“Yeah, so clearly you want this to be more than that. He probably does too, Lys.”

“Probably not, actually. Honestly, I just kind of want to forget it happened, because everything is just weird between us now. Everything was going great, and then we had to complicate things.” 

“Alright, alright. I won’t bring it up anymore.”

I wanted to not care. I wanted to just move on, but I couldn’t. I could not, for the life of me, stop thinking about that night. It was everything I wanted. Mark was everything I wanted. We had already developed a good friendship, and I was totally comfortable with him. The physical attraction was there too, and he was a really nice guy. I could see myself with him, but something told me that if he could see himself with me, he would have made that clear. He probably would have taken things slower, maybe asked me out. He was a guy with needs, and I couldn’t help but think that I didn’t mean as much to him as he meant to me.

******************************************************

Mark and I continued to text every day, but it was strange. Neither of us brought up what had happened. Instead, we acted as if it hadn’t. I wasn’t very good with this kind of acting, though. We couldn’t ignore it forever. So, of course, when he invited me over to play games and make videos, I went there with every intention of bringing it up.

“Hey, come on in!” he greeted me when I knocked on the door of his apartment. I entered and we hugged by default, just as we had before I left that morning. It was a friendly gesture until it lasted longer than normal. However, we both just shook that off and headed into his office room to choose a game and start recording.