Like Gods

[36] whole-hearted doubt

Dylan frowned. 

"What do you mean, 'you didn't see wrong'? Of course, I didn't see wrong. It wasn't like it was hard to see them standing together in the corner, whispering with him hovering over her while she laughed." He swallowed a sudden rush of annoyance. "They were inches apart, Felicia, it was clear what was going on."

"Who was the cheerleader? Was it Megan?" Felicia continued her pursuit of whatever she wanted to get out of grilling him about this, and it hurt that she didn't believe him.

"Yeah, it was Megan, how did you know that?" 

"Lucky guess," she brushed it off and continued, "are you sure that you're right?" 

"Yes, Felicia, I am sure! And yeah, we all knew that he had a reputation when this all started but I just- I didn't think he'd go back to that so soon, and just over a singular argument. Why do you question this?" 

"Dylan, I question this because I think you're in the wrong-" she put a hand up to stop any protest that Dylan had planned, "- and hear me out when I tell you why." 

The soccer player knitted his brows together in both confusion and worry, but he kept quiet, gesturing for her to continue. Had he been wrong? No, he knew what he'd seen.

"You say that he was standing with Megan, but he came to me, asking me to take care of her 'cuz she'd been bugging him while he was looking for you. And that couldn't have been more than ten minutes after he'd arrived, so I think it's unreasonable for him to have both had time to search for you and met her and talked that intimately." 

"Yeah, but-" 

"Let me finish-" 

"No, you need to know this, too, if you want the whole story. He did see me, Felicia. While the two of them were walking toward the kitchen our eyes met and he didn't- he didn't look as though the sight of me was what he was looking for. He looked as though he was on the way to get laid." 

"But he dropped her off with me in the kitchen. And besides, don't you think that there's a possibility that he didn't have time to actually notice who it was through the crowd?" 

Dylan huffed, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that screamed at him that maybe Felicia was right and that he had been wrong. "Even so, he didn't seem very keen on even looking at me at lunch, especially today. He looked at me as if I meant nothing to him. As if we hadn't been everything just a few weeks ago. That must mean that I never meant that much to him," he argued, a pang of heartache shooting through his entire being, making tears form behind his eyes.

Felicia hummed thoughtfully, sipping her coffee. "Well, what did you say to him when he came to your house?" 

Dylan squirmed. He'd definitely said some stuff that he regretted to some extent, but Chris hadn't seemed to understand that he didn't want him there, so it had been necessary.

"I don't know, just that I wanted him to leave, that I'd seen him and her... I may have brought up something about his reputation and, yeah." 

"And you don't think that he might have looked at you like that because what you said hurt him? He seems like the kind of person who gets cold when they're hurt, and that's what I think is going on right now."

"You really think that I'm wrong?" Dylan asked, his voice gentler now, his mind racing at three hundred miles an hour. If he had been wrong then he'd been a huge douche. The image of Chris's face when he'd been told to leave flashed in Dylan's mind, making him cringe. Had he been the one to hurt, and not the one to have been hurt? Was there still a chance for them, in that case? Or had he ruined the first real thing that he'd actually liked.