Teach me

Jeremy isn't invisible. He has friends. A group chat that never shuts up. A seat at every lunch table that matters. He gets invited to things. He knows how to laugh at the right time and keep his head down when he needs to.

He's not unpopular. He's just never the guy.

When it comes to girls, he's background noise. The one you dap up. The one you call "cute" in a way that means absolutely nothing. The one who somehow always ends up holding someone's drink while she goes to talk to someone else.

Sharon has never been background noise.

In elementary school she was the "Sharon touch." In middle school she was the weird one. The angry one. The girl people made into a story before they ever tried to understand her.

Now she's still a story, just a different version.

Now she's the girl with a reputation. The one people talk about like they were there. The one they judge and want at the same time.

A stupid party game brings up Jeremy's biggest insecurity in front of everyone. It's not brutal. It's just honest enough to sting.

Sharon notices, offering her help. Not in a soft way. Not like she feels bad for him. More like she thinks it's fixable.

She says she'll teach him how to get a girl.

It's supposed to be practice. Just lessons. Just proving something.

But it turns out pretending is harder than it sounds. Especially when you've both spent years standing on opposite sides of the same hallway.

They were never as opposite as people made them out to be.

And maybe the problem isn't that Jeremy doesn't know how to get a girl.

Maybe it's that he's been looking in the wrong direction the whole time.