Morgan smiled with understanding. “It’s just nice to have someone else there,” she explained. “Just going to the gym is like just doing work. Sometimes doing work with other people around makes it enjoyable.”
“But aren’t you distracted?” I asked. “You’re doing stuff with the machinery and… yeah.”
Morgan gave me a contained smirk. “You could always watch me be distracted,” she offered.
“The whole time? I’d feel like a creep,” I honestly replied.
Morgan shook her head but kept her smile on her face. “Okay then, let’s settle. Half the time you look at me. The other half… did you bring a book to your final or something?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really reading anything right now anyways.”
“What do you do for fun then?”
“Um, in public? I don’t go out in public a lot, but… I guess I play my 3DS sometimes on the bus.”
“Your what?”
“It’s like a handheld video game console.”
She shrugged and stretched her arms. “Okay, then we can swing by your place and pick it up on the way. You play for half the time, then the other half you look at me.”
I chuckled and grinned at her. “Am I supposed to understand you, or are you being deliberately… strange?”
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?” she immediately shot back.
My smile faded. “Did it come across hurtfully?”
“No, don’t worry. I’m being… this is my way of being flirtatious.” She let a beat of silence pass between us, then her smile resumed, albeit playfully. “Since we both know you won’t be.”
“How would I even be flirtatious?” I asked.
“How…?” Morgan gave me a weird look.
“Yeah. How. Pretend I’m a socially awkward dork and you’re my first ever girlfriend, and that I have no experience flirting.” We’d stopped walking by now, even though we were close to the carpark exit. “What would you say I should do?”
“Well, there are many ways to flirt, Quinn,” she replied.
“Yeah, but I want to flirt the way that makes you feel the best.”
She smiled. “Well, there you go, you just did it,” she replied softly.
I shook my head. “Aren’t you popular? You could date literally any guy and all of them know how to just talk to you, and you go for me and act like I did something huge when I give you a weird awkward… thing like that.”
“Have you ever thought that I wanted to date you because of who you are, not despite who you are?!” Morgan asked, with a surprising amount of heat to her voice.
I remained quiet for a while, processing her answer. I felt like the biggest baby in the world, because the more I thought about it, the more I felt my eyes start to water. I wasn’t even sad or anything, it was like… shock tears or something. I rapidly turned away from Morgan and faced the wall.
I could hear her come up behind me. “Hug me. Do something. I don’t need to see your eyes,” she ordered.
“Give me a sec,” I immediately replied, breathing in and out a few times. I turned around and obliged her, giving her a hug which she accepted. “You’re really nice to me.”
“You’re really honest with me, and I like the nice things you say,” she replied with an earnest tone.
I pulled back from the hug and leaned in to kiss her. We closed our eyes and let a single slow kiss pass between us. Even so, time stopped. It felt like my soul was being dragged out of my body, swirling around with hers in a whirlpool, then slowly making its way back into me. We both smiled slightly as the kiss ended.
“I like that you did that,” she told me quietly. “Please stop telling me to stop liking you though.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” I admitted.
“I don’t care. It’s not fair to either of us when you say it. No girl likes hearing it, and it only makes you more unsure of yourself to hear yourself say it. If you want to see things objectively, who benefits from you saying it?”
“Well, that’s not really objectivity, it’s more l-…”
I stopped myself as I saw Morgan’s eyelids lowering. I recomposed myself and cleared my throat. “No one,” I admitted. “It’s a defence mechanism.”
“It’s a bad habit,” Morgan corrected me. “And not to suck my own dick, but I’m patient. Is your next girlfriend going to stick around when you do this pity party every few times you hang out?”
‘Next’ girlfriend? That was a Catch-22 if ever I saw one. Answering her would be like admitting there was going to be a next, but questioning the phrasing of ‘next’ would have been too bold. I had to not reply at all.
“What do you mean, next?” I asked, unable to stop myself. Thankfully, Morgan only winked in response. Not knowing what else to say, I started to walk for the doors and Morgan followed, no doubt a small smile on her face.
I realized once we got outside that I didn’t quite know which car to look for, though Morgan was happy to show me the way. After catching up to me, she gestured off towards the end of the carpark, where an idling car sat with a certain someone inside.
“Taylor? We’re going with Taylor?” I couldn’t help but blurt out.
“You know I don’t drive. You really couldn’t figure it out? Gifted kid,” she teased.
I stayed rooted to the ground for a few seconds. Something inside of me, weirdly, did not want to get into the car with Taylor, even though I’d done so more than a dozen times at this point, several with Morgan.
That said, what was I going to do, just stand there forever? I blinked a couple of times, regaining my composure, and walked forward with purpose, catching up to Morgan and greeting Taylor with a simple wave.
It was hard to tell if Taylor was completely nonchalant with me, or was trying to communicate with me less than usual because she was trying to prove a point or something. To be fair, she and Morgan were clearly close friends, and I guess I was some guy until a short time ago, so of course they were closer, although I shared a bond with her that Morgan clearly didn’t. I shuddered to think about that.
“Can we stop by Quinn’s on the way there?” Morgan asked when Taylor began driving. “He’s got to pick up his 3DS.”
“Um, why? Does he need it?” Taylor asked.
“He’d feel better with it, and his place is on the way, isn’t it?” Morgan continued.
“I… guess…” Taylor replied, dragging out each word, clearly inviting further comment on why her words were so pained. When no one did, she just huffed. “I just don’t get why he’d need it.”
“He doesn’t,” Morgan replied, cool as a cucumber. “I’m just asking you to stop by his place so he can get it. We’d appreciate it if you did. If you can’t, let us know.” She was, evidently, an expert at talking to Taylor. Taylor merely shook her head slightly and kept on driving, and a minute or so later, she was at my place.
I didn’t wait for either of them to so much as turn around and look at me. Within seconds I was flying out of the car, running inside, hoping that if I was quick enough, Taylor would like me more or something.
It was hard to tell if I had pissed her off or something, but, that was Taylor for you. It really helped having Morgan there — it was like having a giant neon side that said “if you were in the wrong, I’d be mad at you too, so relax.”
As soon as I was in the apartment, Mother spoke up. “Ah, who is… Quinn!” she exclaimed, turning around from sweeping the floor. “How was last final?”