HOLD ME CLOSER (BL/BXB)

Thirty-Two

"Damn it. Damn it. Damn it." I could not help but giggle at how frustrated Scott was with the whole situation. And I could not even believe that the whole silent trip was a thing that I nearly choked on my own breath.

After the post, and how malicious it was that it ruined my confidence around him, he was determined to bring us closer again and now I did feel kind of awkwardness between us because I knew he would be probably thinking that the post about me liking him was true.

"Stop laughing at me." He told me after kicking the tire of the car.

"What are we going to do? The last gas station that I saw was quite far. I don't know if we can walk our way there."

"No need. Let's just wait to see if there will be cops or anything that will pass by. We can get some help from them."

"Your phone's dead. We can not make calls, either." I told him.

"How unlucky we are?"

"Hey, at least we got the cakes delivered. No delays happened." I tried to be positive. He sat down on the ground and leaned his back on the car. He was watching the sunset and I looked around to see if there were cars around but there wasn't.

"Where are we?"

"It’s a shortcut to our town. Only a few knew about this path, and there weren't many cars around, so it was a traffic-free zone."

"Oh, I see." I sat beside him as we watched the yellow skies turn orange. I heard him spew out a few sighs, and it had only been a couple of minutes had passed by. We just stayed there. Admiring the sun. Admiring how peaceful it was in the middle of an unknown road.

"What exactly did you do?" I asked. I was curious about the last time we were in the kitchen of his house. As I remembered, he said that it took him a lot of effort to do something about the post.

"About what?" He asked. He turned his head towards my direction and stared at my face for quite a while, which made me conscious about my appearance. Due to that, my eyes started to admire the pebbles underneath me.

"The post. You said last time that you did something."

"Ah." He scratched his head. "Promise me you won’t be mad."

"Since when did I get mad at you?" I asked curiously. It was true, though. I never got mad at him. Annoyed, possibly. But most of the time, I'm embarrassed. Not embarrassed because he was my friend. Ashamed because he made me feel things that I shouldn’t. Just like what he did last night.

"Yeah. You're right. You never got mad. And people used that because you would rather spend the whole bad things that happened to you all by yourself." He told me.

"I am not." I denied his remarks.

"Yes, you are. Just like after the post appeared, what did you do when we crossed paths in front of your room."

"I ran." I whispered. He made me say out what I just did to him.

"Yeah, that's it. You freaking ran. Like I looked all around the campus so that I can have a good talk about you and what my plans are regarding the culprit of the post."

"So what did you exactly do?" I asked again because our conversations were getting sidetracked.

"I threatened them." His tone reeked of how proud he was about what he did.

"What?" I asked in disbelief.

"You heard me, right? I threatened them. I chatted with the admin of the freedom wall page after a friend of mine sent me the screenshot of the post." He narrated. "I sent them the screenshots and asked them to remove it. Of course, they didn’t want to because it was getting so much traction. Those fuckers. But I told them that if they don't, I'll report them at the Dean's office and will get their pages removed."

"So brave of you." I joked.

"Of course, I can't just stand there and watch you when I see you bawling your eyes out in the hallways." I lightly punched him on his shoulders.

"I am not bawling my eyes out." I tried to deny it. I just wanted to redeem myself.

"Yes, you are. After that, they took down the post, but I know it's too late, so I make another threat."

"I thought it was the end. Like, if I were also them, I would be terrified of being in the Dean's office or something."

"Nah, they're just afraid to lose thousands of likes and followers from their pages. But I wished I could go to far more lengths and get them expelled."

"That's kind of cruel of you, I think."

"And I am afraid you would think of me as such so I did not do any of it." The sun was already setting and we held our eyes together for quite a while now. So I decided to look around. Maybe I could find something that would help us.

"However, I did find who was behind all of that. Just like what I expected, they gave me who sent the post with a simple threat of them getting into the Disciplinary office for posting malicious, damaging and hurtful content." He explained.

"Who is it?" I asked curiously.

"It was some random girl from our department who I happened to see lingering around your building quite often."

Oh, was that the girl I bumped into a few weeks ago? There were three of them so how could I possibly know which one from them?

"I confronted her. How could she possibly do such a thing to someone I care about the most? She probably lost herself somewhere that she just spewed out nonsensical things."

"Oh, I see." I glanced at him then back at the setting sun. I let him continue the talk as my eyes were determined to look for the beauty of the setting sun.

"However, forgive me. I am so sorry."

"Why is that?" I asked. He was the one spewing nonsense now. Apologizing all of the sudden.

"It may come out rude to you or something. But I felt quite conflicted with the post." He sighed. "I was so naive that I could not tell you this before. However, I did sense anger at the post. I do. I hated everyone behind it and I would like to have them punished. But on the other hand---I don't know. I was acting weird. I felt a little bit of joy sparked up inside of me after seeing that post."

"What do you mean?" This time I was the one conflicted with what he was saying.

"I don't know if there's a chance but after seeing that, I really wished you really did feel something at me like the way I do to you."

***
Okay. How is this update to you guys? This is the progress we all have been waiting for. We're almost 5k guys. Never got that kind of numbers before here at Wattpad and now we were this close 🤏 to it. Thank you for the support, love, voting, the comment that I love rereading. Much love from me. Will update as soon as possible.