Dylan's PoV:
We take a seat under a tree, and for quite a relatively long period of time, we just remain silent. Staring at the ever changing view ahead of us, taking notice of random passers by, wandering down the street across from the school's garden.
The air around us grows thick by the passing seconds, it's like we both have a lot going on inside of our heads but no one wants to break the silence first.
I swallow the nervousness, and hope my act of courage isn't interpreted wrongly.
"Why did you do that?" I ask curiously, turning my upper half in her direction.
"What do you mean?" She answers me with a question of her own, accompanied with scrunched eyebrows. Her hands picking at the dead grass beneath us.
"I mean why did you stand up for that freshman kid against Felix and the football team?" I clarify.
"Why did you stand up for me against Felix and the football team?" She retorts back with an inquisitive gaze upon her face.
"Stop answering my questions with questions" I finalize and she sighs, as if preparing herself for an energy consuming challenge.
"For the longest time in my life, I wouldn't stand up to anyone. Whether they were bothering me or someone else for that matter" she starts with a look of shame and uneasiness evident in her features.
"I used to see the jocks bully others and just shrug it off, thinking that it's non of my business. If I don't interfere in their lives, they don't interfere in mine. And for as long as I can remember, it has always been like that". She confesses honestly, staring ahead.
"I mean I wouldn't even stand up for myself when they verbally bullied me, so how could I help others when I was helpless myself?"
"I used to think that guys like Felix and Ryan only bully others as a distraction of what is really going on in their personal lives. It's not that I'm justifying their actions; I know it's wrong and inexcusable, but I thought that what they have to deal with on their own, was perhaps much worse than this".
"But today, they shoved that kid and almost punched him, I felt guilty just standing there doing nothing to help. But it seems that I put a target on my back"
She shakes her head hastily, as if shrugging off all that she has spilled out "You now probably think I'm a bad person for that, and I mean you aren't exactly wrong, and I can't blame you fo-" I cut her blabbering off.
"I honestly don't think of you as a bad person" She seems taken aback by my reassuring statement.
"What? I mean I'm sure I just confessed how I deliberately chose to ignore their behaviors for my own benefit. That doesn't make me a bad person?" Furrowing her eyebrows in concentration, a cute pout appears on her pink lips.
"No, even good people are great at making bad decisions" I shrug indifferently.
[a/n: NF fans, caught the reference? 😉]
"So, what in your opinion differs good people from bad people, if it's not the choices we make?" She asks quizzically.
"Sometimes you don't need to identify what bad people are like to know the difference, you just have spot the good ones"
I shift my gaze towards her, to find her light brown eyes already studying me, like she's trying to assemble all the broken pieces that fit the puzzle.
Her face is pale from the winter air, except for her red colored puffy cheeks and slim, minute nose. Her caramel like hair swirls around her face in bits and pieces falling in strands on my brown leather jacket that she's wearing.
Her eyes have that mysterious glint to them; the kind that sucks you in more and more the closer you get, and when people ask you how you drowned, you'd have no clue what to tell them.
Suddenly, I'm woken up from my hazy headspace when I hear the ringing of my phone in my jacket pocket.
Sophie takes out my phone from my jacket she's wearing and passes it to me. I take a look at the caller ID to find it's non other than Lexi.
The name written on the screen serves as a slam to the face, seeming that Sophie clears her throat and focuses her glance on the scenery in front of us.
Waves of uncomfortableness crash through me, and I hesitate before pressing the accept button and bringing the device closer to my ear.
"Hello" I say.
"Hey babe, where are you?" Lexi asks in a super high pitched tone, causing my ear to turn half deaf in the process.
"I'm still in school, just had to take care of something. Where are you?" I reply in the most hushed voice I can muster.
"I was waiting by your car and it's so freezing cold. I've waited for like 10 minutes and you still weren't there, so I caught a ride with Cole" She says and I sigh.
Distancing the phone from my ear, I check the time; indeed school was over nearly fifteen minutes ago.
"I'm nearly finished, and I'm heading out" I inform her and get up to dust myself off.
"Ok, bye babe"
"Bye".
I finish the phone call, expecting Sophie to be standing as well, however I find her still seated as previously.
I hold out my hand to her, "Come on, I'm giving you a ride" I say firmly, she opens her mouth to protest and I shut her up by my next words.
"It's freezing cold, I'm not letting you walk home in this weather" She just nods her head in agreement and doesn't put up a fight to which I'm thankful for.
The car ride was spent in utterly quiet heavy-bearing silence. As though the reminder of Lexi's existence just slammed some unwanted sense into us, the whole atmosphere took a 180 turn, changing from comforting and soothing; to frustrating and tense.
°°°
A/n:
The beginning of something I see...
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Cynical Souls
Teen FictionCOMPLETED✅ Two high school teenagers finding themselves, analyzing this ever changing world, and building love. This is the type of love you wish you found in high school but probably know way too well that it only exists as fiction. Today I'm turni...
