She lay quietly sobbing on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks, onto her pillow. He had promised, he seemed to want her, but he forgot. He always forgets; has he forgotten her? Does he love her? Is he truly worth her tears? Yes, she thinks he is, but is he really? Her friends look at her, crying over this stupid guy that's hurting her so much, by doing so little. One believes him to be worthless, just trying to get into her pants; the others don't give a hint as to what they believe. Selphie looks up slowly, eyeing all of her friends sitting there looking at her. She wipes the tears from her eyes self-consciously, fearing what Rinoa would say next. She looks Rinoa in the eye and braces herself mentally, "He's not worth it" Rinoa states quietly.

Selphie's face turns angry, "you only say that 'cause he's your ex!" She looks away from Rinoa, to seek help from her other friends; Yuna and Tifa sit there quietly, not taking sides, for fear of losing a friend, or two. Rinoa hasn't taken her eyes off Selphie this whole time, she hates to see Seifer do this to one of her friends, the same thing he did to her two years ago.

"He hasn't changed, don't you see that?" Rinoa says suddenly, Yuna jumps and looks at her. Rinoa turns to face her other friends, "Don't you guys agree?" Yuna shrugs helplessly and Tifa just stares at her a moment. Rinoa turns her attention back to Selphie, who seems to be thinking about the situation, maybe even taking it seriously. She's not one for taking anything seriously, not even school work, especially boys. She seems to have the mind of a child, though she's already eighteen and she should be happy, running around with the perfect boyfriend. Selphie depends on everyone, and has yet to find the perfect match. Yuna's guy left sometime ago, unsure about his existence in her life, she's having a rough time of it, but dealing. Rinoa has Squall, who will always be there for her. Tifa is not one to get along with guys intimately, she could be somewhat friends, and could easily put up with Squall and Seifer, though they both could be a pain at times, but couldn't any guy?

Rinoa nervously plays with the rings around her neck, "Selphie, did he tell you about what he did to me?" All three friends turn to face Rinoa; she had never shared this story before, for fear of what people may think.

"He told me that he made you feel bad and manipulated you into making out with him," Selphie replies, "Why?"

"That's not all that happened Selphie, you could say that's the watered-down version of the story," Replies Rinoa, looking at the ground as she speaks, "do you want to hear my side of the story?" she asks. The three friends look at each other, and then nod.

Rinoa sighs deeply, and with her fingers still on the rings, she begins, "Alright, so I guess we'll start off with why I was hanging out with Seifer in the first place. At the time, Squall got in trouble and was unavailable for a long period of time, and I knew he'd be away for several weeks. He couldn't call, talk, get together, or do anything and believe me when I say that I was going insane."

She stops to shift her weight on the pillow with everyone staring at her, she continues, "So then all of a sudden, Seifer starts getting online a whole lot, and I used something on his profile as an excuse to talk to him, it said 'Ask me one question, and I will answer it', or something like that. I don't remember the question that I asked, but he seemed different from what I remembered, more respectable. He even called me a woman, which made me feel like an adult. He flattered me, and he did it so well, I didn't see what he was trying to do. We talked about a lot of different things, including what had happened between us, how he felt about it, why I did what I did, and he made me feel like shit about it. I was starving for attention, and I see that now, but then I didn't care who it was from, to me Seifer just made the whole thing even more exciting. I ended up becoming 'friends-with-benefits' with Seifer, without the whole sex thing of course."

Rinoa shifts uneasily as she prepares herself for the next part, then she turns to her friends, "None of this is spoken of to anyone else." They all nod. "Okay, so before the official link of 'friends-with-benefits', I decided I should speak with Squall about this whole thing, so that weekend I went to a church related event with him, I won't bore you with details, and I essentially asked him to let me see Seifer 'on the side' I guess you could say. He said yes, but on three conditions,"

Rinoa stops, looking at the frustrated expressions on her friends faces, they just wanted her to continue, but she needed to decide if this was really appropriate for their ears. She decided that she had to trust them. They were her best friends after all. "The three conditions were: one," Rinoa holds up one finger, "to burn him a CD, easy right? Okay, two," she puts up another finger, "I have to take him to the prom, it could not be Seifer. The third thing," she puts up the last finger, "is to remain a mystery, he told me I'd know one day."

Tifa moans, "Are ya gonna tell us?"

Rinoa shakes her head, "what makes you think I know what the last thing is?"

Yuna enters in the conversation, "your face."

Rinoa looks at her funny, "now you sound like my sister," she laughs, "okay, so I know the third thing, but it's not important. I'm freakin' telling you my life story here." They all giggle.

"Pllleeeaaassee??" whines Selphie

Rinoa sighs, "Okay, but you need to promise to clean your room later."

"You sound like my mother," Selphie states unhappily, but she agrees to do it.

"Alright," Rinoa begins, "the third thing," she holds up three fingers, "was that Squall has to be my first." Rinoa turns scarlet and looks away, everyone is speechless.

"That's…an interesting request," begins Yuna, "did you agree to it?"

Rinoa nods, "I love him; I don't see why not, I mean we're engaged."

"You are?" they all say in unison

Rinoa sighs and holds up her left hand, sure enough there's a ring on her ring finger. "Can we get back on topic now? Alright, so I made that deal with Squall, and became 'friends-with-benefits' with Seifer. Fun stuff, anyway, so since Squall was still away, I began spending a lot of time with Seifer, I would go to the library after school with him, but that was the extent of places we went together, school and the library. At the library he sat with me, kissed me on the hand, he used to do that when we went out, and wrapped his arm around me, but he also tried to go both north and south, eventually I dropped a huge hint that I didn't want him to do that by moving his hand, he got it thankfully. Then things became a little bit scarier. He would take me to a secluded part of the library, and kiss me on the lips. It felt strange; I never kissed a guy other then Squall. I never really made out with him, only a kiss or two on the lips, because it felt so strange. I essentially missed the feeling of Squalls lips, and that was hard. The whole thing did not last more then a few weeks, since it was not long before his commander found out about us. One day at the garden he pulled me aside and told me that he needed to talk to me. I wasn't sure what he meant so I told him I would talk to him after work."

Rinoa shifts slowly, uneasy about the next couple of sentences. Her friends seemed to be listening to what she had to say, but was Selphie being affected in anyway? Rinoa couldn't tell. She decided to continue, she sighs and trudges on. "So I met up with Seifer, and he took me to an isolated staircase. He sat me down on a step and proceeded to inform me that somehow his commander had found out about us, and demanded that we stop. I asked how she found out, and he responded that a friend of hers had been at the library the other day, and told her what she had seen, or something like that. I'm not sure what he said after that, but I kissed him, and he tried to french me, he did, and I pulled away, he responded by saying, 'jeeze am I really that bad of a kisser.' I didn't want to bring up the fact that I missed Squall, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I told him that he was a good kisser, but that is was weird for me and I left it at that. Throughout the whole time he kept asking for things, and when I hesitated, he'd talk about how awful he was and apologize, I felt bad, so I gave him what he wanted to an extant, but I didn't ever say anything, I kept my mouth shut, and answered by shaking my head."

Rinoa stands up suddenly and sits on the bed, "my butt's falling asleep. Okay, so the next thing he asked for was he wanted to touch my breasts. I nodded, but I didn't take off my sweatshirt, I just leaned against him so that he could reach. I was frightened; it reminded me of a past event that was caused by him as well. But for some reason I felt like I owed him for everything that happened between us—"

"What happened?" interrupts Selphie

"Let's just say that when we were dating, he jumped to second base, without asking, or even hitting the ball. We hadn't kissed or anything and he touched me under my shirt, I couldn't move because people were there and I was afraid of what they would think, I was terrified but I couldn't do anything about it." Rinoa sighs as if suppressing a frightening image. "Alright, back to what I was originally talking about, so he was touching me through my sweatshirt, but a few moments later he asked me to take off my sweatshirt, but I just shook my head, I didn't want to go that far. He didn't say anything; he just took what he could get. We sat there in silence for a while, he stopped for a few moments, then grabbed my hand," Rinoa stops for a second, trying to calm down and tell the story without wanting to run away from her friends, "He grabbed my hand and said 'let me show you something.' And he started moving my hand, I knew what was coming, I don't know how, but I knew, and that was something I did not want to do, so I jerked my hand, he help tight told me it was okay and continued to move my hand in the direction of his pants. I responded by saying no and pulling my hand away. I was shaking slightly, but he couldn't see it. 'Look I just wanted to show you, I wouldn't be hard if I didn't like you.' That's pretty much what he said to me. I turned away and crossed my arms, I was afraid of what he may do next. 'We should go back' that's what I said. He stood up and arranged himself; I grabbed my sketchbook and walked down the stairway. I didn't really see him at all after that, just in school."

She stops for a moment, "that's why I don't like him all that much, too many bad memories. Remember, he had told me that he had changed. However, he hadn't he'd gotten worse, but besides that, I've been seeing the same behavior in him now that I did when I was dating him in the beginning. Sweet and funny at first, then he does things like forget to call and such, you know?" She looks at Selphie, waiting for a response…