Author: fraidy bat

Rating: T

Pairings: Olivia/Viola, Viola/Duke, Sebastian/Yvonne implied

Summary: 98 percent of the time still leaves two percent in which anything can happen. A sequel to He's Not You. Viola POV.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from She's the Man. None of it belongs to me.

Notes: Things will pick up after this chapter. Stick with me. :) Hope you still like it.


Chapter 2

For a boy with as little hair as Duke, he certainly took a long time to get himself ready for a simple dinner date. I sat on my brother's bed, one leg crossed over the other, wagging my foot impatiently. He'd already spent ten minutes fussing with his aftershave, and now he was fiddling with the collar of his black button-up shirt.

He glanced at me, and I checked my imaginary watch. "All the food will be gone by the time we get there, Princess."

My sass was rewarded with a little scowl as Duke purposefully gave his collar one last flick. He wasn't actually offended, though, as the slight beginnings of a smile proved. "You should be happy I spend so much time making myself pretty for you."

I stood up and kissed him on the nose. "And I'm very grateful, sweetie. I've seen what you look like in the morning before you have your face on," I jabbed playfully.

He rolled his eyes, shrugged on his leather jacket, and grasped my elbow to pull me out of the room.

It was January and chilly out. Duke had one arm firmly around my shoulders as we walked to his car. In silence, I might add. Not necessarily a bad silence, but an empty one. As soon as we were both ensconced in Duke's sedan, he immediately launched into some story about the latest ridiculous thing Eunice had said or done. I had the sneaking suspicion that I'd already heard this one earlier today, but he was so engaged in telling it that I let him be and laughed at all the right moments. It was pretty funny anyway; Eunice was...unique, to say the least.

The rest of the ride was filled with lively chatter about homework and new semester woes and weird teachers. We avoided the topic of soccer without trying to look like we were avoiding it. Now that the season was over, Duke and I made the somewhat disconcerting discovery that most of our time together was spent on the soccer field, and previous to that, in our shared dorm room. With the last game of the season (division champs, I'd like to point out), we found ourselves smack in the middle of the next stage of our relationship, one that didn't include mandatory hours spent playing soccer and goofing around on the field every day. And since I definitely didn't live with Duke and hadn't for months, we didn't have that either.

At first, nothing felt any different. I saw Duke almost every day of winter break. He impressed me with how much time he willingly spent with my mother, who fussed over him and repeatedly complemented him on his excellent physique. God, my mother is bizarre. It helped to have the strange but welcome presence of my dad at these little gatherings. He slapped Duke on the back a lot and did his best to talk sports. It was awkward at times, having Duke with my family, but I felt like he belonged, imperfect as it was.

When school started back up, we walked and talked in the hallways between classes, had lunch with the guys, and went out on weekends, either with friends or by ourselves. Soccer, or the lack of soccer, really, was the neon green elephant in the room that we persistently ignored. In terms of sheer hours, we spent about half as much time together. Gradually, even though we did our best to pretend it wasn't true, it became clear that without our shared sport, we had less in common than we thought. It would be stupid to say that we had nothing in common besides soccer. Many of my interests definitely overlapped with his, and it certainly helped that we loved each other and enjoyed being together. But more and more, we found ourselves swimming around in those neutral silences, eventually forcing ourselves to break out of them with recycled stories or routine discussion of the latest crappy thing that had happened in class.

We were trying a new restaurant that evening, and I was glad about that. Cesario's was great, but it came with too much baggage, and there were certain suitcases that threatened more and more often to explode all over me, suitcases that I really wanted to stay shut. So here we sat in a new booth in a new place, one of those nondescript bar and grill joints that tended to seem just like the bar and grill place two blocks down but with a different name and slightly different quirky Americana décor all over the walls. I hate to admit that I wasn't really paying much attention to whatever Duke was saying. Truthfully, I was wondering if he was going to resort to asking me about cheese or something equally desperate soon.

Somehow, without our knowledge, we had settled. I blame the end of soccer for it. Or maybe it happened before soccer ended and we just hadn't noticed. Or didn't want to. Whenever it happened, it definitely hit me in the face that evening. It felt like a wet fish, or at least as unpleasant. I knew Duke pretty damn well by now, and he knew me just as well. I was acquainted with all his habits, and he mine. It pissed me off that it happened now, in our teenage years, when normally this kind of thing doesn't happen until middle age, or at least after a few years of marriage. The relationship was predictable, stagnant. We were doggie paddling through just to keep above water.

I can't describe my frustration at this. I loved him, I was still very attracted to him, and I wanted him in my life. I didn't know anything about how he felt about it, but I could tell that he sensed the same 'cooling down' I did. All I knew was that we spent less time together, had fewer things to talk about, and slipped into a rut. Something like fear grabbed at my heart and squeezed.

I don't want this to be over.

Duke was ordering food now, and I closed my eyes, knowing exactly what he would have.

Double burger, no pickles, curly fries. Dr. Pepper.

"Hey, um, I'll have the double burger with the curly fries. And no pickles on the burger."

"And to drink?" asked the tired server, her attempt at a bright and sunny customer service tone sounding flat and hollow.

"Dr. Pepper. Thanks."

I opened my eyes and ordered the chicken salad, wondering if Duke knew I was going to. If he did, he made no indication of it.

I mentioned a movie we'd seen recently, and that sent us off into a lengthy discussion of what Duke had hated about it. He smiled at me and spoke animatedly, and there was something in his demeanor that nagged at me.

Relief.

Relief to be talking about something legitimate. I hoped I was imagining it, all of it, that we were fine, and our relationship wasn't drowning after all. Along with the fear that clenched at my heart, something else was sneaking up on me, something dark and terrible of me for even thinking.

This is her fault.

The wave of bitterness that swept over me left me feeling stunned and ashamed of myself. It was my fault, only mine, but the new unfortunate turn with me and Duke left me panicking and searching for someone to blame.

When at my most despicable, I liked to think that the slowdown between me and Duke was because of the stuff with Olivia. It was easy to point the finger at her, saying to myself, "If she hadn't told me all that junk about being in love with me…" "If she hadn't broken up with Sebastian…" "If she hadn't tried to end our friendship…" "If she hadn't kissed me…"

That last resentful thought was always, always followed by smaller, more worried one: "If I hadn't enjoyed it…"

There it was, the thing that I did everything I could to keep tucked away somewhere. It bothered me for several reasons, the first of which being that it served as an inconvenient reminder that Olivia and I would never have ended up where we were when it happened if I hadn't deceived her with my male impersonation to begin with. Second, it made me feel guilty that Duke, a guy I loved, was the one I should be focusing on, and here I was thinking about how I had enjoyed kissing someone else. The third and final reason for my constant burial of it and how it made me feel was that it scared the living shit out of me.

I love Duke. Olivia is just my friend.

How many times a day did I repeat that to myself? Too many. It was becoming more difficult every day for me to completely believe it. Oh, I didn't doubt that I loved Duke. I really did. It was the question of how much, and how long would it last. As for the other half of the statement…

I knew Olivia had a hard time with me, especially when Duke was around. We both knew why. This was not the problem for me. Hell, it wasn't the first time a girl had liked me. I learned how to deal with that years ago. The problem was this little tiny pinprick in my heart that appeared when Olivia finally told me everything and kissed me. It only got bigger when it looked like she was out of my life for good, and when I held her in my arms and we decided we could still be friends, it tore open just a little bit more.

The problem was the way this hole in my heart sometimes felt when I could sense that she was unhappy, or when we were laughing together about something, or she was particularly close to me for some reason. It didn't happen all the time, this feeling, but every once in a while, my heart felt like it would just rip wide open and let Olivia come pouring in.

I was simply not ready for that, nor did I want it to happen. I wanted to be happy with my boyfriend and keep Olivia as my friend. I wanted to find that spark between me and Duke again. I wanted the tear in my heart to close up, or at least not get any bigger.

Duke stopped talking about the movie and regarded me carefully across the table. "Are you okay, Vi? You seem kinda…elsewhere."

He was very cute when he was concerned. "I'm here, Duke. I was just thinking about school."

"Yeah." He smiled and bit into the double burger without pickles that I had predicted.

I smiled back, took a bite of my chicken salad, and pushed any thoughts of Olivia and the hole in my heart far, far away.

Maybe this time they won't come back.