It's crazy how fast that this story is winding down. 3 more chapters for each story. I really hope you enjoy this chapter.
My gaze shifted between my date and my ex my head spinning. I knew that Missy would do something to try and get between Riley and I, but would she really come up with suck an elaborate story? And why would Riley have looked so terrified at the accusation?
"I don't know what you're talking about." She denied. I didn't know if I could believe her, she seemed off, something that I couldn't place my finger on. I heard Missy gasp in shock as her anger was starting to catch up to her, which was typical Missy.
"That's not true! She confessed to me!" Missy was prone to over exaggerate, but this was quite a story she was weaving. I saw Riley shift uncomfortably from the stare of the headmaster.
"I've barely seen this girl in my life. I think she's in my English class. I do remember a conversation where she wanted me to drop out of the Homecoming race." The conversation was news to me, I wondered if that caused some of Riley's behavior at some point.
"Missy, congratulations, you have proven nothing except that they are twins." She hissed the last word. Missy didn't seem all too happy from the interaction. I had only met her once outside of school and that was plenty, I wasn't sure if it was because of the encounter or the lady.
"No, I'm telling you." I watched Missy tried to continue the commotion.
"Missy that's enough." I grimaced at the sharpness of her words. The older women regained her composure and straightened her jacket.
"Now if you excuse me, I have to make sure that the rest of the school population doesn't sneak off on my watch. GO." She started to scoot her away before turning back and apologizing on behalf of her daughter. I couldn't help but be drawn to Missy, her behavior didn't make any sense. My gaze shifted to Riley whose behavior perplex me even further. I noticed the guy that was here as part of Missy's accusation had split. My gaze shifted back to Riley I needed answers and she was one of the only ones who could give them right now.
"Why did you lie to them?" I questioned which seemed to spook her. She was Josh's sister, surely she knew that the guy who was here was not Josh. I shoved my hands in my pockets my gaze transfixed on her.
"What?" She seemed uncomfortable that I caught her lying.
"That guy was not Joshua Matthews," I had been rooming with Josh for a month and I could say that without a doubt I had only seen that guy once to give him directions from the other day. I pointed in the direction the guy had run off in. "I talked to Josh, I roomed with"- Suddenly it all clicked watching her face.
"Missy was telling the truth, wasn't she?" I said in disbelief. When she tore her gaze away from me and it caused my blood to start to boil.
"Lucas"- Expletives slipped out of my mouth as I turned away. I glanced back to see her shrugged, curled up under my gaze.
"Tell me you're lying, tell me that Missy doesn't know what she's talking about, tell me that if I called up Josh right now someone would answer." I needed her to be lying, because even if was it would be a lesser offense than if she wasn't. As her eyes fell to the ground I felt my heart drop to the bottom of my stomach.
"I can't." My worst fears were coming true before me.
"My brother he has a passion for photography, and he got kicked out of school so they transferred him here. He got in his head to join this competition but because of his past, he would get sent to a military school, I couldn't let them send him away. So I pretended to be Josh. At first it was only supposed to last two weeks, but then everything became so much more complicated when you were my roommate." It was just an excuse even if it was valid reason, it didn't excuse her behavior and lying to me.
"Were you even going to tell me?" I replied harshly watching her flinch slightly at my words.
"Lucas, I tried so many times to tell you"- She tried to step towards me, but all my defenses were up. I just didn't want to be lied to.
"But you didn't"- I corrected her. Her brows narrowed in anger. This time the anger wasn't directed towards my Father but rather towards me.
"What was I supposed to say, oh hey Lucas, it's awesome being your roommate and all, but hey guess what, I'm really a girl and I like you." Her arms bent across her chest furthering what seemed like the distance between us, not necessarily physically.
"I would have listened." There was no telling how I would actually reacted, but now we would never know. Finding out the truth from Missy from all people, it just left a bitter taste in my mouth.
"Would you really?" She questioned, our tones were that of hostile behavior, boiling my blood.
"Yes." I fought back. It was almost if I wasn't in total control over the words that were flowing out of my mouth. "You knew that I had problems with lying Riley, and so the best thing you could think of was to keep something this major for me. It's almost like"- I hesitated, this thought was brought up by the dark corners of my mind, and I shuttered at the thought.
"Say it." She ordered with a certain coldness in her voice.
"It's almost as bad as Missy." Sure it sounded heartless coming out of my mouth, but her not telling me would be a move that my previous girlfriend would make. Secrets never really boded well for me. It made it worse that Missy did tell me before Riley was caught and I didn't believe her.
"How could you say that?" Her voice cracked, and it almost caused me to reconsider everything, but I couldn't give in to those eyes.
"How could you not tell me? Don't real friends talk? You didn't trust me enough to tell me"- The words failed me and I shook my head back and forth. Our fight was only making me want to go kick a tree or something.
"Lucas"- She kept trying to move towards me, but I stepped back to put more distance between us.
"I need some space." I needed time and space to figure this whole situation out.
"Lucas,"- She took another couple steps forward.
"I said I need some space!" I shouted, and my mind flashed to point where I had fist in the air with the same doe eyes that widened obviously scared. I stumbled back my head spinning, I needed to put as much distance between us as possible. I turned started to jog, stumbling a little bit. I pushed out the sound of Riley calling my name.
My feet couldn't outrun my mind. I had almost punched Riley. It was when Riley was Josh, but the thought that I almost laid my hand on a girl, let alone Riley, made me sick to my stomach. If I would have known- but that was the thing, I didn't know. If I had I probably would have put up a wall between us and definitely not talked about the personal things with her. It was almost embarrassing that I revealed some to her, she probably thought I was the world's biggest idiot. I slammed my hand into the brink wall the pain spreading as the side effect.
How could I possibly not know that my roommate was a girl? Were all the signs there and I just missed them, or was Riley that good at hiding her tracks?
It would have been different if she just told me, I might have been made at first but I would have gotten over it. There were plenty of opportunities where she could have chosen to tell me, but she didn't. I thought we had a serious bond of trust, that we could tell each other anything, but I played the fool in this scenario.
Despite covering for her brother, which was a valid reason, the cover up was worse than the lie in this scenario. She made me believe that we were friend, someone that I could tell anything to. Josh had a way of making me open up and talk about the important things in life. He got me to talk about the vet office and my passion for that, he was the one who pushed me to peruse that instead of what my Father had planned.
I opened up to him about my father and there were very few people in my life that I talked about that with, let alone take their advice on how to proceed. And even besides that Riley standing up to my Father during the Thanksgiving break left me speechless and made me more attracted to her. How could she stand up to a man like that but be afraid to tell me. There was no way I was more intimidating than my father.
What's worse was my Mother really liked Riley, and the fact that Riley and I were now fighting would hurt her so much. Riley was among a selective few that my Mother actually liked. I could see why, she was smart, beautiful, kind, and had a future in front of her. A future that I didn't know if I would be a part of. I just knew one thing, I had to get out of my own mind. If I stayed here I would go around in circles till the sun rose over the horizon. I walked back towards the dance, hoping that I could finish the puzzle. I wanted to talk to Riley and see the rest of the story, they must be something else I didn't know. I entered the door and the room burst out in applause, my eyebrows narrowed in confusion. I got patted on the back as people shoved me towards the stage. It wasn't long before a crown got placed on my head. The bright lights were blinding to say the least, when I wanted something to take my mind off things, this was not what I had in mind.
"And now for the Queen, nominated, Missy Braford, Kayla Reynolds, and Riley Matthews." My body froze, Riley? My eyes immediately started to search the floor for the brunette.
"And the winner is..." In the brief pause it seemed like everyone was either on the edge of their seats, or they were disinterested.
"Riley Matthews." Some applause scattered the room, but the winner didn't make her way up on the stage. The announcer tried calling her name again, but the same outcome occurred. He turned to the DJ in a panic and music started to play resuming the dance's activities. I jumped off stage in time to see a pissed off Missy storm out of the room in a huff. I made my way towards Zay, Farkle and Smackle.
"Hey congratulations!" Zay patted my back. I didn't care about winning the title, but it was an ego booster.
"Thanks," I brushed off his praise.
"Where's Riley?" It might be more pointed than I meant it to be judging by how the three of them responded. Smackle crossed her hands over her chest, disapproval flashed over Farkle's face and Zay looked all shades of uncomfortable.
"Maybe that's not the best plan, considering everything that happened." Zay said causing my face to scrunch in confusion.
"Everything that"- My voice stopped no longer able to continue, my mind putting together his statement.
"Wait"- Everything clicked for the second time of the night.
"You knew didn't you?" When Zay coughed filling the awkward silence between us, my blood riled up again. Not only did Riley not tell me, as my gaze shifted around the circle everyone avoided eye contact with me; it seemed like I was the ONLY one that was left out of the loop.
"Lucas, you have to understand."- I was getting sick and tired of everyone telling me that I have to understand. Was I the only one feeling like I had been played time and time again? It was a sucker punch to my stomach that my real best friend couldn't even tell me or hint towards the secret that Riley had.
"I don't need to understand, I needed the truth. Did everyone know about this; except me?" When they all adverted their eyes it was enough of an answer.
"I can't believe this." I threw up my hands up in frustration and began stalking towards the exit.
"Come on Lucas, don't be like this." Zay put his hand on my shoulder and spun me around. I shrugged off his hand as our eyes locked.
"I don't have time for this." I didn't want to lose my temper beyond my control twice in one night. I already lost one of my best friends, I couldn't lose both of them.
"Not right now Zay." I snapped. He held his hand in defensive backing off at my bark. I took the opportunity to leave and separate myself from everything. It was one thing that Riley was keeping something from me, it was a completely different thing that she was keeping this secret from just me. I needed to escape and get my mind off things.
A few hours later I was surprised when the door shifted open and the guy from earlier, who I can only assume would be the real Joshua Matthews strolled in. He stopped short of his bed and looked in my direction.
"Hi, I'm the real Joshua Matthews," he held out his hand awkwardly. At first all I could do was look at it like it was an alien from another planet.
"Look, I know things are kind of tense between you and Riley right now, but she talked about how cool you were all the time. So let's put all of this behind us, and move forward on a fresh slate." That sounded so tempting, a clean slate, to forget everything that happened over the past couple weeks, but I knew that was impossible, I had met Riley. She changed my world and encouraged me to follow my dreams no matter who stood in my way. But the pain that I felt from Riley or any of my other friends, Josh had nothing to do with it. He may have started the whole thing, but he wasn't responsible for how everyone else responded.
"I'd like that." I grabbed his hands in a firm handshake as a smile appeared on his lips. He let out a low whistle at my game system set up.
"Does part of my roommate privileges extend to whopping you in Zombie kill 4?" I smirked in response.
"You wish." I tossed him a controller and booted the system up. Everything about interacting with Josh was easy compared to my first encounter with Josh. But as we battled my lips tugged down in a smile. Everything was different. Not that it was bad, but I was just used to how Jos-Riley, I corrected myself, was. Riley was terrible at video games, not only did I enjoy the ego boost, but I knew that I could always count on him-her. The guy next to me was a complete stranger, and somehow it felt like something was missing, in my mind I kept trying to push the thought down because I knew the answer; it was Riley.
A.N.- I have a plan, just trust me :) Let me know what you think. Till next time.