Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball Z or any of its characters.
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Moving forward from that crazy week, and into a Saturday in May...
I'm in my dorm room, lying on my bed, eyes still closed, not ready to wake up yet.
I open my eyes slowly, and as they come into focus, I see Yamato on his bed.
Completely naked.
Instead of calling him out on it, I immediately close my eyes again and pretend to be asleep.
I don't think he noticed.
My cellphone rings. Wonderful, now what do I do?
I very carefully squeeze one eye open to see Yamato's reaction. There isn't one. Either he doesn't hear my cellphone or he doesn't care who sees him. Or he doesn't care that I see him.
I open my eyes entirely and grab the phone.
"Hello?"
Yamato turns to me and smiles seductively.
Over the phone, "Hey, Goten?"
"Yeah, what's up, Trunks?"
"Not much, not much... hey, do you want to--"
I'm distracted by Yamato winking at me.
"What was that?" I ask Trunks.
"See a movie? See a movie tonight? 7:30?"
"Sure! Yeah, I'd love to."
Yamato blows a kiss at me. I shoo him away with my hand. He chuckles lightly.
"Great, I'll --"
I don't really hear the end of it, as Yamato begins to dance around the room and sing loudly, "If I only had a brain..."
I flip him off, turn to the phone and say, "Sounds good, see you tonight," closing the phone. I then turn to Yamato, "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Just fuckin' with ya, Goten," he responds, sitting back on his bed with a mischievous smile.
"God, you're such an asshole."
"Aw, you know you like it," he responds, with another wink.
"Put on some underwear."
"Nah, I feel more free this way," he says, pulling the ponytail holder out of his hair and running his fingers through it, loosening it.
"Ugh, then as a favor to me?"
He stands up, and does a handstand, saying "Go to hell."
At this point, I close my eyes and, without turning back to see him, I get dressed, grab my keys and stuff, and leave.
I look at my cellphone as soon as I'm out the door. It's 2:20. Shit, I slept in for a while.
You know, I think I may have liked Yamato better when he just lay back with his iPod. This semester... man, it's just been weird.
I begin my journey to the cafeteria.
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Although it may seem like it, Yamato is not attracted to me. No one's really attracted to me, I suppose. Bra used to be, but that ended up in the shitter. I haven't seen her since, actually. I'm kinda surprised I was able to pull that off, but considering she doesn't go to college yet, all I have to do is avoid going to Capsule Corp. And that's easy when you're trying to avoid hanging out with Trunks so often in the first place in hopes of losing the attraction (in vain).
Ah well, it'll be okay.
Other than that, the last couple of months have been like any other. After that talk Trunks and I had at the restaurant, we're on good terms.
Marron's still with her boyfriend. That's kind of a shocker to me, actually. I thought she just wanted a date for Valentine's Day. I guess it just kinda worked out for her. That's good.
Haku and Pan are still dating. How sweet. I guess.
That's it, right? That's all that matters to me, anyway.
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I arrive, have my access card swiped, and walk in. I see none other than Trunks sitting at a table in the near-empty cafeteria during the lonely 2:30 lunch crowd.
After getting food, I begin to bring my tray to his table, but stop dead in my tracks when I see that he's sitting across from... Bra.
I start to turn back when I hear my name called. I feign a smile and say, "Oh, hey! Didn't see you there."
I sit between the two of them.
"So,... how are you, Bra?" I begin.
"Fine," she says in this deep, throaty voice, not raising her gaze from her plate.
"All right, and you, Trunks?"
"I'm all right. Looking forward to the movie tonight."
"Oh, yeah, me too," I respond excitedly.
"Umm, I'm gonna go, all right, Trunks?" Bra says, getting up.
"Uh, sure, okay. Have a good evening."
"Yeah," she replies.
Shit.
"Actually, Trunks," I pipe up, "I have to go, too."
"What? You just got here!"
"Yeah, well... just a second."
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I chase Bra down outside of the cafeteria building.
"Wait!"
"Go away, Goten."
"Will you just listen, Bra?" I plead.
She turns back. "What? What do you want?"
"I'm really, really sorry about that night. Really."
She sighs. "It's not your fault, Goten."
"It is, though. I shouldn't have led you on like that."
"That's true, but I shouldn't have tried to seduce you," she says, taking a seat at the nearby bench. "God, I feel so stupid," she continues, burying her face in her hand and sobbing.
"No, Bra,..." I sit on the bench next to her and wrap an arm around her. She cries into my chest, dampening my shirt a little.
"Why? Why did you say you love me?"
"I... I wasn't thinking. I had had a lot to drink, and I thought Trunks had sent the flowers. I got confused about my reaction to receiving the flowers and ... God, I fucked up. I know."
"Were you... when I was... were you thinking of him?" she asks, sniffling and looking up to my face, burying her cheek in my neck.
"For about six months now, there has been no time I'm not thinking of him, Bra."
She sobs harder into my shirt. "But..., oh..."
I rub her back for a few minutes as she lets it out, when finally she pulls back, rubs her nose, and sighs heavily. "Goten, I understand that you don't love me. But I'm dead serious when I say that I don't want to see you get hurt."
I nod. She's been warning about this practically since I met her.
She sniffles once more, and smiles. "I'll see you around, all right?"
I nod again. "See ya."
I return to the cafeteria, have my card swiped again, and go to where Trunks was sitting. He's gone now.
Dammit, and I wasn't even hungry.
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"Goten! Come on, the movie's going to start."
"Yeah, yeah," I say, sticking my hands in my pockets. I should've listened earlier. I would've known we were going to see Lost in the Pits of Hell. I wanted to see Love in the Strangest Places. For that matter, I wanted to see it with Trunks alone. I also would've heard that Marron and her boyfriend as well as two other friends of ours (mostly friends of Trunks's) were coming. But we're here now, and we're going to watch Lost in the Pits of Hell.
As we walk into the theater, the "Feature Presentation" screen is playing. I hear popcorn crunching beneath my feet and shudder slightly. There wouldn't be popcorn on the floor at Love in the Strangest Places.
Marron and her boyfriend form an impenetrable barricade that prevents me from sitting next to Trunks, so one of the guys gets the aisle seat, and I sit between him and Marron's boyfriend, who sits next to Marron, who sits next to Trunks, who sits next to the other of the two guys.
While we're getting seated, a loud electric guitar riff plays and flames and explosions come from all places on the screen. The title screen appears, with a gruff, metalhead kind of voice reading "Lost in the Pits of Hell." I could picture him throwing up the horns and headbanging afterwards.
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Luckily, when things aren't going boom on the screen, I can have a little fun of my own. I look around the theater for various things that capture my interest. First is this kid who looks to be about six years old and who's sitting three rows ahead of us. After the title was read, he screamed "Cool!" Umm, little kid? Isn't this movie rated R? Go home. And the pits of hell aren't cool. They're very hot. I laugh at my own lame pun aloud and Marron's boyfriend shoots me a look.
Shaking that off, I wait until no one around me is paying attention and look back. First at the projector. I watch about two minutes of the film backwards. Guess what? It's exactly as uninteresting.
Then at this group of forty-or-so-year-olds. What are you doing here? Then again, what am I doing here? Are college students the only acceptable age group for this kind of film? And I don't even like it. I wonder if I could sneak into Love in the Strangest Places.
I look to my left. The guy has a box of Sour Patch Kids. Gross. I'm done looking in your direction, dude.
I look to my right and see Marron and her boyfriend's hands intertwined. I almost say "Aww," aloud, but decide against it, in case it would ruin the atmosphere that Pits of Hell is supposed to have.
Come to think of it, why the hell are they holding hands during this kind of movie anyway? I guess that's kind of weird, but in another way it seems kind of in place.
Whose idea was it to watch this? Just Trunks's? Maybe Sour Patch over here voted for it, too. I didn't get to vote. I don't think Marron or her boyfriend would want to see this.
I then look past the happy couple to see Trunks, fast asleep. If you chose this movie, Trunks, the least you could do is stay awake during it. We could be watching Love in the Strangest Places. You suck.
An explosion onscreen causes Trunks's face to light up. It's a beautiful sight, before he bolts up, awakened by the loud noise. The loud noise also shakes me out of my stare and back to the movie. The movie I was never interested in in the first place.
Seeing Trunks like that, though. And Marron, and her boyfriend, and...
Dammit, I know what I have to do.
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After the movie, we gather in the parking lot, outside Trunks's car. He took me and the two other guys.
"So, that was a pretty good movie," Trunks begins.
"It was all right," I respond, although I didn't watch a lot of it.
"I thought it was awesome," the guy who sat next to Trunks says. "That scene, where the devil is like, 'When the sands in this hourglass run out, I will have your soul,' and then she shoots the hourglass and says 'Not on my watch!' Ah, it was great!"
Trunks nods, "Well, to tell you the truth, I slept through some of it."
"Aww, how could you?" Sour Patch interrupts. "With all the action,... it was so intense!"
I stifle a chuckle as Trunks shrugs his shoulders in response to Sour Patch's comments.
"Well, we need to get going," Marron says, turning to her boyfriend.
"Right, take care!" Trunks shouts back, escaping the awkward Pits of Hell discussion.
We climb into the car, with me getting the front seat. The entire ride home is a back seat discussion about some of the finer points of Lost in the Pits of Hell.
I'm pretty sure that Sour Patch said that that was his third time to watch it. Dammit, if Trunks, me, Marron, and Marron's boyfriend weren't interested, that's not even a majority!
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Trunks drops those two off before taking me back to my dorm. Though we don't talk during the ride over, when we arrive, I turn to him.
"Trunks, listen... we need to talk."
"Hmm? What about?"
"I've ...," I swallow hard. "I've made a decision."
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One chapter left!
Post-disclaimer: Those movie titles are made up, if you couldn't tell. Any resemblance to any real movies is completely coincidental.
Also I don't own any rights to Sour Patch Kids. Thank goodness.