Don't Make This Easy, I Want You to Mean It

“Where the fuck have you been all day?” I heard Jack scowl as Alex entered Rian’s house. I was a few feet behind him, shooting off a text to Marissa to let her know where I was and to come over. Alex was beyond late for band practice and Jack had been calling him almost non-stop since noon, though I assumed that was to do with me rather than band practice, which they’d set for 5 o’clock. It was currently 6:30.
“I was in Baltimore. Jesus Christ, Jack, I’m late, I didn’t murder anyone,” Alex grumbled.
“Trust me when I say you’ve got a lot to answer for.” I could hear the annoyance in Jack’s voice and thought it was probably best that I sped up to get Alex out of trouble.
“What did I do now?!”
“You know what you did!”
“What happened?” I asked coolly from the doorway. “Did he murder someone when I wasn’t looking?” I shut the door behind me as Jack gaped at the pair of us. I’d seen half a second of his anger before I’d started talking and could now see nothing but confusion.
“Jack’s just PMSing, I think,” Alex shrugged. “I mean, I’ve full on skipped practice before because I was hungover and he wasn’t this angry.”
“Baby, I think he’s confused,” I laughed, linking my hand with Alex’s. I saw Jack glance at our hands, frowning and beyond confused.
“Oh! That’s right!” Alex slapped his free hand to his forehead, finally realising that Jack wasn’t angry about band practice, but about him supposedly leaving me this morning. “I didn’t ditch, Jack. I went for coffee. You guys ditched me.”
“She’s dangerous, Alex,” Jack said, pointing at me. I pretended to look offended at his words. “She’s wrapped you around her finger already and it’s been a week.”
“Leaving last weekend was all part of my master plan to make him crazy,” I shrugged, smirking.
“So, you told him?”
“Of course she told me, asshole. I was expecting you to have told me though, so don’t think you’re off the hook.”
“Is Kara here?” I asked Jack, trying to stop the pair from bickering at each other over me. Jack nodded, pointing to a door on the opposite side of the room. I nodded, detaching myself from Alex and walking over to what I soon found out was the basement.
“Jasey!” Rian shouted, looking just as confused as Jack had been. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Oh, I have gossip, of course I’m here.” Rian snorted at me as I perched myself on the sofa next to Kara.
“Ooh, tell me everything,” Kara gushed, turning away from Rian to face me. I couldn’t believe how stupidly easy this girl was to get along with. Considering she had been just as biased against me as everyone else in school yesterday, she had really turned around.
“Alex Gaskarth is infatuated. With a girl, not himself.”
“Go on.” Alex entered the room (with a much happier Jack in tow), leaning against the wall opposite and smiling as he saw me and Kara gushing at each other, clearly happy I was getting along with his friends and becoming part of the group.
“Do you want to tell them how unbelievably whipped you are, or should I?” Alex rolled his eyes at my words, realising I’d been talking about him while he wasn’t in the room.
“I liked you best when you weren’t a gossip.”
“But, babe, how else am I supposed to let the entire school know I beat you?” I frowned, trying to appear genuinely confused. “I mean, there’s always been an unspoken rivalry between us. You know, trying to see who’s going to cave first and become normal. And now, not only am I the girl who walked out on Alex Gaskarth, but I’m also the girl he couldn’t walk out on.”
“You’re such a drama queen. We’re not famous.”
“No, but I am infamous.”
“Wait. What’s going on?” Zack piped up, looking up from his phone.
“Ugh,” Alex groaned. “Holly over there suddenly stopped acting like a huge slut and decided she wanted a boyfriend, so I’ve been roped into it.”
“Who the fuck is Holly?” Jack asked, frowning between us.
“She is.” I scowled at Alex.
“I should have known I couldn’t trust you with my secrets.”
“I am legitimately confused right now,” Jack stated. The others nodded and I tried not to laugh to myself. Alex and I weren’t exactly being concise about this.
“Basically, Jasey is her middle name, Holly is her first name. I think it’s cute, she hates it. She was the one who walked out on me last weekend, I didn’t walk out on her this morning, I went to buy her coffee. And, finally, she’s so crazy about me, I just had to make her my official girlfriend, or some shit.” I nodded, agreeing with Alex.
“Holy crap, Jasey, you got Alex to have an actual relationship?” Kara squeaked. I didn’t know if she was more impressed or excited about the news, but I was going to take it either way. I liked having made a couple of new friends this week.
“More importantly: holy crap, Jasey, you didn’t tell me your real name for five years?” Jack scowled at me. All of the news, of course he was most concerned with that bit. I rolled my eyes at him, though ignored the comment. He would soon get over it. “Marissa! Did you know!” Marissa looked shocked as Jack screamed at her when she walked through the basement door, having absolutely no idea what was going on. “Her name is Holly, not Jasey!”
“Of course I knew, Jack. We had to sign a lease together.” She rolled her eyes, looking at me in confusion. I shrugged. It wasn’t worth the explaining. Jack had the biggest mouth of anyone I’d ever met, and, while he was trustworthy as a friend, he would have undoubtedly told everyone in school if he’d known before now.
“Can we just get on?” Zack sighed, pocketing his phone and looking at Jack and Alex in particular. “Congrats and stuff, Alex, but you’re late and we’ve done nothing.” I felt a little bad. It was, mostly, my fault Alex was so late, having distracted him in random stores and making jokes at each other all day. I pulled a guilty face at Kara and Marissa (who had now taken Rian’s place on the other side of Kara), trying to hide myself from the stares of the boys. I heard Alex making a non-committal noise and the boys all made their way to where their equipment was set up. I continued to chit chat with the girls, filling them in on everything that had happened during the day while the boys began to play around with their instruments.
“For fuck sake, Alex; what now?” Jack asked, frustrated. The three of us looked up, staring at the boys as Alex shushed him, putting his phone to his ear and making his way out of the basement. I cocked at eyebrow at Jack, unsure why Alex felt the need to leave the room for his conversation, but Jack just shrugged at me, rolling his eyes. “He’s an ass.” I laughed lightly, though didn’t feel it. Why did Alex feel the need to leave the room? Was he keeping something from me already? He did say he wasn’t good at relationships. Was this why?
The girls fell back into conversation and I nodded along with them, though couldn’t stop thinking about Alex. He’d been gone about ten minutes and I could hear him pacing above us. That wasn’t a good sound and it was beginning to worry me.
While I hadn’t had a relationship in a while, I’d never been this girl before. I let boys wander around, doing what they like, while I did my own thing and didn’t think twice about what they were doing or how they were feeling.
Frankly, I was an awful girlfriend, who paid little to no attention to what was going on around me.
But, this was different. It had been six hours, and I was panicking about Alex like I’d never worried about anyone before in my life.
Another five minutes later, he stalked back into the room, slamming the door behind him, a foul look spread across his face as he put his guitar strap over his shoulder.
“Are we going to practice, or what?”

Notes

I'm really hammering this lately, because it's a rewrite and I know exactly what I'm doing.