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

“I hate you both,” Jack scowled as he threw the bag of sweets and popcorn at Alex and I on my sofa. It was New Year’s Eve and we’d forced him to go out and get us some treats as recompense for everything he’d made us put up with the night before. In the time since he and Marissa had been out, Alex and I had thoroughly set up camp on the sofa, curled up together with a blanket and watching movies. We were more than happy for Jack to hate us over this.
“Well, maybe if you were a little quieter we wouldn’t have to make you pay for our missed sleep,” Alex scoffed, grabbing the bag before it hit the floor and stuffing it onto his lap, where I quickly started to rummage for my Twizzlers.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you guys were silent when you were doing it. You have never kept me up at night.”
“Bite me, asshole.”
“At least my girlfriend hasn’t got me watching fucking kids films on New Year’s Eve.” I glanced up from searching in the bag, glaring at Jack for reminding Alex we were watching The Addams Family, which I’d practically begged him to agree to in the first place, after having already put it in the DVD player. I’d honestly agreed to let him pick the next film in order to make him agree, but we both knew I had nothing too masculine in my collection.
“Jack, butt out, you love this film,” Marissa sighed, sitting on the other side of the couch with her own bowl of popcorn. Alex pulled my sweets out of the bag, opening them for himself and I squeaked in protest before Jack could retaliate to Marissa’s argument. Alex raised his eyebrows at me, a small smirk pulling at the side of his mouth at my reaction.
“Those are mine,” I pouted. His smirk spread its way across his face, one of the red lances hanging out of the side of his mouth.
“Whatcha gonna do about it?” He raised the rest of the bag, shaking them in front of me and I intensified my pouting. Of course he wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Baby, please.” He shook his head, chuckling and I scowled briefly. Clearly, pouting and puppy dog eyes were not going to work on him today: Cute Alex was not in the room. “Fine, be a dick. I’ll just party with Marissa tonight. You have fun with Jack and your hand.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” he said quickly, pulling me back as I started to shuffle toward Marissa on the other end of the sofa. He dragged me onto his lap, shoving the treats onto the floor to make room for me, handing me the bag of Twizzlers. “I didn’t say anything about not ringing in the New Year with you. I’d rather have you than candy.” It was his turn to pout now and I felt a smile tugging at my lips. It was a bit of a bitchy move, but I knew threatening to leave him alone for the night was decidedly going to get me my own way. I pushed a kiss to his lips quickly to stop his pouting.
“I wouldn’t dream of abandoning you over Twizzlers, Alex. But don’t even get in-between me and candy ever again.”
“Noted,” he grinned, pulling me closer to his chest so we could return to the film.
Before we could even catch up on where we were at in the film, Jack started making gagging noises from the other side of Marissa, where he’d positioned himself while Alex and I were pretending to bicker. The three of us turned to look at him in confusion, not sure just why he was pretending to gag. He had his finger in my open mouth, miming being sick to accompany the noises his was making.
“What now, asshole?” Alex asked, throwing the bag of popcorn he’d bought us at him to get his attention.
“You guys make me feel physically sick,” Jack stated, stopping his fake vomiting, but maintaining a thoroughly disgusted look nonetheless. “I mean, we always used to say Rian and Kara were bad, but there’s nothing a disgusting as you two.”
“And here was me thinking we were the most attractive couple in our friendship group,” Alex scoffed, pretending to be offended by Jack’s words. I laughed softly, still unsure on what Jack was actually getting at.
“You’re definitely second place,” Marissa joked, but Jack ignored us all.
“I mean, you’re fucking whipped. She pouts and you come running. You too, Jase. Anything to make each other happy.”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about that,” Alex shrugged. My stomach fluttered. Of course, he didn’t see what was wrong with that. Nobody but Jack saw what was wrong with that, clearly, but just hearing him say it made my heart race. It showed me, once again, that he cared as much as I did about us. I offered him a sweet, which he took, smiling at me and pressing a quick kiss to my cheek.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he clarified. “I’ve never seen either of you so happy and you both deserve it so much.”
“So, what’s the issue? I’m happy, Holly’s happy, you and Marissa are happy. I don’t see why it’s sickening.”
“Maybe it’s because you guys are so cute?” Marissa offered, looking at us and shrugging also, clearly not sure what Jack was getting at either. Alex groaned softly next to me and I chuckled lightly.
“You can’t say that,” I explained. “Apparently, it’s the kiss of death to a guy. First, we’re ‘cute’, then we’re Rian and Kara and that’s like a death sentence. Or something like that.” Alex nodded in agreement and Marissa rolled her eyes, as unimpressed as I was when Alex had explained the scenario to me a couple of weeks ago. We can be happy, we can be the couple everyone wants to be, we can make people jealous, but as soon as they see us as cute, it’s game over. I don’t quite see the problem, but apparently that’s the way Jack and Alex saw it. Teenage boys, I swear, they’re a mystery.
“Besides, that’s way more likely to happen to you two than us,” Alex told her. “Me and Holly are the party couple, we’re not the cutesy, ‘I’m so in love with you’ couple. You guys are.”
“We’re not the ones in over our heads though.”
“Jack,” Marissa warned, glaring at him as if she finally knew what he meant. “This isn’t the time.”
“How isn’t this the time? They’re infuriating everyone with their coy bullshit. It’s just us guys now, they need to actually think about it.” Marissa rolled her eyes at him, while Alex and I looked at each other in confusion. I still had no idea what he was going on about.
“Let them work it out in their own time, jackass. It’s not up to us.”
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” I scowled, unhappy with the cryptic remarks. Knowing half the conversation is way worse than knowing none of it.
“You seriously don’t see any of it?” Jack asked, narrowing his eyes at the pair of us.
“Well, if you gave us a fucking hint we might.” I nodded at Alex’s words. How were we supposed to know what we were or were not seeing if we didn’t have a clue? It could be literally anything at this point.
“Jack thinks, and I seriously mean thinks, that you guys are in love with each other but you’re both too proud to admit it,” Marissa explained, when Jack’s only response to our words was a scoff.
I snorted loudly at her words, choking back full blown laughter. Were they serious? They thought I was in love with Alex Gaskarth? The girl who’s never believed in it for a second? I’m happy, beyond words happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s love. Alex frowned at my amused reaction softly before responding.
“We’re not the love type.”
“Alex, the girl got you to go out in public to see Harry Potter. She bought you a robe for Christmas and you were ecstatic. Tara asked you to go see Fantastic Four with her and you told her it was too geeky. For you to not give a crap about people seeing you doing nerdy things, you’ve gotta love the girl.” Alex frowned again before Jack turned his attention to me. “And you. When Mike tried to take you home from a party, you screamed at him to the point where you guys ended up breaking up. Alex drags you home before midnight and it ends in cuddling on the sofa. You told me relationships were for losers, now you’re attached to Alex at the hip. Tell me you’re not in love with him.”
“Jacks, come on. You and I both know I don’t believe in it. What do you want? You want me to lie to you? Why can’t we just be happy together without attaching yet another bullshit label to it? Sure, he changed my mind on relationships. I wanted him to be my ‘official boyfriend’,” I bent my fingers into air quotes as I said ‘official boyfriend’ to show that it was another label I wasn’t particularly happy saying, “sure. I wanted to be known as his girlfriend, okay. But why does that have to change everything about me? Love isn’t on my agenda. If this lasts forever, that’s great. If it doesn’t, I’m enjoying it while it lasts. I’m happy, stop making it an issue.” I pushed down the feeling in my gut telling me Jack was right about everything, rationalising Alex’s frown as his ego being hurt by my reaction rather than wanting me to love him, or feeling that way himself.
“Holly gets it. She’s fucking perfect for me, because she basically is me, in a totally un-narcissistic way. She gets me. She gets what I want. Why do we have to fall head over heels? Why can’t we just be happy?”
“Because you-“
“Enough, Jack. Leave them alone. You’ve said your piece. Don’t push it.”
Jack clamped his jaw shut at Marissa’s words and I relaxed.
I didn’t need an interrogation. I didn’t want to let slip my worries, my change of heart about everything. I wanted to continue to be the girl who stood on her own and didn’t need anyone. Alex had changed enough of me already, enough of my opinions, he didn’t need to know I was already beginning to make him my everything.

Notes

I know, I know, I'm a nightmare.
I managed to squeeze this out between assignments, but I may be AWOL again for a little longer because I start a new job in a week and I'm moving and just... ugh. Life. It sucks and I'm busy as hell.
If you subscribe to A Story To Tell Your Friends, I promise I'm updating that next. Some point in the next week (I hope), but I've still got 5000 words to submit for uni on Monday, so it definitely won't be before that.
I hope you guys enjoy this and don't hate me too much. <3