My father’s flight had a six hour delay, and the airport was two hours away from where I was, so by the time he got to the hospital, I was already sound asleep.

Rhys had left while Daniel had remained asleep on the extra bed. He had gotten up once when Rhys was there. We had asked him to drink water before he buried his head back into the pillow and fell back asleep.

He was a mature guy, but when he did things like that, it was hard to not see him as a child.

My dad slept on the waiting chair the entire night. I didn’t realize when he got there, and slept through almost everything.

I was hospitalized for longer than I preferred, but I had my friends to keep me company. They had some internal discussion and took shifts on seeing me.

They would often bring some books with them and teach me what they were taught that way. With my flu and this, I was lagging way behind for my comfort.

Rhys often came over in the afternoons and slept till the late evening. He would help me with mathematics and chemistry first and then we’d talk about his day and which new nurse I flashed had my ass to.

Daniel was a huge help as well, but he wouldn’t let me go. He’d hold my hand until he had to leave and he’d work using a single hand all the time, even while catching up with his college assignments.

Rivika kept me caught up on the school gossip, and brought me fresh flowers and cookies everyday, flowers that I threw after she left, and cookies that I could never eat with my diet. I was scared of the worms in the flowers, so I always kept a safe distance from them.

But Rivika seemed just as affected as Rhys and Daniel. The first time she came to visit me, she crouched on the floor beside me and I woke up to her asleep with her head against the legs of my bed and one of my hands firmly gripped by her.

My memories of that day still hadn’t come back. It was as if they had been wiped out clean. A part of me was happy that I couldn’t remember what had happened because I knew for I fact that I hadn’t just slipped and hit my head.

Something had happened, something bad, and maybe it wasn’t my brain that was affected but my ming, and for that reason, the day was erased from my head.

The cops had checked my house thoroughly for any sign of intruders, and they had found none, which meant that no one had gotten in by force and there were not signs of any fight either.

They had concluded that I must’ve slipped and lost my balance or maybe I must’ve gotten hypoglycemic and lost my balance.

But I was found wearing a red piece of lingerie, and I was definitely not wearing it to school. What they suspected was that I had invited some other guy for some…purposes, and he’d accidently hurt me and left.

It was a sensible theory, but I would’ve been happier if we’d found out who the guy was because my chat history and call history was clean. I had called absolutely no one which was just as relieving as it was suspicious.

However, I thought it was all history when I got back to the school.

It wasn’t.

Somehow, my pictures in that outfit in school were found which meant that I had gone to the school and I was wearing those same clothes.

Which meant that there were two good news: there was no man in my house and I had won the monthly award for wearing the sluttiest outfit.

No judgement, we all have our priorites.

I was also gifted a silver thigh chain by some pervert and I kept on receiving cookies from people I never really cared about.

I wondered whether people thought that my figure was natural or they just figured that I would stop my diet cause of a head injury.

Either way, the charity received a huge amount of cookies that week and I got to click pictures at different charity places for my social media posts.

Promoting charities made you look good and wasn’t that the dream of any author?

The number of my followers went considerably up and I didn’t even have to win a competition for it.

What didn’t go up, was my marks in biology. Apparently, Mr Grey absolutely loved taking tests, and since I couldn’t give the test on Friday, he had rescheduled my test on the next Friday during a free lecture of mine.

I sat in his cabin, trying to look as sweet as possible to get the answres from him but he didn’t look up once.

“Can you check your pocket watch for the time?” was really the only question he bothered to answer.

He stopped scribbling, sighed, and then spoke patiently, “I don’t use a pocket watch, Miss Decembers!”

“Well, I thought it went with the aesthetic of yours. Old-school English guys vibes that-”

“You have ten more minutes,” he interrupted, his eyes briefly flashing to his digital watch before he resumed his writing.

The test went worse than I had expected. Our previous teacher used to give us easy papers; she knew half of us were hopeless at biology.

But this time, the paper was so conceptual. It was as if I had complained there were no explanations and Mr Grey had made a paper no one would’ve been able to solve without having the explanations.

Why do plants have an endosperm with 3n chromosomal configuration?

Why, stupid plants, why?

No answer came from the cactus pot by the window of our classroom.

I had never scored less than an A+, but I was certain that that test was going to change it for me.

With my back slumped, I made my way across the hallway, walking wordlessly to my locker. I was in no mood for a conversation, no mood to talk to anyone.

I was like Taylor Swift in her folklore era.

It was quite a jump; from reputation to folklore, from vengeance to sorrow.

“How was the paper?”

“I messed it up big time!”

“How very bad of you,” he joked, trying to lighten my mood.

“What will you? Cuff me up and whip me?”

His eyes narrowed and he cursed, “Fuck you,”

“You know you want to,” I winked at him before making my way to the next class. I found Miller and Rivika doing their lovey-dovey ‘goodbye’ stuff near Rivika’s locker.

I was no cupid, but I really did not understand how staying away from someone for forty minutes would require goodbyes so long.

If I were to date someone, I would be happy to stay away from him just so I could flirt around freely. That doesn’t count as cheating, right?

See, the thing is, I had never had a boyfriend. I had never been committed to a guy for longer than three hours, something I was definitely  proud of.

“Who am I dating this week?” I asked Rivika who was holding the school’s weekly magazine in her hands.

“Could you not?” she asked, nodding pointedly to the banana I was eating. I shrugged before throwing it away and leaning in to look at my picture on the front page.

Damn, I looked cute.

“You aren’t dating anyone, but apparently, you are having sex with the biology professor and confessed your feelings for Angeline.”

“Angeline? Well, that’s new.”

The school’s magazine loved writing about random people dating or fucking different guys. Usually it was at least three of them in a week. But hell, I had never been paired with a girl. That was new and definitely amusing.

Maybe people were getting bored of the regular old crap. A teacher and a girl in the same week was a new combination, but I was cool with it. I had worse printed about me.

Apparently, the said teacher and the girl weren’t so chill and decided to lodge a complain against the editors to the principal.

Now, our principal knew what was published there, and she was cool with it, but no teacher had even complained before, even they were fine with it.

The principal couldn’t turn a blind eye against a complain of that sort, so, she had them prohibit more publishing of that issue and take down the magazine on the site.

Well, what rumors run wilder than those who are being publicly supressed?

I loved the attention that I got from everyone that week, and the way that Mr Grey tried to pretend I didn’t exist.

It was fun to be honest, seeing him try to pretend that he felt nothing for me and that I was a mere student. He found me cute and I knew it.

“Ms Decembers, I need you to stay back after the school. I have already called your parents, there’s something we need to discuss,” he informed briskly right as I was leaving the classroom.

“Well, someone’s in trouble,” Rhys teased as I told him about it.

“Shut up, I know,”

“Maybe I should ask him to bring up your recent appearance in the magazine. That ought to lighten the mood!”

“Fuck you!”

“You know you want to,” he winked, feeling pride at throwing that phrase back at me.

“Oh yeah, maybe I do.” I blinked up at flirtatiously and he groaned at his loss.

He smacked the back of my head and I punched his arm in response. I liked how light things were between us. We had a phase where things got heated and sure, that was fun, but the last thing I wanted was out friendship to get ruined.

And from my past experiences, I knew that feelings ruined friendships.

I had never been rejected by a man (because I had never asked one out), but every time I rejected someone, things just turned bitter between us.

That being said, I never wanted to lose what Rhys and I had.

We flirted, we did a lot, but at our core, we thought of each other as best friends, and I knew I would never want to hurt Rhys, just as he would never want to hurt me.

But if either of us were to fall in love with the other, I knew that the other would never reject them, and things would be plainly wrong.

Things get complicated when you get involved with someone. I had no proper experience but those three hours “sessions” surely taught me that.

They made me come up with three Bs for people I got involved me: Say be right back, block, and then ban from your life.

It was as simple as that. Never go to a man who couldn’t make you happy and if he did make you happy then it was for a reason and you’re getting too emotionally attached so just cut him off.

Yeah I guess there was a reason I was single.

As soon as the classes ended for the day, I went straight to Mr Grey’s cabin. My parents were already there and they did what they were best at: shot me judgemental looks and asked themselves why chose to have a kid and why the hell they didn’t abort me when they could’ve.

And I knew I was in huge trouble. Taking a deep breath, I asked, “Is it about the magazine?”