Free My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend by Eleanor Wood Page B

she knew him as well as I do, she’d be aware that Seymour isn’t as great
at laughing at himself as he is at laughing at me. In fact, he’s pretty good at being the touchy one himself.
    ‘Anyway.’ I decide to try changing the subject. ‘How’s things with Anna, Nish? You guys do anything yesterday?’
    She shoots me a look that freezes my blood. I instantly understand where all this animosity is coming from; it is not anything to do with comments or my blog or with me and Seymour.
    ‘I really wouldn’t know,’ she snaps. ‘You’re the one who walked home with her after she left me the night before last. I’ve barely even heard from her since.
I’ve got to go.’
    She pushes her half-eaten quinoa salad aside and leaves the table without even saying goodbye to me, stomping out of the cafeteria.
    ‘Bad move, Chew,’ Seymour says, shaking his head and taking the last bite of his sandwich. ‘I’d better go after her. I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but I
really think you’d better apologize to her. See you soon, OK?’
    He pats me vaguely on the shoulder and trots off after Nishi. This is unbelievable. What I want to know is, how come it’s all right for the two of them to gang up on me, yet the one time
that I speak to Anna on my own I’m suddenly the one in the wrong? Nishi and Seymour just love blaming things on me – that’s Chew, too loud, always putting her foot in it, always
getting things wrong, let’s say it’s all her fault.
    At the moment I feel like I can’t do a single thing right. I am gripped by that pointlessly reckless, self-destructive feeling I get sometimes, which I know by now always ends in disaster.
Or at least leaves me feeling completely rubbish about myself.
    I shove the whole bowlful of macaroni cheese into my mouth within seconds, barely chewing. I wash it down with a can of Fanta, practically in one gulp, followed by a bag of salt-and-vinegar
crisps that sting my mouth after the boiling hot cheese sauce.
    I think of Nishi and her healthy lunches, and how Seymour can take about three hours to eat a two-finger KitKat, and it feels like I’m laughing in their faces, showing that I don’t
care. Too bad I’m the only one who will get fat.
    I take a deep breath and plaster on some fresh orange lipstick – bright tangerine to match my vintage blouse – as I fear I have none left on by now.
    I have a free afternoon and I had been planning to ask Seymour if he wanted to go to the cinema or something. But apparently he’s too busy running after Nishi, so I have nothing to do.
God, it’s a good job she’s a lesbian. There’s enough to worry about here as it is.
    I march out of the college building and start pounding down the road in an attempt to dispel the furious, pointless feeling. I have no idea where I’m going. I’m too jangly to
concentrate on college work or anything else useful.
    So I just keep walking. This is probably where I would smoke an angry cigarette, if I smoked. Fortunately I don’t.
    After a while the fist-clenching frustration passes. However, the deeper emotion that lurks beneath – the recurring one that I can’t quite put a name to – does not.
    I admit defeat and sit down on the nearest park bench. As if magnetized, my hand creeps into my pocket and closes around my phone. It’s an old BlackBerry – another cast-off from my
mum’s office – so I can pick up my emails on it.
    I barely even look at it as I automatically thumb out a message. I certainly don’t stop to think about what I am doing.
    I only type four words, but the gravity of each one hits me like a punch in the chest. I have a feeling that this is huge. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, yet I’m
totally aware of all the potential ramifications – and I am doing it anyway. I don’t care that this might ruin my cosy little life in so many ways.
    I hit send. Four words:
OK, I’ll do it.

To: Tuesday Cooper
    From: jackson evan griffith
    Ruby