optical ↠ the boyz

thirty one

"You seriously can't hang out for how long?" Eric shouted down the phone at the girl, as she held it away from her ear. "I know you want to get your head down, but this is too much."

"You can't survive without me for a week?" Nari chuckled, flipping the page in her notebook.

This summer, she had sworn to be better, to do better. Heartbreak wasn't for her, it was something she never wanted to experience again, but she knew it was inevitable.

Everyone would hurt her one way or another, she just had to make sure they were worth the pain.

And what better way to start off her healing process other than letting Jacob Bae take her out?

Exactly, there were plenty of more effective ways she could get over this hurdle, but this was the route she was taking.

"I'm volunteering," the girl smiled to herself. "Monday to Friday, and then next week, I'm all yours."

"You're not even getting paid for it, why are you doing it?" Eric complained. "Your rebound is charity work, Nari. That's pretty sad."

"Well, when you say it like that it is," she said, sitting down on her bed as she read the list in her head. "You shouldn't get paid to be kind."

"But you should at least get something out of it," Eric joked, staring at his ceiling. "I'll let you go and do another good deed for the day."

"I'm not leaving the house looking like this, that's my good deed to society," Nari huffed, looking at her messy state in the mirror. "I'll text you."

The two hung up, the girl now laying to stare at her ceiling.

She couldn't deny, she wondered about him often, maybe too often. She wondered what he was doing with his summer, and if he would be spending it with someone else, doing all the things they did.

And he wondered about her too, there wasn't any questioning that fact. He wondered if her summer would be spent with him, and he tried his best to feel like he was happy for her, but he wasn't.

The first time he had loved was the first time he had gotten truly hurt, and that set him up for what he expected in the future.

Would everyone break his heart like she did? Would he lose everyone to the love of someone else?

He tried most days to keep himself occupied, to drain out the thoughts of their last exchange and focus on how she did utter those three words, even though he wasn't convinced she meant it, it was enough to keep him going.

The girl sighed, checking her phone to see how much time had passed. "You're not doing this, Nari."

She prayed that by the time the hurt had initially past, she wouldn't spend too much time in her day thinking about him.