Adrian Gonzalez knows the painful truth about liking someone you have no chance with-they never like you back and you're left heartbroken. Ever wonder why it's called a 'crush?'
But when the hopeless crush he has is on Parker Thompson-nonbinary scho...
Trigger warning: Adrian has a short panic attack during his presentation. It happens in the middle of the chapter, so you can read from the beginning, and then skip to the scene change graphic if you feel uncomfortable.
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Shakespearean love had always been superficial to me. Everyone was just overly dramatic. Like come on, Romeo and Juliet dying for a love that grew in record time? She was barely thirteen; for the love of God.
The thought of coming close to feeling whatever they could possibly feel for each other, so intensely that they would pick death over living without the other, was jarring and incomprehensible.
My foresight was off though, and for once, I would agree with William Shakespeare: If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.
I never realised how much I was drawn to music before I listened to Parker's playlist selections. On second thought, it could have been that I did not know how strongly I was attracted to Parker before he immersed me in the world of music he liked. It almost made me want to confess my feelings for him, as Adrian or as Mystery. It didn't really matter as long as he got to know.
That night, and many nights after that, I frequently looked through the playlists in the links he sent. I listened to the songs so much that I knew which came after which by heart.
Parker had called me a handful of times after the first one-sided exchange, and he introduced me to a world of songs I didn't know I needed to hear while we did our homework.
Sometimes, it lasted for only a few minutes, our bond often broken by the world outside what was us; when my mother called me for dinner, or his siblings became too overbearing and refused to listen to anything Parker said. On rare, treasured times, it lasted centuries and years and months and days and hours. Those calls usually ended up with both of us falling asleep on the line, leaving the timer to count our shared moments when consciousness left us, leaving us to surrender in darkness, which was induced by the mere reality that we were both there.
Luckily, I didn't have to worry about Wi-Fi plan being drained whenever I accidentally slipped off; we had unlimited data for the month. If not for that, I would have already gotten so much shit from my dad about my internet usage.
But even that wouldn't have deterred me. The approaching presentation didn't, much less a scolding.
Yes, the project date was finally due. No, I wasn't scared in the least. I had read through the document several times, and I could quote everything in it without the bat of an eyelid. Anxiously going through it every four hours did that, you know?
But it seemed some others in my Biology class weren't as confident as I was.
That morning, Kevin kept reassuring himself that he could do it, despite asking constantly whether Mrs. Smith would develop a change of mind and let us have the papers back. Rowan faked being nauseous right from lunch. He was loud and showy, no doubt going to use anyone who was within a fifty-mile radius as a witness that he was indeed 'going to puke out everything he ate the past three days' or felt 'diarrhea awfully close, and will need an hour-long bathroom pass.'
