None of Us Saw This Coming

May, 2018: FRIENDS

Irene was the most childish human to ever exist if she must say so herself. Because what kind of adult let her crooked mood and discomfort dictate her doing? Perhaps, that was her toxic trait speaking—but the point was, she was acting immature for her age, although it was triggered by an unpleasant event she witnessed between her eyes, she could have taken the high road instead of nurturing the pettiness in her heart, like ended up cancelling her dinner plan with Lisa and left the woman ignored and bewildered for a little over a month by then; Lisa was probably questioning herself if ever she did something to offend the older that led them to the point where Irene kept on ignoring her calls and neglecting her messages, even her birthday greetings, which the younger ended up sending it by text only because the older one could not bother to pick her phone up in the first place.

The thing was Lisa did not do anything wrong.

Irene did.

Simply by fooling herself.

But it got her thinking—quite hard, really. Was it jealousy? Was that how jealousy was supposed to taste? She thought it was supposed to be bitter and made her miserable. Honestly, she could handle bitter and miserable better than the feeling she currently had churning in her stomach; it was like gasoline and the gasoline was poured into a flame and it made her burn everything—by burning everything, it simply meant she had been doing senseless things. Idiot things.

She was turning into an idiot was all she was saying.

So finally, her lack of experience in the particular department managed to catch up with her arse. See, having no interest whatsoever in pursuing anything in the love section of her life never quite gave Irene time to sit down and think about her preferences. What surprised her more was that her brain was more focused on the fact that she had fallen for Lisa, who was not available, rather than the fact that she had fallen for Lisa, who was a woman.

Well, she was not some homophobe and she was never against the idea of same-gender being involved in a romantic relationship, still, it was news even to herself. She might have unconsciously shown some faint distaste towards men in general—in all fairness, she had never intended any offensive gestures towards any man, her body just reacted naturally, it was out of her control, and Luvies had pointed it out as a joke in some of their creatively produced crack videos, but to actually come to face the reality that she was, in fact, finally experiencing her first love (Irene cringed at the term), one she could acknowledge, with Lisa, who was a woman as was she a woman, took her aback.

She had her reasons—about ignoring Lisa, that was. Although it was mostly just to cover up traces of her pettiness, she still had her reasonable excuses; she had to think things through because what she felt for Lisa was clearly way over her head as a person who was lacking experience. She needed to make sure that what she was feeling was what she thought it was. She wondered if it was real because she did not want to make assumptions, drag Lisa into her own uncertainty, and end up hurting the other woman—that would be a very unnecessary turn of events. She could not be held responsible for any of that.

"Fancy seeing you here! You've been locking yourself up in your room for almost a month by now, eonni."

Irene let out a subtle 'you startled me' and glared to her right. Wendy always had ways to startle her. The girl had always been energetic and her overflowing energy was channelled to her every movement; be it simple, be it complicated, like then, she was just flopping herself to the vacant space of the sofa where Irene was resting her arse on but she created such a commotion that startled Irene while she was at it.

"That's not true," Irene denied that accusation. At least she did not feel so.

"Well, yeah, except when we have schedules, obviously."