Spaceking

Chapter 24: That Sounds Like A Grudge To Me

"Are you in for tonight, Jo?" Lisa slammed her hand down on my shoulder, causing my fingers to slip on my keyboard. I scowled at her, erasing the wrong typed letters. She grinned sheepily.
"What do you mean, tonight?" I asked. "I didn't know we had plans tonight." I turned away from my laptop. I was working on my paper. It was about the influence of English literature on actual history. It was the biggest part of my grades at the end of the year, and I had to get good grades to go to my next year. I loved literature and everything around it, but it was tiring, and I had been working on it for a long time.
"Oh come oon," Lisa sighed. "You forgot? We were going to get together tonight Jo."
"With whom?" I checked my phone for notifications, and I saw three. I had been texted twice by Dan and once by Julian. I groaned while deleting the messages from Dan. Julian asked me if I was free tonight.
"Jolene, of course. Who else? Just chilling, we haven't seen you in a while." I shrugged. "I've been busy."
"Yes, with Julian." Lisa looked weirdly at me. "Look, Jo, I know it was hard and all to get rejected like that, bu-" I frowned deeply at her, cutting her off. "Julian is not a rebound. Not for me, anyways." I put my laptop away, standing up to leave the study hall. Lisa followed me, keeping her voice low so she wouldn't disturb the other students. "Okay, I understand, he's not a rebound. But you're still spending all of your free time with him. Jolene and I hadn't seen you in two weeks before I came here. We're still your friends," I waved at a girl who was in a few of my classes before leaving completely. I turned to Lisa, irritated. What gave her the right?
"Look, Lisa," I mocked her tone from a moment before. "I like spending time with him. I would love to see you two more too, but with my job and this paper, I just don't have that much free time. And I like spending that with him rather than having to bike an hour to see you." Lisa looked sad, almost dissapointed. "But you see Julian all the time at work."
"Yes, at work," I sighed. "At work we don't get to spend our time like we want, if you understand what I mean."
The corners of her mouth turned down, and she rimpled her nose. "Oh my god, Lisa, seriously?" I had to laugh a bit. Even though she was frustrating, I still loved her, and it had been a shame I didn't see her and Jolene that often. "Don't act like you didn't know that."
"But, you mean that- that you and him, you know.." She montioned to me, then slowly looked down, at my crotch area. She gulped. Now I laughed out loud. "Yes, Lisa, that's what I meant," I smiled at her. "But please girl, it's not like I was still a virgin. Don't flip out." I had the urge to hug her. Lisa began to chuckle and looked up to me. "I'm sorry, but I'm happy I made you smile."
Okay, now she surely deserved her hug. I embraced her tightly. "I miss you two. Of course I'll hang with you." We hugged for a moment. "What are we doing?"
She shrugged as we left the building and started heading to the place where my room was. "Just the usual, I think." But then she blushed up at me and looked uncomfortable. "And you know, Phil will facetime with us." I smiled. "That's cool. I haven't spoken to him in person since we left England." Lisa frowned at me. "You don't mind?" I shook my head. "Why would I mind? I love Phil, I want to see him." "But you know, Jo, there's a big chance Dan will talk to us for a moment too.."
I shrugged. "I'm an adult, I'm not holding some kind of childish grudge against him. Yes, he hurt me badly, but I'm over that now." But Lisa frowned at me. "Then why are you ignoring him? his calls, his texts? That sounds like a grudge to me." My eyes widened. "How do you know about that?"
"I saw your phone a moment ago. Danyul? Sounds pretty clear to me who that is. And you immediately deleted his texts, whil you left Julian's open. You're ignoring him." My shoulders fell before I took out my key to open up the front door. I let Lisa pass, and we headed to the stairs. "It's okay though," Lisa said. "I can understand why you would do that. I'm just concerned about you. Are you sure you want to facetime too?" I nodded, determined. "I want to talk to Phil, and if that means I have to talk to Dan too, then so be it. I have Julian now, and I liked him for a long time, you know that. I can handle Dan. He won't see how bad he hurt me, because I'm over it now."
Lisa nodded and I got ready to leave for Jolene's.

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"Oh my God Jo!" Jolene yelled when she openend the door. "You're here! I haven't seen you in so long!" She embraced me and then led me inside her and Lisa's dorm. They were studying at the same college while my university was half an hour with the car. They shared their dorms. Sometimes, I felt lonely because they spen all their time together, but I love that I have the complete dorm for myself. With a roommate, seeing Julian in private wouldn't have been as easy.
I sat down on Jolene's bed, where she and Lisa were already seated. Their gaze was on the TV, playing a kid's program that played when we were that young. "I haven't seen this in forever," I sighed, memories about this catching up with me. "Then what the hell do you do with all your free time?"
I shrugged. "I study, and all the things I watch are on my computer."
Lisa nodded without hesiation, but I saw Jolene cringe slightly when I said that. She's thinking about Youtube, isn't she?
I hadn't actually watched any of Dan's videos. I kept watching Phil, and sometimes I rewatched some older ones of Dan, but I avoided the new ones. Now that I had seen him so much face to face, it was difficult to understand how he was now, after I left. I felt that I couldn't handle the fact that maybe he was happy. And I granted him happiness, I really did, but not right now.
Jolene waved at me. "Jo, want to help me grab some food?" I nodded at her, standing up to retrieve my coat. Lisa stayed at the dorm, while Jolene and I headed to a Chinese restaurant/take-away for our food. On our way there, Jolene gently pushed my shoulder with hers.
"You haven't been watching him lately, have you?" Like I thought, just as worried as Lisa. "I have," I shrugged. "But not his latest ones. I have only been watching old ones since we came back." Jolene didn't react, but I could read in her eyes that she exactly knew what I meant.
"It's bad, Jo." She sighed. I furrowed my brows. "What do you mean, it's bad?"
"You haven't heard anything about it? It was all over the Internet. He first uploaded two videos, everything seemed normal, maybe a little gloomy, but everyone has bad days." She pushed open the door, letting me pass. When the door closed again, she handed me her phone with earphones. "But last week, he uploaded this. He doesn't name, but it's obvious there's something completely wrong," she headed towards the counter.
"Watch it."
I opened the app and went to Dan's profile. The last video had a normal thumbnail, but he didn't smile as widely as he normally did. The video was called 'A big mistake'.

"Hello Internet!"

He looked tired. His hair wasn't styled carefully, he had red spots in his face and black shadows under his eyes. I gasped quietly. What happened to him?

"A lot of you already pointed out to me that I looked very tired, which is appreciated. I wasn't sure if I could tell you this, but as I'm not going to call names, it's okay I think. By the way, I don't think she still watches my videos anyway."

He made jokes like normal, acted like normal. But his content was entirely different. Where he normally would never tell his fans about this kind of things, he now opened his heart and told his story.
He talked about how he had made an amazing friend, who he would never forget. And he talked about how their friendship ended. I cringed when I heard how Dan retold the drama in Dover. It was weird coming from him. From my point of view, it had seemed like he was completely uninterested, but he was saying something else. He said that I couldn't grasp what she told me which made me seem rude.
The video was bad, heartbreaking. The last couple of sentences he said made me tear up as I felt my heart crack slightly.

"She left after that. I haven't seen her since. I miss her. She was a perfect friend. But the thing is, right when her car left the street, I realised. She wasn't just a perfect friend. She was so much more. I found out too late. And that was a big mistake."

The video ended abruptly after that.