Hearts ✓

Twenty 💕

Who are you?

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Given that it took all of Aubrey's energy and persuasion skills to stop Lauren from abruptly blowing our cover as soon as Will referred to her as Naive, stupid, and twistable, she made sure that both of us were immediately ushered by Aubrey's light shove into her car before Lauren caused a scene.

Of course, school resumed as normal, and honestly, it was a real shame that the one person I had become quite fond of and thought that was finally being real with me, was merely a hoax. A split second later, Jake ran up to me, like everything was normal, and I responded by very calmly turning my back to him and walking forward instead of screaming at his face. I thought I did so quite subtly as well, no one seemed to guess that I was fuming.

"Callie, wait up!"

I swiftly slipped on my pair of headphones that were resting on my neck, blasting the music as much as possible.

My car's repair had finished today and therefore, I could use it to get away from the pestering boy that was chasing me along the streets.

Jake has many traits, some include sweet-talking, knowing when to use his pretty convincing smile and a very good filter, but one of his most practiced characteristics was persistence. It's one of his not-so-hidden abilities.

"Are you mad at me or something?" Jake asks. "What did I do, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

I laughed boisterously as I stared at him in disbelief. "You should take up a career in acting."

"What?"

I slam my car door shut and fired up the engine.

" Callie's no challenge, I mean, I think that even Dean could make her fall in love," I mimicked the way he had said it. "Sound familiar?"

I knew that he would attempt at defending himself, or at least try to reason with me, so as soon as I saw him recognizing the sentence that he had said and starting to turn the wheels of his brain thinking of what to say in response, I drove off.

I was ahead, and he was speechless.

I didn't end up speeding my way home, so, to my extreme dismay, Jake had made it to my porch before I did.

"Did anyone ever tell you how slow you are at driving." He says amusedly.

I curse under my breath as I fiddle with my keys trying to figure out which is the right one quickly. I rapidly shove the recently stood up Jake who was perfectly ready to reason with me.

Finally, I find the right key and immediately unlock the door. I snicker as I face Jake. "Go to hell."

"Callie, wai-" He attempts, but the door is already slammed shut.

Behind the door, I crumple and hug myself like a baby, and sniffle. How could I have done this? Girls really were manipulabe

"Callie," Jake whispers from the other side. "I'm sorry."

I chuckle in disbelief, a chuckle out of hate, as I would call it. "Sorry doesn't cut anything. Sorry is an overused word. Sorry doesn't mean shit."

"Callie. Look, I'm sorry. The guys, well, they're intimidating, and if I don't say what they're used to, or what they want they want to hear, then they'll pick on me." He sighs.

"Right. I forgot. This is all about you."

"It's not like that." He murmurs into the door. "You know they would've picked on both of us if I hadn't pretended that you were nothing to me."

I stay silent. "You mean the world to me, Callie. Look, I didn't mean what I said because you are the most amazing, and special thing that's ever happened to me."

"Your words are empty lies." I snort.

"Sunset, please." Jake pleads. "At least give me a chance."

It took me a full two minutes to comprehend the entire scenario that seemingly excluded Jake. Although I had already spent a lot of time thinking about it, I felt like revisiting the recent few events and answering the one question that was stuck in my mind felt appropriate.

The question that had been entangling, and intertwining every nerve part of my brain since I had heard Jake say what he said at the pub.

If Jake had been so confident as to call me an easy play, then why did Darren make a deal to let Jake win.

Either could've schemed this or worked together, but here was an idea, I was still in the game and I still had a chance at winning.

It was official, Jake and I were stuck in a twisted tangle of recent events leading up to the one-month play mark.

Here was the thing. Time was almost up.

"Okay." I breathed, determining whether I was already regretting this or not. "I'll give you a chance."

Because I took a two-minute break to re-evaluate everything that was happening, I was unsure whether or not Jake was still leaning against my front door, but when he gave a sigh of relief, I knew he was still on the other side.

I raised my eyes and looked towards the clock. 3:30 pm.

Time to have a chat, the one and only, Darren.

Who are you, Jake?