Cupid Hates Me ✔

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Thursday passed in a haze. I don't even remember what I did. All I remembered doing was worrying about Saturday. What would I wear? Would everything go alright? Will his friends like me? Will he like me?

Whenever I voiced my thoughts to Penelope, I'd get hit on the back of my head.

"You idiot! It'll be fine. He already likes you; this'll only make it better!"

But this was Penelope. My overly-optimistic non-biological twin. She was genetically programmed to like me for me. But Jake isn't…okay, neither is Penelope, but...gah, you know what I mean.

I mean, I wasn't pretty. Not trying to be modest here, but I really didn't inherit the pretty gene from my parents. My black hair was frizzy and curly. My nose was kind of large and my lips were too thick. The only pretty feature I had were my eyes. They were large, framed by long, naturally curly eyelashes and a dark brown colour. Michelle thought my eyes were the perfect example of the phrase: "Eyes are the windows to the soul." They clearly told anyone what I was feeling. It was how she was sure that I was in "love".

That was another thing I was afraid of. What if Jake finds out how I feel about him? I don't think he'd be happy to have a sixteen-year-old chase after him. And I can't handle rejection.

I mean, sure, four years isn't a huge difference. Heck, I think Michelle's boyfriend is twenty-two or something, even though he says he's not. But I don't trust him.

The point is, it's not a big difference to me, but it might be to him. What will his friends say if we start going out? My friends will be ecstatic. I can imagine their reactions:

"Geez, Rebs, you sure know how to catch 'em. And four years older too? My, my, you've been a busy gal."

And his friends? It'll probably be something like this:

"Dude! Sixteen? What were you – desperate?"

And, I'm not even the girlfriend type. All guys see me as the best friend and the sister. I'm sure Jake does too especially because of my age.

Penelope, always the psychologist, says that I think this way because I had been rejected by my last two crushes and so I’ve lost hope in guys ever falling for me.

"Hello? Could you like come back from RebeccaVille now?" said a disembodied voice, waving a hand in front of my face.

I chuckled in embarrassment, looking at the person the voice belonged to. "Sorry, Ace. I was…in Rebecca-Ville as you so creatively put it."

Ace grinned toothily. "Yeah, I'm creatively awesome. Anyways, how the hell do you do this experiment?"

Ace Richards was my brown-haired, hazel eyed, five foot eight lab partner in Chemistry class, who always depended on me to get the experiments right. It's not that he was dumb, he was just lazy. Always goofing around, Ace was a nice guy to have fun with and just lighten up sometimes. Because of that, and his slightly heavy built body, he was known as the "Ape-Man".

Sighing, I showed Ace how to carry out the experiment.

"How do you sleep with all that brain?" Ace asked me with a serious expression on his face.

"If that's your way of complimenting me, then thank you, Ace," I replied.

"You’re welcome, babe," he said.

I looked suspiciously at him, raising an eyebrow. Babe?

He smirked at me, raising his eyebrow back. "What?"