pizzaface | ✓

28.

IT WAS three thirty pm by the time Noel had come home, he still felt particularly fatigued, his feet dragging on the pavement slowly. Surprisingly, instead of Noel to produce his keys and fumble his way in, Cheryl had opened the door abruptly, her expression twisted and mangled.

"Where have you been?"

"Since when do you care?"

"Since you were gone the entire weekend." Noel could sense the tremor in her voice and the scratchiness of her eyes, something was wrong.

"Where's my mom?"

"Your mom and my Dad have gone off to cement their wedding plans."

"So they are getting married." Noel had whispered this more to himself than out loud, he still remembered Ron's anguished rebuttal to him earlier, when he had made a dire proclamation on his mom perhaps expecting a child. It hurt that his mom never said anything to him.

Cheryl opened the door a little wider as if to usher Noel inside, he took the hint warily, before flopping down onto the sofa, slipping his heavy backpack onto the floor next to him.

Cheryl tentatively sat on the sofa next to Noel, a huge uncomfortable space between them. She began to pick out her nails fiercely, her eyebrows furrowing intently.

"Do you have something to say to me?" Noel was the first to speak, all he wanted to do was sleep, he didn't want to think.

"Yeah. Our parents are getting married." Cheryl retorted with a curl in her lip.

"And what am I supposed to do about it?"

Something changed in Cheryl's manner, as if her face folded in on itself and it was trying so hard not to break. "They can't get married."

"Ron makes my mom happy, who am I to take that away from her." It physically hurt Noel to say that, his throat jabbing at him in justified protest.

"He won't. My dad won't make your mom happy, he didn't to mine."

"How can you be so sure?"

"M-my Dad is...obsessed with perfection, to the point where it's uncanny." Cheryl had moved on from playing with her nails to fiddling with her ginger hair, biting her lips intensely as she did so. "I don't know if he's performed any erratic behaviour towards you-"

"No." It came out of Noel's mouth without him thinking about it thus eliciting a suspicious glance from Cheryl.

"Um, anyways, his need for perfection drove my mom and him away from each other...he did some pretty unforgivable things, I mean I love my Dad but my mom isn't even able to take care of me efficiently because of him." Cheryl let out a long shuddery breath, covering her long fingers over her face. "I may not care specifically for you Noel but your mom is lovely...I don't want to see your family ripped apart because of my Dad." She removed her fingers from her face, her murky green eyes staring into Noel's. "Are you sure he hasn't done anything to you?"

"N-no...how come you called Myron yesterday?"

"Myron? What...how did you know I called him."

"Oh...nothing..."

"You..." Cheryl stopped for a minute, her eyes glazing over in silent thought, she brought her gaze back to Noel's, and Noel couldn't help but name the look as defeated. "You were with him. Weren't you?"

"Yeah. I was."

A silence fell over them but words were itching at Noel's throat.

"Why did you break up with him." This time Noel turned his face to the fireplace in the living room, he didn't feel like looking at Cheryl.

"I'm not stupid." Her tone was snarky and hurt. "I know Myron doesn't like me. He's too nice to break up with me. It just gets to a point where I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't be the golden couple. You can't like someone, who loves someone else."

"Why, why-"

"You can say it. I'm not going to bite your head off. You were going to ask me who he loves."

"I wasn't-"

"I can't tell you anyways." Cheryl began to throw her ginger hair into a messy ponytail, a few strands covered her face, it's locks masking the dark rings under her eyes. "I don't think he knows it himself."

"I was going to ask why you're so horrible to me." The fact of Myron being in love with someone else ignited a dark feeling in his stomach, Noel dug his fingers into the folds of the sofa to stop himself from trembling too much.

"I'm not horrible to you."

"Yes you are."

"I'm truthful."

"I never asked for your truth, did I?"

Cheryl let out a dragged sigh, she began to pick at her nails again, screwing her lips up into a tight ball. "It was pathetic how you used to be. As if you were screaming at people to come bully you. Your sole goal was to be invisible but in doing so you made yourself the most visible." Cheryl took a look at Noel, at his bright red t shirt and protruding yellow joggers, she didn't know how he was able to pull it off so well, his legs were parted on the chair casually, his curls fresh, brown, luscious, his eyes the vivid blue-green she refused to notice. Noel was frustratingly beautiful and even she couldn't deny the reason why.

"Insecure people like to feed on visible insecurities, and yours was the biggest one out there. Failed your math test? It's okay at least you don't look like Pizzaface. Boyfriend dumped you? At least you don't look like Pizzaface. Family problems? That's cool too, because at least you don't look like Pizzaface. People seeing you made them feel better about themselves." Cheryl turned her attention to the fireplace Noel was staring at. "It made me feel better about myself."

"Do you ever stop to think about how it makes people feel?" Noel's voice was clipped and tight, his brows furrowed in conflict.

"People are selfish. They only care about themselves or what affects them, some even get a sick pleasure from your misfortune." It sounded as if Cheryl was reading straight out of a textbook, her voice monotone and robotic. "If you think I'm going to apologise I'm not."

"I didn't expect you to."

"Why not?"

"Because your still insecure." Noel picked up his backpack, planning to retreat to his room and listen to his Lo-fi hip hop playlist while drawing. He was already halfway up the stairs before Cheryl called out to him.

"Be careful Noel. That wedding should not happen, for my sake and for yours too."

Cheryl didn't know whether Noel had heard as he made no response, opting for slamming his room door forcefully.

Either way, it wasn't her problem anymore, and she wasn't going to stick around to see it crumble.