"Tell me."

"No"

"Tell me."

"No."

"Tell me, tell me, tell me!"

"No, no, no!"

"Did you know all along, 'cause you didn't look very surprised?"

I sighed, rubbed my forehead, and fell back on the couch in my living room. "I told you I'm not saying anything until Sebastian gets here."

"Pleeease," Daniel drawled. "I am gonna blow up with the suspense!"

"Then please do so," I replied, not missing a beat. "Might be entertaining to watch."

"You're mean."

"So I've been told." I got up to get to the kitchen, and took out my phone to see if I had gotten any other reply to the SOS message I had sent Sebastian.

Alright, maybe it wasn't exactly an emergency but I was stressing out here, not sure what information I could give out to Daniel without Seb's permission, and beside it wasn't just my beans that had been spilled all over the floor. Sebastian was to blame too.

Who in their right mind would go out in open with their boyfriend if they are trying to keep their relationship hidden?

Seeing that I didn't have any new message, I yanked open the refrigerator door, and reached for the ice compartment. After the large tray was twisted, the ice cubes easily fell in the plastic bowl that I had taken out.

"What are you doing?" Daniel asked, an almost grimace on his features.

Instead of an answer, I settled on shooting a 'duh' look, and popped in another ice cube in my mouth.

"I've never actually seen someone do that." He looked a little bugged with the ease that I was devouring the cubes, one after another. "But I don't think that it's good for you."

"It's either this, or I smoke off a whole packet of Marlboro," I finally answered, moving my hands aimlessly. "Choose my poison."

"Fine, whatever," he said, raising his hands in defeat, and just when I thought he was going to stop with the questions that he had pelted me with from right after we had dropped Juliet at her house, a grin spread on his face. "But only if you tell me what was it all about."

I exhaled, closed my eyes and shook my head.

"Come on! At least give me something!" he spoke when I didn't. "That other guy, it was Lucas Allen, right? I think he graduated from our school last year. So he and Iver, huh? Since when? Well, now if I think about it, Sebastian is kind of dandy. God! Tell me!"

He was having too much fun in this.

Keeping one ice cube aside from it, I picked up the bowl, pulled on the collar of Daniel's shirt and emptied all its content. Taken completely by surprise, a cry of being startled erupted from his mouth as the half melted ice cubes tumbled down his shirt, leaving water stain on the white cloth as their aftermath.

"What was that for?" He protested, pulling his shirt away from sticking onto him.

"I suddenly realized that I never got my revenge on you for throwing me in that dirty lake during the cabin trip," I answered, not at all sorry for my actions. "And plus, you were seriously annoying me."

Picking up the kept aside ice cube from the counter, I nibbled on it but as soon as a familiar sting of pain ran across my brain, the cube almost fell from my hand, and a hiss of pain escaped my mouth.

"Told you it's not good for you," Daniel said in a concerned manner, and seized the remaining cube from my clasp, tossing in the sink. 

"Is it hurting a lot?" He tipped his head towards me.

"No, just a little brain freeze," I mumbled in my hands that was covering my face, the thumbs running in circles over my temples.

I was thinking of calling Sebastian again, and yelling at his to get his ass over here faster when the doorbell rang.

'Please let it be Sebastian,' I prayed in my mind with every inch I got closer to the door. If it wasn't Sebastian, then it could have been my dad who had gone out with one of his colleagues, and if the person at the door was dad, then it was certainly going to be an awkward fest for everyone.

I felt a wave of relief as the somewhat alarmed faces of Sebastian and Lucas came into view.

"What's the emergency? Why did you ask to bring Luke along? Is your dad not home? By the way I heard that the dance got cancelled. What happened?" Sebastian started talking non-stop without giving me any chance to even answer a single one, rushing inside the foyer. Lucas trailed after him, rolling his eyes at the long string of questions that his boyfriend had fired in my way, his fingers laced with Sebastian's.

Seeing no point in answering, since I was sure Daniel was going to do that for me any second, I didn't say anything. Just stared at the two guys. Both Sebastian and Luke exchanged a addled look. "Is everything all righ-"

"You're finally here! Now we can start." Daniel appeared in the foyer too, prompting Sebastian to go silent and drop Luke's hand at an express speed.

"No need for that." Daniel jabbed his thumb in the air to point at the sudden un-linking of hands that had happened on his account. "I know."

"You told him!" Sebastian clamored, his voice shifting at least two octaves up, and the look of him being aghast-ed and a little anger clear in his hazel eyes. I could tell he was scared. "You could have at least discussed with me first!"

"Oi, don't put this on me, you moron!" I finally spoke up. "They saw you at that Persian place. Your fault!"

Lucas grabbed Sebastian arm, holding him at place to stop him from hyperventilating. Sebastian's fingers furiously plowed through his hair, making them in every direction.

"What do you mean by 'they'?" With every word, his panic rose. "Who else was there?"

"Calm down, Seb," Lucas whispered, softly, his hand running up and down Sebastian's arm to provide a soothing effect.

"Juliet was with us too," I answered, opting for a much cooler tone this time.

"Beside these two, does anyone else knows?" Sebastian was still on the very edge of falling into jitters.

"No one," Daniel told him, casually leaning against the arched entrance of the foyer.

Sebastian didn't pay much attention to what Daniel had said. "Why am I even asking that? He's gonna tell everyone at school anyway!"

"No he won't," I replied.

Sebastian tossed a look of disbelief from his eyes which had a storm riling up in them. "Really, and how do you know that?"

Yeah, how did I know? I had merely assumed it all.

The eyes of the three of us traveled to the person in question, all of us mentally asking him the same thing, "What will you do?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Oh, I thought I was supposed to act like I'm not here while you guys talk about me."

Sebastian's eyes twitched in annoyance. "It's useless. Of course he's going to broadcast to everyone. I won't be surprised if I see it painted on all the walls tomorrow."

"Okay, first, don't give yourself too much importance. You think too highly of yourself if you think that I have nothing better to do than to waste my time over you," Daniel explained, his tone miffed and with an undercurrent of anger. "And second, I am not as much of a jerk as you think I am. It's not my place to tell anybody anything."

Sebastian turned a blind eye to the irritation in Daniel's words, his tensed shoulders seemed to be relaxing slightly. "So you are not gonna tell anyone?"

"No," Daniel simply replied in a monotone. "Just wanna know what's going on, nothing else. So stop getting your panties in a bunch."

With that the thick layer of tension which had been hanging in the air seemed to dissipate a little.

"I need to sit," Lucas spoke for the first time, and without waiting for any affirmation of any sorts, trudged inside the living room leaving the rest of us to follow him.

"So which one of you is going to start talking?" Daniel gaze switched from me to Sebastian and then returned back to me, like it had been doing for the last five minutes, while both Seb and I had been sitting on the couch like two awkward middle schoolers who had been dragged into some social event by their parents, twiddling our thumbs and swinging our legs.

"Come on guys, someone has to say something," Lucas piped in, perched on the arm rest on Sebastian's side.

"Fine, I'll do it," I breathed out, gearing myself to unfold all the answers. "Sebastian's gay and I knew it from day one."

Daniel didn't real look much affected by that. "Yeah, I already kind of got that part. What I wanna know is why the hell would you two do what you did?"

"Um..." I bit my lower lip to find the proper starting of what I was going to tell. "Well, the first day after I returned to the school in tenth grade, Shay instantly let me in her friend group. She was I think going through this phase of playing the match-maker during that time and after knowing me just for one day, she kept hinting towards how Sebastian was single and so was I, and blah blah blah, some other nonsense."

I paused, feeling slightly uncomfortable by the fact that all the three pair of eyes were on me, waiting intently to proceed.

"Well, after school she asked me to tag along to the basketball practice with her and after it was over, she left me alone with Seb." I tried recalling how exactly the events had taken place. "For like ten minutes, we just pretty much with awkwardness brimming up to our head, until-"

"Until I made an entrance," Lucas broke in, but pursed his lips immediately as I shot him a raised eyebrow look for interjecting in the middle. "Sorry. Continue."

"Yeah, until Lucas came. He was still in school that time and wasn't expecting me to be there so as soon as he saw both of us, there was this devastated look on his face and than ran away like a drama queen and then Seb had this pained look o-"

"I wasn't devastated. You're a crappy story teller!" Once again Luke cut me in the middle.

I decided to ignore his argument. "And I instantly understood what was up in between them."

"It's true." This time it was Sebastian who had implanted his views in between my narration. "She's like freakishly good at these things, like telling if someone likes someone."

I gave my shoulders little kick, in an almost bragging sort of manner.

"Right." Daniel chuckled, shifting forward on his seat, and then he added, "Anyway, proceed with the story."

I shifted my focus back on the story. There was no point in arguing about such a stupid issue anyway. "So I started asking Seb about Lucas and why he was hiding his relationship, and-"

Sebastian took the next part of the narration from me, "And then I explained her the real reason for it. My dad wasn't supportive of me being gay, still isn't," his voice dipped a little deep, but he continued as Luke gave his hand a tight squeeze. "He was forcing me to be with a girl, as if that is something I have power over."

"Your dad's an ass," Daniel put forward his views, without any hesitation.

Some times that guy had no brain to mouth filter. 

Thankfully Sebastian didn't get offended by it, on the very contrary, he cracked a half smile. "Kind of. So I explained Norah how I was planning to make it look in front of everyone like I was single and will keep that act until college, after which I would be free to live however I want and with whomever I want. But my dad kept nagging me to have a girlfriend."

"And that's where Noh plays her part." Lucas' hand reached over Sebastian to clamp down on my shoulder. "Both of them have been keeping up this act since then."

As the story was finished, Daniel leaned ahead, and anyone could tell that he bursting at the seems with questions. "And you don't have a problem with this?" He asked, looking at Lucas.

Lucas shrugged. "It's about priorities in life."

"Hmm..." Daniel hummed, his narrowed at us and then returned to normal. "But you two were really convincing. It would have been impossible not to believe that it wasn't real."

"That was the point of it all," Sebastian spoke, now at much more ease than he had been when he was handed the news.

Daniel nodded silently, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. "So all the stories you told about you two in the locker room all this time were all bogus?"

That certainly piqued my interest. "What stories?"

"Nothing!" A now terrified looking Sebastian exclaimed, his eyes asking Daniel not to say a word, but telling by out-for-trouble smile on Daniel's face, he had other plans.

"No, tell me," I demanded, a weight growing in the pit of my stomach.

"Well, isn't this interesting? You haven't even told her." He smirked at a miserable Sebastian. "Are you gonna confess or I can do it in a much messier way."

Choosing the first option, Sebastian opened his mouth struggling for words. "W-well, it's...it's nothing much."

"Nothing much?" Daniel laughed, sardonically. "Oh, I beg to differ."

"I'm really sorry, Noh," Sebastian started again, shooting a venomous look to Daniel. "But at first I was scared that someone's gonna see through our lie and I might have told some more lies to make sure that everyone believed us."

"Lies like what?" My suspicion was already pointing towards a definite direction but I was hoping it wasn't what I was thinking.

Sebastian's eyes twitched, in fear perhaps, and he didn't say anything so Daniel did, "He repeatedly told everyone in the locker room how much of a- I quote- "freak" you are in...in...you know, bed."

Kill me now.

"I'm what?!" I turned to Sebastian, wide eyed and mad as hell.

"I don't know why I did that. Rara, I'm so sorry..." Sebastian cowered in his seat, sinking as further as he could.

"Don't Rara me you...you..." I fought to come with a suitable insult.

"Douchewagon?" Daniel offered his help.

Sebastian glared at Daniel, muttering something under his breath.

My cheeks felt like they had been tossed in the fire; burning. This was the kind of conversation that no girl should endure when surrounded by three guys, even if two of those guys were gay.

"Lucas, just take him out of here," I said, trying my level best to keep my anger to rocket to the sky.

"I am not sure if I should do that. I am getting these voices in my head that are telling me to murder him," Luke answered me, but his eyes fixed on Sebastian emitting the annoyance that was evident in his face too.

"Fine, whatever," I mumbled, getting up and walking towards the stairs. "Close the door after you."

My bedroom door made a loud noise as I slammed it close.

Okay, what to do now? What to do now? What to do now?

I made my way to my closet and wrenching it open with force, I stared at the inside for one good minute. 

Why was my wardrobe arranged on weather basis? That's so boring and it looked like a mayhem. They should be according to the color palette, starting from dark to light. Of course.

So then I pulled out everything, piling up my clothes and started to classifying into five different groups.

Alright, I was very well aware that I looked like nuts, surrounded by heaps of my own clothes, frantically trying to make an order of things, but I needed some distraction. 

"Norah!"

I jumped on my spot and rotated my head around to find Daniel giving me a 'what the hell' look. I offered him the same look.

"I've been calling you for like last five minutes," he told me with disbelief.

"You have?" I asked. "Sorry, I might have spaced out. Anyway, I thought I told all of you to leave."

"Well you looked really pissed off when you stormed up. Someone had to check up on you," he said, sitting on the floor with me.

"I'm fine." I shook my head. "I'm probably just over-reacting again."

Or maybe it wasn't because of what Sebastian had done. Maybe everything including New York and dad was crashing up on me. I couldn't tell the difference.

"You're not. What he did was wrong and I shouldn't have dropped that thing on you like that," he said, his voice going all low and soft. "I'm sorry about that."

"It's not your fault. You just told the truth and I'm not really mad at Sebastian either. He's not a bad person, just a silly one." I pushed the remaining clothes away. "So just because I'm curious, how explicit were the accounts? Were they really bad?"

His eyes crinkled, and it was clear that he was debating whether he should tell the truth or not. 

"That bad, huh?"

I hung my head, embarrassment creeping up on me.

"He did blabber a lot about the "crazy" things you did together."

Crazy things? A pillow fight was the probably the craziest thing that I could recall that I might have done with Sebastian.

The boy had created such a mess.

"Great, I've been the school's slut all this time and I didn't even have any clue. Some one should just paint a letter and sew it on my clothes," I mumbled.

Daniel chuckled and I shot him a steely gaze for that. 

"Sorry," he said. "But screw what everyone at school thinks. You know who you are."

"You sound like my dad," I said with a lazy smile.

"Your dad says 'screw' what everyone thinks?"

"My dad can be strange at times. He doesn't always follows the standard dad vocabulary," I said and then noticed the look on his face, like there was a question that he wanted to ask but was just holding back.

"What?"

He gave me a perplexed look. "Huh?"

"I know there's something you wanna ask, so what is it?"

He shook off the expression off his face. "Well, you know I was just confused why would you do it? It's one thing helping someone but another to this extent for no reason."

"I make the strangest choices in life. Don't waste your time thinking about that," I replied, waving the matter off.

There was a sudden light coming from the driveway and the sound of tires against the ground soon followed it. "That must be my dad."

"I should go then," Daniel said, standing up on his feet. "Don't over-think much about this or whatever else has been bothering you lately, okay? And please sleep tonight. Your face tells me you haven't been doing that much."

"I can say the same thing about you," I countered, patronizingly. "Ever tried taking your own advice?"

"Hey, it's not entirely my fault. I blame it on Shay, Liam and their need to be loud all the time. I am scarred for life now." He shuddered.

I cringed too. "That doesn't seem like a fun experience."

"Trust me, it's not. It's like "Game of Moans" all night long. I've heard things no person deserves to." He sighed, discouraged. "Anyway, so as I was saying that don't an idiot and please sleep. You need to."

And with that, he walked out, leaving the door to an ajar state.

After a few minutes of just plain breathing and nothing else, I started working on finishing up the job that I had scattered in front of me and wondering what I was supposed to do now.

Now, since Dad wanted me to so I had to drop this act with Seb, but this act had worked as a blanket for me till now, saving me from answering several questions. With that security gone, where did it leave me? And amidst all this was Daniel. I wasn't going to play the denying stubborn teenage girl act because I knew I felt something for him, even though I shouldn't. But that wasn't the main issue here. The real problem at hand was that he wasn't in the plan. In my plan. I wasn't supposed to have this strange but nice feeling whenever I saw him, or anyone else for that matter.

I knew that I couldn't blame myself for everything either. I wasn't in control of how the things started with us. It would have been just so wrong if I wouldn't have tried to get close to him, to convince him to let me in. But along that way, I had accidentally let him in too, and that was the exact problem. I had let him onto way too many things that realizing now I felt like an idiot for doing.

By now I was convinced that Daniel was going to be fine. Of course, he would have some bad days, but he would also have good ones, and somehow, no matter how I much wished it, I couldn't picture myself in them.

Running my hands on my face, I got up from the ground after being finished with the task and left my room to see Dad.

The ground floor and his room was dark, so I headed for the stairs to the second floor that had just my dad's study, where I didn't go much often. I mean it was just shelves and shelves of law books lined up one after another. Not exactly a lively place to be.

Except for the table lamp that glowed over the stacks of paper that dad was reading, hunched over the table, all the other lights of the area were switched off.

When he heard my footsteps, dad turned around on his heavy dark wood chair to face me. "I heard the dance didn't go very well."

"It didn't," I replied, bringing up a small smile and sitting on one of the two chairs positioned opposite to my dad's. "I needed to tell you something."

"Go on," he said, piling the papers along with a few files.

"I'm gonna end that thing with Seb tomorrow, like you want," I spoke, anticipating his reaction closely.

He breathed out, nodding his head. "I say that's the right thing to do. For everyone."

Not necessarily.

"Yeah," I agreed, weakly. "I guess it is."

"You know I don't like putting this time limit on you either. But that is something I had to do." He positioned his gaze to look straight at me, and whenever he did that I always got the feeling like he could tell if I'm lying about something, so I didn't hold his look and looked down at my hands resting on my lap.

"I know," I whispered. "Dad, can I ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything."

"If you knew it from the start how things will end with you and mom, do you think you still would have loved her?" I spoke, finally asking the question that I had been wanting to for a long time.

As I expected, the calm look on his face was ousted by a surprised one at the arrival of my question. "Why are you asking this now?"

"No reason," I said, there being absolutely no truth in those two words. "So would you have?"

"There's no way of knowing how things are going to turn out in life. That's what keeps us moving forward. The curiosity of situation."

His answer was wise but not what I wanted. "But what if there was a way. Like for some strange reason you know what's coming next. Would you still make the same choices? Would you still have married mom? Do you think Nathan would have fallen for Em if he knew that she'll leave him like this?"

By the look on his face, it was clear that he knew that there was some reason for all this inquiry, but he didn't mention it. "I can't speak for Nathan but if I wouldn't have married your mother, then I wouldn't have you either. So I don't think things ended up on a complete bad note for us."

Still not the answer to my question.

"What if it wasn't for me? What if Em and I weren't there? Then what? Would you still make someone your present knowing that they aren't your future?"

He looked down, stayed that way for sometime and then looked up again.

"Maybe not..."

And that was my answer.

------------------------------------------

I'm excited to write the next chapter. You'll see why. Anyway, I hope you liked it. And you'll soon understand what'sgoing on in Norah's mind.

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