“His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life”  - The Fault In Our Stars, now in theatres!

Chapter 2

It had been three full days since I had gotten hold of Marcus’s number, or potential numbers. Or it might not have been his number. Whatever. Those three nights hadn’t been the most peaceful, but at least it was less tortuous than thinking about my previous life, where I still belonged with my ex-group of friends.

Right now, it was the fourth night, however, and I was growing impatient.

It was incredibly easy to give out reasons on why I shouldn’t call: 1. Marcus was someone who was devoid of any tact, or even human-emotions. 2. I had never hated anyone upon the first five minutes of meeting them, but Marcus was an exception. 3. He was my boyfriend’s freaking brother, for God’s sake. 4. And even if he weren’t, it’s so very unladylike to call first. Like, what the hell?

And the sole reason on why I should call: 1. Because I wanted to. I freaking wanted to.

I bit on my lip, feeling my pride diminishing by the seconds. I hated to be a coward, but on the other hand, I hated to be a chaser.

The clock struck at six fifteen when all hope for self-respect flew away, and I dialed one of the numbers.

Failed Dreg.

I listened to the ringing sound, my heart sinking lower and lower as the gravity of my situation dawned upon me. Here I was, reaching out to my boyfriend’s brother. What kind of sick person was I!

And then I heard a click.

To say that my whole world snapped into a halt would be the understatement of the century. 

“I’m flying on heaven, man…,” the voice on the other hand sounded like someone was having a particularly good time. Like, shit your biggest piece of deuce kind of good time. I almost couldn’t catch what he was saying since there must be the rest of the world simultaneously talking around him. On top of all the noise, there was also what might be passed as ‘music’ blasting on the background. It took me a while to figure it out.

This guy was having a very illegal, very wild party over there.

“Where are you? Why are you not here?” the guy drawled.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember what Marcus sounded like. And then I hung up, blocked the number, deleted it and prayed for a good fifteen minutes that whoever he was would never attempt to contact me back.

That didn’t go well at all.

I looked at the second number. ‘Obnoxious Sociopath’.

Did I lack the self-respect to not call the second number after the obvious disaster of the first number? No. I did not.

Did I lack the self-restraint to do what my pride and my brain told me? Yes, my dastardly magnificent self did.

And so I called the second number, silently cursing myself for falling for Marcus’s games.

And then I heard his voice at the fourth ring.

“What?”

This time, I was so sure that it was him. Nobody could have sounded like that much of an entitled bastard with just a word.

“Marcus?” I called out hesitantly.

“Mmm,” he sounded like he was only half awake. “Yeah, that’s me.”

I nodded, suddenly at loss as to what to say. I considered hanging up, but that would seem cowardly. At that second, I wished that I had written something on paper so that I knew what to say. Unfortunately, all of my energy was spent on mustering courage to dial the number.

“Um, anyway-“

I wasn’t even close to finished (and still thinking on how to finish the sentence) when Marcus interrupted me. “Ugh, don’t yell at me,” he mumbled.

I could only gape.

“Or on the second thought,” Marcus said, as if an afterthought. “I’m sleepy. Call you later…” there was a pause, “whoever you are.”

And then he hung up.

I couldn’t close my mouth and my eyes started to water because I had them open for a while. I had never been treated like that by any guy, ever. Maybe I wasn’t such hot-shit right now, being a friendless, desperate bastard, but I knew that I had a pretty face and I’d perfected the art of playing-hard-to-get-while-being-reasonably-easy.

Thus I still couldn’t believe how much trouble I was getting myself into to call this guy. I had to lie to my boyfriend, and then spent the last three days lamenting over the phone, and then I actually had to lower my pride and call him first.

And he? He hung up the phone because he was too sleepy to talk.

I couldn’t say anything, but there was an immediate urgency to shut down my brain because of an overdose of embarrassment.

When someone typically said ‘call you later’, usually they’d mean in a few hours. Six hours at the latest. Matthew, in particular, never took more than two hours to call back, even though he always seemed like he was busy with college.

His brother, however, took 26 hours and 34 minutes to call me back.

I was eating my dinner alone when that particular incident happened. Both of my parents decided that it was the perfect night for their date-night, and I was alone with twenty dollars and a box of frozen pizza.

They were being too generous.

My phone buzzed, and I nearly choked on my cold pizza dough when I saw the name. ‘Obnoxious sociopath’.

What the hell.

I had my own rules to phone calls. Only answer after the third ring. It made me seem busier, and it usually made the caller nervous enough to throw him off when he heard my voice. For Marcus, however, I had to make an exception.

The first ring.

I held my breath.

Second ring.

Third ring.

I held onto my phone harder, waiting for the millisecond to reach the fourth ring.

And the fourth ring never happened.

My shoulders slouched as my gaze fell. Marcus called me, and then he just let the phone ring thrice before he gave up.

That was it? Three rings?

In a fit of rage and humiliation, I texted the number.

Seriously?

Only 3 rings?

What is wrong with u?

Not five seconds later, my phone rang again. The same caller-id flashed on the screen, and the same heart-palpitation ravaged my chest. It took my whole willpower to wait for the first, second, third ring.

At the impending fourth ring, I closed my eyes.

Ring.

Hold it hold it hold it hold it hold it.

Ring.

And then I lost all control and pressed the green button.

“Hey, freak,” his voice sounded much, much calmer than the day before. In fact, I could feel the smirk on his voice, and it infuriated me.

I didn’t say anything and let my breathing do the talking.

“Is that how you play the game? You wait until the fourth ring before you answer the phone?”

“Usually it’s three,” I corrected him. “But you’re a massive jerk, so you deserved five.”

That didn’t deliver any blow to him, as it appeared. “I knew you’d call.”

And I knew that it’d be best for me to not comment on this statement to not contribute to his arrogance.

“Although I hadn’t thought that you’d take this long to call. How many days has it been? Six?”

“Four,” I cursed inwardly as I let my mouth slip. I didn’t want him to know that I actually counted, and that any of this actually mattered. After all, I had a boyfriend, and it was his brother.

“How did you get my number?” he asked. “Or let me guess, you pretended to borrow Matt’s phone?”

Damn it. He got it right on the first try.

“One of my friends knew you,” I fibbed.

“Yeah? Who?”

“Harry,” I just called any name on the top of my head. Harry sounded like a very common name. At least, with the publication of Harry Potter, lots and lots and lots of smitten parents had been naming their sons Harry, right? At least this guy must know one Harry, right?

“Hmm,” there was a clicking-pen sound on the other end. “Whatever, I knew at least seven Harrys.”

You show off!

“Uh-huh,” I said, masking the fact that I hadn’t took a breath in the whole ten seconds it took him to answer.

“Anyway, was it you who called me yesterday morning?”

“Five PM is usually classified as afternoon.”

He laughed. “I just got back at like, nine in the morning, so you know…”

That piqued my curiosity a little bit. What was he doing until nine in the morning? Yesterday was a Wednesday, so it was nearly impossible to have a house-party around that time. And then I slapped my own forehead because my own thought sounded stupid. A guy like him must have his own fake ID. A guy like him must be out in some club with older friends. He looked like he was the kind of guy to do that.

I tried to curb my curiosity about his night-life and asked something else that had been bothering me intensely. “So why you asked me to call?”

This time, it took Marcus a whole lot more time to answer. “I just want to hear your voice…” finally the words came out.

I scrunched my nose.

“If I were Matthew, that’s what I’d say,” he continued as he laughed, an indication that his answer was nothing but a joke.

“It’s not funny.”

“I never claimed to be funny,” he answered lightly. And then, there was another awkward pause. I checked to phone to see if he had hung up once again, but no, the phone was still ongoing.

And then, suddenly the statement came.

“I’m interested in you.”

That was so unexpectedly forward that I was thrown aback. Either my ears gave the wrong signals to my brain or I was dreaming aloud. And it seemed that both possibilities were wrong, because Marcus wasn’t quite finished yet.

“So?”

“So what?”

There was an impatient sigh. “Your name.”

I gritted my teeth as my brain cells skidded hard. He didn’t even know my name. we had dinner, and he came this close into kissing my ear, and he wanted me to get his number, and he didn’t even know my freaking name.

I closed my eyes as another fit of anger started to boil inside me. I had to decide my attitude fast if I didn’t want him to deem me as a doormat. How would I react to his question? (A) play hard to get. (B) jump to his lap (C) Ignore him, because let’s face it, Matthew was still his brother!

And then I chose (D), which was brilliant: all three of them.

“Go to the other side of the world and find out my name, you idiot.”

I could hear him breathe in sharply, but I didn’t give him the chance to speak anymore.

I wouldn’t want to be the only one working hard on this.

-

-

-

It was hard to concentrate on your lessons when you were anticipating something. Today, however, it wasn’t the bell that I was looking forward for, but the phone call from Marcus.

Yes, I had abandoned all hope for redemption and decided to just coast to desperateville.

My hand was below the table, still holding on the phone. I had been texting Matthew at the whole class, but I had to admit that every time my phone buzzed, I hoped that it was the other Hawthorne. I knew what I was doing was incredibly bitchy, and if Noelle, or if my ex-friends knew about this, they wouldn’t let me live it down.

But like the usual, my heart wasn’t something that could cooperate with my mind easily. No matter how hard I ordered my brain to stop waiting, I couldn’t.

It was english class this time, and Mrs. Bennet was boring us as the usual with all the lessons about grammar and whatnot.

When the next buzz on my phone came, I casually looked at it, and nearly fell off my chair when I saw that it wasn’t a text from Matthew, and instead Marcus calling.

My freaking God my freaking God my freaking God.

Who the hell decided that it was a good freaking idea to call at one in the afterfreakingnoon?!

In just a jolt of seconds, my whole body was filled with inexplicable energy. It was weird, it was disgusting, how much I let someone affect me this way.  I slipped the phone in my pocket and walked into Mrs. Bennet.

“I need to pee,” I didn’t even bother to decorate my words, and before she could even respond, I had bolted out the classroom. I could hear the sound of some guys laughing, but I could worry about my image later. What mattered now was I had to find a place to answer Marcus’s call. Now.

-

-

-

“Azalea Walters,” Marcus’s voice boomed on my ears as soon as I clicked the green button. “But you’re usually called ‘Alea’. Cool nickname, who gave it to you?”

“You son of a bitch,” I tried to not sound as happy when I found him completing my little mission. “Who calls at school hours?”

“You’re at school?” the obliviousness at his tone was almost impossible to feign. “So why are you able to answer?”

“I’m at the infirmary. Caught a bit of a fever,” I fibbed. Fortunately, my voice was even, my breathing normal. It was a good thing that I was a natural-born bitch. Lying was second-nature to me.

“Lucky me, I guess,” there was a pause. “This time you made me wait eight rings before you pick up.”

That’s because I ran to the other end of the hall, you idiot! “You should be grateful that I even picked up.”

“So who chose your nickname, Azalea?”

My nose scrunched as I heard the name. It’s been such a long time ever since I’ve ever had someone called me with my own full name. The very first person who called me ‘Alea’ was Noelle, a few years ago, when she decided that the extra ‘za’ in my name was unnecessarily hard to pronounce. The first time I heard it, I didn’t really like the name, because it sounded like a plant. But then people really started to like ‘Alea’ and they agreed that the extra ‘za’ really was hard to pronounce, and in less than three months, I had a brand new name for myself.

“Someone,” I decided to go with that. “Where did you get my name? You looked up Matthew’s blog?” Matthew really did have a partially private blog where he’d write about people and stuff. That’d be a realistic option.

“How can I? I didn’t even know the password,” his answer came quick. “One of my friends knew you.”

“Who?”

“Noelle.”

As if there was an invisible knife cutting through my chest, my whole energy was depleted. The initial high from the previous euphoria was now all gone, leaving her body empty. I leant on the wall for support, part of me not believing what I just heard. Noelle? Noelle? He knew Noelle?

I tried to listen to his breath, hoping to find a single modicum of proof that he wasn’t being serious. But his breathing was normal, his voice was even.

I had to try, anyway.

“Don’t lie to me,” finally I said it. “You saw Matthew’s blog.”

There was a very long, very uncomfortable silence following that statement.

Finally, though, Marcus started to laugh. It took him about fifteen seconds before his laughing calmed down a bit and his words came through. “Alright, you caught me, detective.”

“Why the hell did you lie?”

“You started it first,” he answered defensively. “Everybody with the name of Harry hates me.’

I couldn’t see Marcus’s face, but I could already tell that he was smirking his pompous smirk. “So, be honest to me, how did you get my number?”

“Matthew’s phone,” I answered. “Where did you get Matthew’s blog’s password?”

“I did a bit of hacking here and there, beneath this tattooed exterior is a true nerd,” his words flew faster than before. “You’re not at the infirmary?”

This time, it was a bit harder to answer honestly, but since I was down the rabbit hole, I figured ‘what the hell’.

“The corner of the school. I pretended to go to the toilet when you called. You? Still in front of Matthew’s laptop?”

“You’re such a confident little prissy,” Marcus said with a bit of awe. That was when I realized that he might share my predicament, after all. That he had also been working hard to get to know me, too, and that allowing me to know his hard work meant that he was lowering his pride.

“Yeah,” he answered anyway, “lots of your photos here. Lots of stories about you, too, you miss popular.”

For some strange reason, the idea of Marcus, a partial stranger, knowing things about me wasn’t such a scary notion after all. “Did you stay up late to guess the password?”

“It’s not your turn to ask questions,” he protested. “Why do you bother getting my number?”

I answered him. “Why do you bother staying up late to guess Matthew’s blog’s password?”

And like I thought, Marcus only laughed and changed the topic of the conversation.

Ego-ridden bastards, we were.