5 #2
I was trying to hold back the anger Aegan had stirred in me, yet I could still feel it seeping from my pores. The nerve of him to say that I was begging for his attention was what made my blood boil the most.
“What happened?” Kiana wanted to know, realizing I wasn’t just angry for the sake of it.
I didn’t want to tell her, so I tried changing the subject.
“What’s that key?” I asked her and pointed to the large silver key on a necklace that matched her clothes. It was a bit strange; it wasn’t shaped like a normal key.
“It’s my Tagus room master key,” she said, without making a big deal of it. “I got it for being a leader of the painting club. But seriously, what happened?”
Artie finally let it slip, unable to keep it in. “Aegan asked Jude out about twenty minutes ago.”
Kiana and Dash were shocked. Their eco-friendly glasses didn’t reach their lips. They almost blinked in sync. Their eyes flicked between Artie and me, waiting for someone to deny it. Then they realized we weren’t joking.
“What?” Dash spat, shocked. “And what did you say?”
“I said no, of course.”
They were stunned yet again. They looked at each other and then looked at me. Seeing their reaction, it dawned on me that my “no” had been almost a feat, something extraordinary.
“But girl, what revolutionary planet are you from?” Dash exclaimed, showing a mixture of awe and shock.
“I never saw it coming,” Artie confessed, still shocked as well. “I never thought Aegan would do something like this.”
Dash panted like life itself was a mystery to him—or, more accurately, like the trio of brothers were. “Well, that’s why he did it,” he said, “because we expected the worst, not that he’d ask her out.”
I agreed that Aegan had switched his strategy entirely.
At that moment, a girl wearing a white trousers-and-blouse uniform with the Bat-Fit logo came up to the table.
She looked at us with a funny face, maybe because she’d heard something, but was quick to become helpful and ask us what we wanted to drink.
Artie ordered two protein chocolate shakes and then the waitress stepped away, but not before casting a quick look over her shoulder, as if she was tempted to linger close by to see if she could overhear something juicy.
What I’d been told about that poor guy Pierre and the students bombarding him with questions in the debate had me conjuring conspiracy theories.
What if Aegan had spies all over Tagus? What if they weren’t just his followers but also acted as his servants?
If so, there’s no doubt that they’d be well-compensated.
We had to keep our voices down. I was just about to say as much when I saw Kiana had covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide, as though she’d just had an epiphany. She was looking at me, yet she wasn’t.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, frowning. “Did the milkshake give you a brain freeze?”
She snapped out of it and looked around at us all, her eyes suddenly darting from one face to another.
“Quick, name one girl who’s agreed to go out with Aegan against her wishes,” she asked.
Dash blinked but didn’t say a word. Artie shook her head without saying anything either, saying no name.
“There isn’t one. She doesn’t exist,” said Dash.
“What about any girl who went out with him for less or more than the infamous ninety days?” Kiana asked, on a roll.
Dash pouted thoughtfully, opened his mouth to blurt out a name, but then closed it, thinking better of it. He’d been about to say something else before deciding against it. He ended up shaking his head.
“There isn’t one of those either.”
Kiana nodded and held out her hands dramatically, as if she’d just handed us the key to something, but we didn’t get it. A little more patience with the slow ones, please.
“This has never happened because usually Aegan breaks up with the girls once the ninety days are up,” she said, trying to make us understand. “He’s never been broken up with. He’s never been turned down.”
She glanced at us again, expecting to see that we understood, but . . .
“Fucking hell, get to the point, would you? You’ve got me on the edge of my seat here and this sounds interesting!” Dash demanded impatiently.
Kiana clasped her hands on the table, exhaling slowly to steady herself before getting to the point.
“The fact that Jude had the courage to turn Aegan down made me think.” She bit her lip as if holding back a cruel smile.
“What if Jude had agreed to go out with him, led him on, and then, at some point, publicly broke up with him? She’d be knocking him down just like he’s done with every girl he’s ever gone out with. Wouldn’t that have been epic?”
There was a stunned silence. Artie looked gobsmacked, as if such a thing were impossible, but also realizing that if it happened, it wouldn’t just be epic—it would be dangerous too.
“I can’t even begin to imagine,” she doubted.
“I can,” Kiana said, and her eyes sparkled with a mischievous excitement that, honestly, could’ve convinced anyone.
“It would be disastrous for him because he always feels the need to show everyone who runs things around here. If someone were to disrupt his system or break his rules, it would be an attack on his control. And all attacks end up destroying something.”
The table fell silent again. Dash nodded slowly, looking at Kiana as if she’d just opened his eyes to new and intriguing possibilities.
“Sounds great,” he admitted, but then shrugged. “It’s just that it hasn’t happened. Jude made it clear to him that he repulses her.”
“But come on,” Kiana insisted, hoping we’d dive further into her fantasy.
“Just picture Aegan’s face when he’s broken up with in public, when he realizes she never liked him, and that Jude was just leading him on .
. .” She outlined the scene with both hands in the air.
A female revolution against the Cash tyranny.
Dash frowned, acknowledging how great the idea was.
“Well, my plots usually involve thinking up ways to meet Timothée Chalamet, but now that I think about it, I’d actually love to see something like that,” he admitted, and then gave Kiana a little nudge.
“Still, you clever little devil, Jude could’ve agreed to go on a night out with him and then turned him down.
It would’ve crushed his ego. Simpler and less dangerous, right? ”
He winked at me, like he was throwing the idea at me.
“Maybe Jude isn’t like that,” Artie said, shaking her head with a confidence that faltered at the sight of me. “You’re not like that, are you?”
“Oh, Artie. I’m everything I’m not supposed to be.”
In my opinion, Kiana was right about certain things.
Aegan radiated an unshakable confidence.
Everyone at Tagus put him on a pedestal.
Their fawning over him had shielded him from what ordinary people couldn’t get away from: rejection and failure.
Clearly nobody said no to Aegan. Nobody left Aegan out.
Aegan was never second-best at anything. He was treated like he was superior.
But that was only because others wanted to see him like that; in reality, he was really just a normal guy.
What Kiana meant was that if everyone saw a girl shamelessly break up with Aegan Cash before he got the chance to break up with her, they’d realize he could be turned down just like anybody else.
And just like that, he’d no longer be a god, guru, or leader; he’d be just another ordinary guy.
“Jude can be whatever way she wants to be,” Kiana said, interrupting my thoughts to answer Artie, “because we’re not talking about good, innocent guys.
In fact, you know what I’ve always thought?
” She leaned forward and whispered, “The three of them must be hiding something. There’s no way they can be that perfect.
There must be a dark secret, and in his case, a really big one. ”
Hearing all this, all I can say is that the signs had always been there; they’d simply been carefully hidden.
“It could be, Nancy Drew,” Dash agreed with Kiana, “but there’s no way to know. If they mess up, all it takes is a phone call or a click of their fingers to have it sorted out.”
The overcurious waitress brought us our milkshakes right at that moment.
Again, as she turned around, she glanced back at us, hoping to overhear something.
This time I shot her an angry look that said she better tend to the healthy snack–filled counters rather than eavesdropping.
As I followed her with my eyes, the Bat-Fit door opened, and in walked none other than Aleixandre, the teenage heartthrob.
Once again, he was impeccably dressed, with his jet-black hair perfectly slicked back and not a single wrinkle on his clothes. He was holding his phone at arm’s length and speaking into the camera, probably live streaming.
As I watched him, I noticed something a little strange: He ordered at the counter and was handed a glass almost straightaway, as if it had been prepared in advance. But instead of just taking it, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to hold the glass. Then he was out of there.
Why couldn’t he touch the glass with his hand?
Baffled, I turned my attention back to the table just as Kiana was recounting all the times she’d seen a girl cry over Aegan. They hadn’t noticed that I’d tuned out.
“Just think about it, Jude,” she suggested, leaning against the back of the chair with her milkshake in hand.
“It’s not like she’s Katniss Everdeen or something.” Dash elbowed her. “Leave Jude alone. Hopefully, Aegan will never look at her again and things will settle down.”
But who said I was lucky or that I wanted things to settle down?