I hate boys!
I hate boys!
He answered it immediately and heard her frantic voice say over the phone. "James... there is trouble." She said as she paced around the sitting room while also biting her fingernail.
"Hey! Calm down. What is it?" James asked as he stood in a spot. His heart was beginning to race and he hoped she wasn't in trouble and neither was Mira.
Rachel who just returned from school watched, looked at her brother quietly without heading towards her room upstairs.
"I told Leo Benjamin kissed me and—"
"What the hell!? Benjamin kissed you?" James asked in surprise without giving her a chance to complete her sentence. "When? Why? Was it consensual?" James asked immediately.
That was probably all James cared about. Whenever he heard something happened between the girls and a guy, he always asked to know if it was consensual. He only reacted when it wasn't.
"It wasn't but that's not—"
"It wasn't?" He asked, interrupting her for the second time. "He forced you? Please tell me you hit him or something?"
"Can you just stop talking and listen to me? I didn't know who else to call so I called you. So please.. try to make things easy for me."
"Someone forced Mia? Are we going to fight the person?" His younger sister, Rachel asked with interest as she tried to listen in on their conversation.
James glared at her. It was very typical of her to always like trouble and he couldn't believe that letting her sit at the police station for hours hadn't taught her a lesson.
Just then, the door opened again and Peter came in with his friend Noah. Rachel and James knew the boys were obviously going to remain inside Peter's room for the next couple of hours, playing video games. Rachel had heard Noah had a private room with a whole lot of games in his house. She always wondered why he liked coming here to play instead and it was worse because they treated her like she was some kind of errand girl so she scowled at his presence.
James could not deal with the crowd so he head outside to go continue his conversation with Mia.
"What's wrong? He doesn't look okay." Peter asked Rachel.
"I think someone tried to force Mia to have sex with him." Rachel said rather exaggeratedly while the boys looked on in surprise.
"There's always one trouble after another." Noah said and began to head upstairs but not without ruffling Rachel's hair first.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rachel yelled at his back angrily but he didn't turn around to look at her at all while Peter didn't care about whatever was going on with the two, he simply head upstairs.
"I hate boys!" Rachel declared loudly before stomping her feet angrily as she took the stairs to her room.
~~~~
"So tell me what happened." James told Mia as he got into his car and connected the call to his airpod so he could comfortably drive and speak with Mia at the same time.
Mia began to narrate how everything had happened the previous day but she made it snappy.
"I just couldn't keep it from him so I told him about the kiss." Mia said in a high pitched voice which showed she was nervous.
"What did Leo do? What happened?" James asked curiously.
Mia recalled how Leo had reacted and why she was feeling this way right now.
She told Leo Benjamin kissed her. She had been really careful with her words. She didn't say they had both kissed or she kissed him. She had let him know he was the one who kissed her.
Leo looked at her quietly and searched her eyes, trying to figure out whether she was joking or serious. But seeing how serious she looked, he dropped his hands from her shoulders and took a few steps backwards.
"I... I swear I don't even know what happened. He said he wanted to talk and... it all happened so fast. He held me and before I could react, he kissed me but Jeremy came and punched him and—" She stopped rambling to catch her breath and also look at him to know if he truly believed her.
"He... kissed you?" He asked in a very quiet voice as if he hadn't heard all she had been saying for the past minutes. His head was spinning simply at the thought of it.
Mia sighed in response. Admitting it with her lips irked her.
Leo laughed. It was the kind of laugh that could be interpreted as 'I can't believe this right now.'
"I really didn't—"
"He knows I fucking love you! Everyone knows that!" He yelled suddenly in rage that made her jump from fear. She had never seen him that angry.
"I. Am. Going. To. Kill. That. Son. Of. A. Bitch!" He said in a really quiet and serious voice that took her aback.
Next thing she knew, he had reached for his car keys, placed a kiss on her head and disappeared, leaving her stunned and speechless.
Firstly, he had said he loved her. He loved her? He had never said that to her before. It took her a long while before she remembered he had said he was going to kill the 'son of a bitch' and by the time she ran outside, his car was out of sight. She called but he didn't pick up.
She didn't know where he was going to but she had a bad feeling about all this and didn't know what to do. Since she hadn't officially apologized to Mira, she couldn't call her and so she called James instead.
"He's probably gone to look for him. I didn't know Leo had such a temper." James said as he sped up.
"I didn't know so either but–"
"He doesn't have any right to react that way, you know?" James suddenly said.
"You aren't even officially dating. Even if he loves you, his love wouldn't stop other guys from making advances. He is a smart guy, he should know that." James said thoughtfully.
Mia who usually didn't have to worry about anything related to guys was suddenly having a really busy life with guys everywhere around her.
There was Leo, there was Benjamin, she had James, Jeremy and also one who made her uncomfortable, Louis.
"I'm almost at your place. You should come out now. We need to search for wherever Leo is before he does something stupid." James said before disconnecting the call.
Meanwhile, over at the hospital where Jeremy was, Chloe and Ellie was at the middle of eating while Ellie talked nonstop about Jeremy.
Chloe listened to her attentively. Both siblings loved each other dearly and she could understand why Ellie didn't like her much since she didn't treat her brother well. But what was she supposed to do? Treating Jeremy right was kind of risky because he may think she was giving him a greenlight to pursue her and at the end, he was going to get heartbroken.
They both stopped whatever they were doing when Jeremy stirred on the bed.
"He is finally awake." Ellie said and hurried to stand beside his bed when he turned again.
"I thought you were going to sleep for many days." Ellie said excitedly as she jumped on the bed and sat down beside him.
He groaned sleepily before opening his eyes slowly.
He smiled at his sister but frowned when he didn't see the other person close to him.
"She left already?" He asked groggily.
"N... who?" Ellie had bee about to say 'No' but she decided to play a little prank on him.
"Chloe. When did she leave?" He asked, sounding disappointed. Even though he knew there was no way Chloe would have stayed there for hours just because of him, he had hoped to at least see her when he woke up.
Chloe just shook her head at him. If he turned his head just a little bit, he would definitely see her behind.
"What a dummy!" She mouthed only for herself to hear. But she noticed he sounded better than how he had sounded that morning when she saw him. She guessed whatever the doctor injected him earlier must have really worked and she was happy for it.
"Oh. That was yesterday. You've been sleeping for a full day." Ellie said making him gasp before he forced himself to sit up. "Yesterday!!!!!?"
Ellie began to giggle while Jeremy turned his head to the side when he heard someone laugh lightly. His eyes slowly widened when he saw Chloe was still in the room, watching him with an amused glint in her eyes.
He looked away from her and fell back on the bed before covering his face with his hands.
"That was so embarrassing. I can't believe I fell for it." He said with his hands still covering his face while Ellie kept laughing.
"How do you feel?" Chloe asked as she approached his bed.
He opened his face and turned his head to the side to look at her. "Better." He looked at the clock and back at her. "Can't believe you are still here." He said with a smile.
Chloe just nodded and ignored him. "You must be hungry. The doctor brought you something to eat earlier."
Jeremy nodded immediately. He was starving!
"Have you eaten anything?"
"Yea, we already ate something."
Ellie took out the cooler from the bag and handed it to Chloe who gently placed it beside him before opening the soup which was still hot.
"You should eat. I have to go home now." Chloe said when it suddenly dawned on her that it was far past school hours and she was in trouble!
She hurried to fetch her back and almost gasped when she saw the number of missed calls.
"You are going home?" Jeremy asked sadly but before Chloe could answer, Ellie spoke up.
"Aren't you supposed to feed him? He can't feed himself right now."