You're Not Mad?

The stress of finals and his impending doom via introducing Alexa to Emily really got to Justin. He got so little sleep leading up to his last online final that the second it was done he fell asleep at his computer and slept for seven hours straight before waking up with a horrible crick in his neck at two in the morning. Unfortunately, he was now wide awake.

He decided to scroll through Blogr to kill time until he got tired again and saw that he had several more missed messages from a_special_discontinued_grape_juice. He opened them with a sigh. Not replying was truly exhausting his willpower but there needed to be a clean break, or how would Emily get over RoboCat?

'RoboCat, can we talk?'

'I went to a friend's place for Thanksgiving and it was an interesting experience, would love to talk to you about it'

'I miss you'

Justin breathed deeply to try and calm himself. She missed him. And she wanted to talk to him…about him. He couldn't deny that he was very interested in what she had to say about what went down that weekend but he couldn't break his resolve for such a reason.

It would kind of be like cheating. Emily wouldn't dare talk about Thanksgiving with him in person. She only wanted to get her feelings out through an anonymous outlet. Listening to that wouldn't be fair.

Hating himself, he sent a message in return. 'We can talk if you're willing to go back to how things used to be and stop asking personal questions'

To his surprise, he got a response immediately. Why was she online so late? 'No questions, I promise! I could just use a listening ear and you're the best one I know'

'Why are you still up?'

She thought he was three hours ahead of her. 5 AM was early but not unheard of as a time to be awake but 2 AM was the middle of the night.

'Too much on my mind. I'm supposed to meet the girl my friend likes tomorrow. Or I guess technically today'

Justin's feelings of cheating the system intensified but he persisted nonetheless. 'The friend you spent Thanksgiving with?'

'Yeah. He was like a completely different person this weekend and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it'

'Different how?'

Did that mean Sam's idea of showing under-the-surface Justin was working? Had she actually seen him?

'He's very sweet but super quiet. This weekend I saw him goof around with his cousins, talk to me for hours at a time about random things, and have a laughing fit after he passed out on top of me. This is going to sound terrible but I had no idea he had so much life in him. It completely changed my impression of him'

Justin probably should have been insulted by being called lifeless in a roundabout way but a warm, fuzzy feeling filled his chest. She saw him in all his awkward glory and yet…

'What's the different between your impression before and your impression now?'

It took her a few minutes to reply. 'I always thought he was nice but didn't really think of him much aside from that because that was all he showed to me. How do I explain it…it's like he wants to blend into the background. And he's very good at it.

'He's there in body but not so much in spirit, you know? But this weekend he was all there. He was funny, expressive, and didn't seem as afraid of being seen. It was a pretty big difference'

Afraid of being seen…Emily had hit the nail right on the head. Who had he let see the real him outside of his family since he was a kid? He supposed Alexa knew more than most people but that was because she figured out his secrets and had a knack for making him confess things. He still didn't act like his online self with her.

'Interesting. Would you say that's a good thing or a bad thing?' he asked, somewhat nervous about what her answer would be.

'Good thing. I'd like to get to know him better. I had fun over Thanksgiving, fainting episode and all'

His heart swelled. She…liked being around him. She said she had fun. She wasn't repelled by how stupid he acted when he was about to die of shame. This was the best news he had heard in a very long time. 'I'm glad you had fun'

'I'm glad he invited me. I would've been alone otherwise because my original plans were with my ex-boyfriend'

So she brought up Brandon. Justin wasn't sure how to reply. The reason they had gotten into a fight in the first place was that she was saying she wanted to break up with her boyfriend…kind of because of him.

Emily had no idea that she had already talked to her online friend about this the day she cried in his apartment. What could he say that wouldn't make them go back to square one?

He was spared from having to reply when Emily sent another message. 'My friend reminds me a bit of you, actually. When we drove up to his aunt's house we talked about the kinds of silly things you and I talk about'

Scratch that. He definitely wasn't spared because the next message was definitely worse. Why did they always have to come back to dangerous territory?

He almost missed the days when they chatted online in blissful anonymity. Almost, because now he was able to see her more in person. How could he regret that? But now he didn't know what to say.

He could shut her down cruelly, saying she should just talk to her friend in person then and leave him alone. It would solve his RoboCat problem but at the same time he couldn't bear to do that because she would be upset.

In the end all he could reply was 'Really?'

'Yep. It was a good distraction but I still missed talking to you'

'I was busy' he sent quickly, trying not to have his online persona be emotionally involved even though he was.

'You're not mad?'

The only person Justin was mad at was himself. How much trouble could he have avoided if he had added her on Friendbook as a freshman in high school when she still had a vague recollection of who he was?

He could have actually talked to her in the ice cream shop each week. He could have said hi to her in the halls at school. And when she moved away he could have chatted with her on Friendbook as himself so she knew he existed. He desperately wished he had never talked to her on Blogr in the first place.

'No'