Bros
2256 Words
I must be drunk and my dizziness got to me because I'm seeing Eli from that girl at the door, stepping inside our karaoke room.
Yeah, I'll drink some more to... wash... it- Wait a minute... I'm not drunk but only tipsy. But do you know you're drunk when you're drunk? I'm thinking just fine so I mustn't be just seeing things.
Sipping from the cup, I look at her face carefully. I see that she's also from our school. She wears a white blouse, covered with a pink jacket that slightly slips off from her shoulders, a grey tube skirt that shows how defined her hips are, and she carries a leather brown shoulder bag that looks very expensive. That long shiny black hair with bangs... is something worth a while to look at, and she's tall by girls' standards. She looks a bit older than the freshmen so maybe she's a second-year? I'll know about it later.
Oh, she's looking at me too. She widens her eyes for a bit and I cough out the beer I had just swallowed, spraying it onto my crotch.
Oh, sh1t!! Now it's all wet! And that girl!! She looks like Eli! She has no bangs but her face—she looks like her!
“Jesus Christ, dude,” says John. “calm down.” And they laugh at me.
“I'm Elizabeth,” she says with a bow. “It's nice to meet you all.”
That name! I was right!! It's really her—what the heck?!! Or maybe it's just a coincidence. Eli is not as girly as her. I must be wrong in assuming this girl is Eli.
I dry my pants with a small towel while John is busy introducing us until she sits on the sofa beside me. I'm petrified when my arm touches her flawless skin.
“We'll give you guys space so you could know each other,” says John. “Don't be shy with each other. Both of you are cool people.”
He holds out his fists in front of us and we bump them with ours. With a nod, he turns and sits beside his girlfriend in front of us. We're here at the back, isolated while they sing and laugh like we're not here.
Dang, these guys know what I needed.
Ugh! I can't believe I doomed myself! How am I supposed to gather confidence (which I don't have) so I could to talk her normally and find out if she really is Eli?
“What the hell are you doing here?” she whispers smiling without moving her lips that much.
“Eli?”
“Shh!” she shushes. “Don't say that name!”
“What?! It's really you? Why are you here?”
“I was asking the same thing, you knucklehead!” She's sounding a bit tomboyish but the way she acts, suggests that she's trying to hide it from everyone else but me. “This must be a mistake that I got matched up to you.”
Or maybe it's destiny...
“Anyways,” I say. “it's nice to meet you again.”
“Well, nice for you, awkward for me. Of all the guys in the world, why does it have to be you?”
I feel insulted. “Hey, I didn't ask for this!”
“But before anything else. Don't tell anyone that you know me or I will sack you and throw you off a bridge!” She's waiting for my answer as she glares at me.
“Fine,” I answer. “but let me ask you, why?”
“Let's talk outside.”
“Okay.” I stand up with her. My friends look at me. I got their attention right away. “Hang on for a moment, guys.”
Then these idiots smug at me.
It's not something like that! Geez! They're making me uncomfortable now. I hope she doesn't feel this awkwardness I feel.
I let her walk out the door first. Then my friend, James, grabs my shoulder and winks at me. I answer with a scowl, telling them it's not like that. They don't get it and just murmur at my back when I finally walk out the door. I close it and she's there leaning against the wall, looking at her pocket mirror.
Like a guillotine, the sound of the mirror when she closes it before putting it inside her pocket. After a slow blink, she looks at me in disdain then sighs.
Am I gonna get murdered on the spot?
She says, “Since you already know who I truly am, first, I have to know if I can trust you to keep it a secret.”
“Who are you, ‘truly’?”
“Don't let me say it. You already know!” She punches my chest.
“Ow! What was that for?!”
Argh, my chest hurts!
She says, “You're the same as before, you loser! And you look like a walking chopstick. Don't you work out?”—Ouch.
“I have no time for that. I'm focusing on-”
“On studies and gaming—you couldn't be more predictable and so pathetic.”
I know that we'll more than anyone else but when somebody else says it, it makes me mad. “Just tell me what I asked,” I say, gritting my teeth.
“Okay. I'm pretending to be a girl so I could get a guy to introduce to my parents.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
A guy to introduce to her parents? That could be easy for her considering how she looks like.
“You want me to poke your eyes out?”
Oh, shoot! I realize I was staring at her from head to toe. “I'm sorry.”
“Also, it's because I don't want them to know that I'm only pretending to be a girl when I'm in front of them. I don't want to break their hearts. Others knowing about my gender will just make beans spill out faster. The reason why I transferred here is that rumors about me being a lesbian and a tomboy started to spread in the school I came from. That's the main reason, along with many other reasons, that led me to transfer here. Well, let me explain why my parents want me to have a... guy—ugh...” The way she talked sounded like she ate something unpleasant and could barf.
To continue the family lineage—I presume. But looking at this tomboy, she might not fulfill her parents' wish.
“They want me...,” she hesitates, closing her eyes, frowning, and folding her arms.
To have children? That's easy. If you want, let me giv- What the heck am I even thinking?!!! This rotten mind of mine... curb it, man!
“to become a woman,” she finishes with a face of disgust.
“What's wrong with that?” I ask.
“It's f*ckin easy for you to say! You can't force me to become someone I'm not! I like bewbs and vagana, not weiners!”
“Hey, language,” I remind her. But she has bewbs and vagana. Why does she need others'?
She sighs, rubbing her eyebrows with her fingers. Then “I have an idea!” she cheers up, surprising me with a sudden change of mood. She puts her palms together, smiles, tilts her head, and says, “What if you pretend to be my boyfriend?”
Oh, that's actually a good idea. But I'm not sure if- “Wait, what?” I ask.
“It could work! They'll never know,” she says with a sinister giggle.
“No, I won't,” I deny—although I feel it would be a way to end my 20 years of streak but I'm not delusional. “I'd rather have a real girlfriend. Us pretending would get in the way of that.”
“You just have to pretend when we call them online.”
“No, that's a hustle. I have a tight schedule.”
“I see through you. I know your schedule is nothing but gaming and p*rn.” She's right.
“You're wrong! And stop spitting out cursed words!” I yell.
“And you're timider than a little girl! Someone needs to fix you before you die a virgin.”
“Hey, I'm not a virgin!”
“Lies. I know a virgin when I see one. And to think that my childhood friend is a loser, it's gonna stain my name. You need to get laid, man!” She punches my shoulder again. “Then you will become a man!”
“How does that make any sense? Just getting laid will make someone a man? I don't know about your definition of a man but for me, a man is someone who is dependable and can provide. As long as I stay like this, I know I'll get the best girl for me.”
“That's what all people who died a virgin, said.” I just narrow my eyes at her. “How about this: You do what I say and I'll help you find a hot girlfriend?”
That sounds fishy. “I don't know know if you can really do that for me.”
She scoffs, putting her left arm around the back of my neck, pulling me down to bend slightly forward. Her smug face is near me when she whispers, “I banged up so many hot girls in my lifetime and I lost count.”
“You're just exaggerating.”
“You want some evidence?” she asks confidently.
I didn't answer because I don't wanna know at this point. It feels like I'm knowingly stepping on a landmine. She pulls out her phone from her pocket. I see that the language in her phone is Japanese when she unlocked it. She goes to the file manager. I feel tense that I gulped. She taps on the file safe, unlocks it, and there they are: her picture with different girls. They are mostly lying on the bed with only the phone's flash as a source of light. Looking at them, they look legit. Something instantly grows like a bamboo shoot under the rainy weather I saw in a documentary on TV.
I don't believe this. She might've downloaded these from the internet.
“You downloaded these, didn't you?” I ask but couldn't help but to swallow.
“No,” she answers in a thirsty voice, showing me the detail of every picture.
Upon checking, I realized that they're taken by her phone—no doubt. And she even has a selfie, showing only her pleased face and a girl in her underwear on the bed. She's legit. I push the phone away so I could stop looking at the pictures. It's hard to think that she beat me to it. She's a tomboy and bedded a lot of hot girls. This world is unfair!
“I regret asking for evidence,” I tell her. Ugh... she has become worse.
“It's better that you know. Now, you know that I'm better than you in getting girls and how I can help you. Come on, we can help each other. All you have to do is pretend and I'll help you get a girlfriend. What do you say?” She holds out her hand for me to shake it and seal the deal.
Do I have the insanity to trust her? At a first glance, she looks like a sweet innocent Japanese girl but now that I know her, she's a devil's spawn. Her soul must be tainted with lust and carnal desires. I hope I won't get tarnished, now that she touched me. I must refuse.
“Okay,” I say instead, and shake her hand. While she shakes my hand up and down, she smiles at me, and somehow, I regret my decision.
Why the heck did I agree?
“A good decision, my friend,” she says before letting go of my hand. “And just to be clear, we will only be pretending as couples when my parents call me. The rest of the time we spend, we will be bros.” She puts her arm around my shoulder again, pulling me down to her level. With a smirk on her face, she eerily says, “I will be your big brother, teaching you the ways of the predator.”
“Predator?!!!”
“Girls are our prey, my little brother.”
“What? No, girls are persons like us. We have to treat them as persons.”
“Tch!” she scoffs. “We all stem from the nature of survival of the fittest. Only those who are aggressive make it through. You have to be assertive, little one. Grab what you want and claim it as yours or you'll be left behind with nothing! You have to be mindful of every factor that comes into play. Any single miss can ruin your chances.”
“Yes, but what I want is someone to love, not some just one-night stand.”
“It's all the same.” She nods a couple of times with closed eyes. “I have an idea. Why don't we hang out somewhere, just the two of us to commemorate this fateful reunion?”
- Writer
