And I hear your words that I made up
You say my name like there could be an us
I best tidy up my head I'm the only one in love

- Adele, Melt My Heart To Stone

hardbeck (14:30) just seen your messages

Frankyfitzfuck (14:41) and did you have something else to say or were you just coming to fucking acknowledge me?

Hardbeck (14:43) yeah, I fucked up a bit

Frankyfitzfuck (14:45) I know. Grace texted me. She sounds like she's in an Adele song.

frankyfitzfuck (14:46) look… whatever is going on. Don't fuck up your friendship along with it.

Frankyfitzfuck (14:46) sort it out.

I have never in my sixteen years of living done this before. I just skipped an entire class on purpose! I had done it once when I was eleven, but it was a mistake – I thought it was the end of the day already and so just went home. My Mum and Dad were furious with me and made me ring up my Head teacher to explain the situation. My Dad had written what to say and so naturally it included words like exonerate, dishonour and procedure.

This time I'm pretty sure I will face a punishment worse than death for this one considering my Dad is my Head teacher this time around and I know my Mum is at home today. Of course I can't go home right now as I am tear stained and on the verge of more tears.

I wipe viciously at my face, just wanting the tears to stop. I've never felt so equally heartbroken and angry all at once. How dare Rich pretend that we're not friends and I mean nothing to him? Or there's always a chance that he was telling the truth when he said I'm just the annoying girl that he hung around with due to habit. GRRR… I just want to know more than anything what his explanation could be, but I also want to never speak to him again.

How dare he also cause me to miss my Music class? I was practicing my solo song 'Something There' with that little boy named Marvin with the bad acne on the keyboards. He's probably wondering where I am and playing the keyboard sadly by himself. I also said hello to my Music teacher this morning. Oh my giddy aunt, they've definitely gone to my father by now querying how I could have been here this morning and how I'm not there now.

I rummage in my coat pocket for my phone to check if my doom is already awaiting me, but there is no phone call from my father yet. However I can see I already have a missed call and a message from Rich. Before opening Rich's message I send Frankie a message that I realise as soon as I send it looks like I'm either 13 years old or am not taking the situation as seriously as I should be. 'Rich is a wanker *angry emoji with steam coming out of it* *crying face emoji* says were not frendz! *insert broken heart emoji*'

Thinking I can't get any worse than how I'm currently feeling, I open up Rich's message.

'Okay, I fucked up. Let me explain. Just ring back.'

And now I'm crying again.

I scream loudly. Somehow I ended up in Bristol town centre and there is a mime street artist currently right in front of me. I scream again and he mimes a scream, still trying to get me to interact with him. I am now coughing and crying all at once, he still won't stop. He is mime laughing at me.

"What is wrong with you? You… you evil, stupid mime!" He begins to mime cycle around me and now there is a crowd gathering around us, including Rich's mother.

Great, great, great… Now she thinks I'm a psycho person that has a phobia of mime artists or that I'm just erratic in an emotional sense. I run away from the mime artist and run straight past Rich's mum, ignoring her concerned expression and the fact that I'm pretty sure she said, 'Oh, my dear!'

Rich has once again made me do something I have never done before in my life – be intentionally rude to someone's parent.

The worst thing is that I know Rich would be delighted at me being rude to his mother, but I love her. I really do. Whenever Rich told me to go home, because he was irritated with me or he just didn't watch the same TV show as me, his mother would say I should stay for tea and she would let me take some leftovers home in a special little Tupperware with a bear on it. She called it 'Gracey's box'. His father used to let me help him with the gardening as well, which I loved, and even though my father acts like he doesn't approve of Rich and their family, he was definitely impressed with my new knowledge of foliage.

Twenty minutes of walking and wiping at tears till I get at my front gates. My gates are so dramatically awful at opening and closing that I know as soon as I press my automated buzzer to open them that my Mum will be made aware of my entrance. To make matters worse my dog is outside in the garden for some reason and he comes bounding at me, barking and jumping up excitedly. I'm too sad to pet him, so I just sadly say,

"I can't give anyone love right now. Not even you." He tilts his head in confusion and goes running back to the house. I can now see why he's outside; the door is wide open and my Mum is walking towards me.

Okay, I'm ready for my punishment. Whether it be a lifetime of being locked up in a tower or being turned in to a frog I'm ready. In fact that sounds like something I would currently be rather enthusiastic about rather than the alternative.

As I get closer to the front of the house, my Mum begins to start jogging towards me. Right, well she's incredibly eager to punish me, isn't she? As I get even closer it looks like she's actually wearing a face full of concern rather than one of anger and determination to get me locked up in a tower before my one true prince can save me from my own rebellious ways.

"Oh, Grace, I've been so worried about you!" She instantly brings me into a hug, our dog still barking around at our feet. I don't return the hug and just stand in confusion. I'm definitely not late home, as I unfortunately missed my class, so I'm instead one hour early getting home. Maybe my parents have planted some sort of spy cam on my person and so she's managed to watch my whole embarrassing rejection from Rich and so she's known about my crying self for a whole hour.

"Really?" I ask, instead of the alternative question which was going to be, 'How long have you been spying on me?' I realise maybe it's not the best idea for me to jump to conclusions that quickly.

"Of course I was!" She says, pulling away from me and holding my face in her hands. Maybe she really is spying on me. "Mrs. Hardbeck a little while back telling me you got attacked by a mime artist!"

Oh, jeepers. Well, that's certainly an interesting turn of events.

"I've already informed your father about it and he's going to see about how you can remove street artists from the street. He's going to get him arrested!"

I shake my head violently. This is horrible and all completely wrong.

"Mummy, no - I wasn't attacked!" She removes her hands from my face, looking rather confused. I think I would be as well if I was in her position.

"But Mrs. Hardbeck said you were screaming and crying." I shake my head again, growing frustrated with the fact that this is all wrong and I can't seem to do anything apart from tell her the truth. "You were scared then? You're not usually scared of mime artists! You're not even scared of clowns!"

"Stop… No, I was already crying."

"It wasn't the mime artist?"

"No, it wasn't the fucking mime artist!" I freeze for a split second, completely unable to take the words back. Maybe she didn't hear me? My mum then audibly gasps at my exclamation. Okay, no, she definitely heard me.

I sidestep her and begin to run to the front door. She's right behind me though, hot on my heels… I was about to go into a mental debate about what 'hot on my heels' really means and who came up with it, but now is really not the time!

"Grace! Grace Violet Blood!" I run through the front door, beginning my ascent up the stairs as I hear my Mum slam the front door shut. "Grace, why were you crying? Did something happen at school?"

I turn around, wondering how on earth I can explain my current predicament to my Mum so that she can understand it.

"I'm sorry, I'm not a princess." I begin, feeling a nice, droopy piece of snot leave my nose. I cannot wipe my nose with the back of my hand in front of my mother. Not when I'm trying to be eloquent about princesses. "I know I'm not now, because I have been rejected in the worst, most embarrassing way. Princesses don't get rejected. Princesses either have happy love or tragic love, because their loved one has died or they cannot be together despite their love. I've just been rejected. Maybe if you didn't feed me so many fairytales when I was younger then I would be able to be a bit less emotional about this."

I turn back around and run to my room, as I now desperately need to blow my nose.

I sit at my desk, staring at my reflection in the mirror. What I said to my Mum was right, I've been looking at this whole thing with Rich in completely the wrong way. I've been looking at it with rose-coloured glasses, I've been looking at life that way, but that's not all her fault.

I'm about to run back out the door and apologise to her now that I have blown my nose and look more like a regular human, but she knocks at my own door.

"Mum," I weakly say and she enters, giving me an equally weak smile. "I'm so sorr-."

"Shh…" She takes a seat on the bed opposite me and begins to smile a bit more with almost a hidden purpose. "Let me take a guess on who this is about: Alo."

"No!" I don't know if she said it to make me laugh, but it was working if she meant to. I start laughing more and she joins in. "Alo is lovely, but just as a friend."

"No, I thought not. Mrs. Hardbeck and I have always wondered if things would ever happen between you, but she tells me he has a girlfriend now."

I sigh, knowing I'm about to go into way more detail on this that I ought to with my mother.

"That's the whole problem! I started feeling weird about him having a girlfriend and now I know why… I think I love him… a lot and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Did you tell him that?" I nod and she gives me almost a proud smile at that. It's so weird to actually be talking about real feelings with my Mum. I'm so used to us talking about things that don't really matter or school or how I really shouldn't be best friends with a pair of boys. I'm not scared though to talk about these things anymore for some reason.

"Sort of and I thought I could cope just being friends, but today I heard him telling his girlfriend that I don't matter and he's not even 'proper' friends with me."

"Well, you know that's not true." My Mum look appalled as I was telling her all that, so I am taken aback by her very dismissive comment. I look at her waiting for her to elaborate, but she doesn't.

"How can you be so sure?" Now I know what the hidden purpose of her smiles have been for since she walked in her – she knows something that I don't. What can she know? Maybe my parents really are spying on me!

"Do you remember that time you got shingles on your back and you lay in here, face-down on your bed for a whole week?" I nod and internally shudder at the memory of that. It was about a year ago and I had to miss over a week of school – I missed a test on Shakespeare that they told me I didn't have to take when I got back which was totally unfair! It was an awful time.

"And every day you got a present? One time it was a lollipop and another time it was your little bear with the Harry Potter glasses?" I smile fondly over at my bear.

"Harry Jr."

"Yes, well it was Rich that brought all your presents." I frown at this. It definitely wasn't. I know it was all of them, well, really Rich was dragged along to give them to me – he definitely didn't want to come for that.

"He told me to say it was from everyone and he didn't come by himself."

I take a moment to just let that sink in. I remember gushing to everyone about how much I loved the presents when I got better and nobody told me otherwise. Did they know that Rich was coming by himself? Did they even know about the presents? They definitely acted like they did.

"He's a proper prince in my books. You see, even if he doesn't like you in that way, he definitely loves you as a friend." She puts her hand to my cheek and smiles sadly at me. "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like you couldn't have the boys as your friends."

I smile, having nothing really to say that. Her and my father always did make me feel like that, so I'm not going to argue against that.

"Don't worry, if anything does happen between you and Rich, I'll speak to your father and make sure he understands that it's something he needs to approve and keep out of."

OMG, my Mum literally just got +1,000 cool points for that! She gets me! She gets that sometimes my father is a complete baboon when it comes to Rich. THANK YOU MUM!

"You will? Thank you," I say in a much more mature, reserved fashion. She kisses my forehead and leaves.

And now I'm ready.

I take out my phone and ignore the messages I can see flashing on the screen. There is an important phone call I need to make before I hear the sound of 'My Little Pony' again.

"Grace?" He sounds mildly panicked.

"Hello."

"Look I'm really sorry… I wasn't expecting you to actually call back, I -,"

"I just want to hear your explanation, because I don't understand. I know we're friends, so I don't get why you would say that and sound like you mean it."

I cut him off, because that is my only reason to call him. My Mum was right about him being my friend. You can't be friends with someone that long to just have someone say it they didn't actually care about you.

"We are."

"So go on."

I'm being horrible, but I feel like I can't just ask him to tell me things, I have to force him otherwise the words will never come out of him.

"I… She thought I liked you… More than a friend and I just panicked, so I tried to make it seem like I didn't like you at all, not even as a friend, to just convince her but I swear I wasn't lying when I told you..."

He was talking really fast, but as he got to the end of his sentence, he started fizzling out, like he forgot the question.

"You, Alo and Frankie are my best friends. And even if I act like I hate you, it's not true."

"Okay then."

"Things have been weird since the kiss and I've been confused about us… and you."

Brain, co-operate with me here! Look at this sentence in the complete logical sense. Do not get your hopes up, I repeat, do not get your hopes up.

"So that's why you said what you said?"

My hopes are up. Anyone listening in would be able to hear that. I practically beg him in my voice to get him to answer saying something that I want to hear. That yes that's why he said it, because he feels the exact the same way as me!

"I guess."

Definitely not the answer I was hoping for.

"I don't understand. Are you still confused?"

I gently push him again, not giving up on getting the answer I long for.

"Look I was being an idiot."

Okay, I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. That was for nothing.

"I'm not sure you know what you want, but I know I need time before I can be your friend again."

"I want us to be fucking okay again! Before everything!"

Well, that answered my original question. He wanted us to be friends. Before he told his girlfriend I wasn't his proper friend, before I spent the night at his house drunk, before I told him I liked him more than a friend, before he gave me his jacket, before I realised I hated seeing him with another girl, before we kissed and before I set him up with this girl.

He was right. We were friends and it had been simple. I was happy – happier than I was now. I wanted to go back to that time too. Maybe we could, but not right now when his words from earlier still ringing in my head.

"I'm sorry… I'm the reason why things aren't okay like before."

If I hadn't started developing feelings for him. If I hadn't told him I liked him. If I hadn't thought that kissing him would be a good idea for you. They all start with 'If I…' and so it's all my fault.

"No. No, that's not -,"

"Have fun at the concert tonight, Richard."

And I hang up, like I'm going to hang up on my feelings for him as well.

Happy V Day! This is the fastest I've updated in a while and I think might just be my longest chapter yet.

I want to put together a playlist inspired by this story, so if any of you have a song that reminds you of this fic please let me know and I'll add it to the playlist if it fits J