Love Addict's RPG Ch. 35

I was feeling especially inspired last night so I got a ton of work done on this one, too, hence why it's done so early.

---

Quincy Adams High was a downright labyrinth. The building was big enough to house well over two thousand students, and the place was stuffed with twisting corridors, winding hallways, and paths that looped back in on themselves. Oliver never got used to the layout in his two short months of attendance.

It happened after school on a day when he'd stayed behind to hang out at the library alone for an hour or two. The place had so many volumes of manga that it was a treat to behold, and Oliver used to love relaxing in a little corner by himself after the bell had rung and most of his peers left the building. Once he'd had his fill, he needed to dump some of his textbooks into his locker before taking off.

He got lost along the way, causing Oliver to pass by what he thought was an empty classroom. It didn't even stand out to him until he heard the sound of laughter echoing from beyond its unclosed door. Not one to eavesdrop, he stopped only for a second before deciding to continue on his path.

Until he heard a layer of crying hidden beneath the mockery.

Oliver looked inside to find precisely what he expected- bullying. A bunch of popular girls cornering a nerdy girl who looked vaguely familiar to him. Wait, that was his chemistry partner that one time, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Oliver couldn't remember her name, but he was sure of it. Not like it mattered who it was- he would've stepped in regardless.

The only thing that gave him a brief pause for alarm was the ringleader- Stacy Lynn, the undisputed most popular girl in school despite only being a freshman like himself. She'd situated herself on top of the teacher's desk and was flipping through a sketchbook- clearly the nerd's. She laughed, showed off pictures to her bitchy friends, all while the victim sat there and sobbed.

While waiting for the right moment, he picked up on the contents of the sketchbook and was pretty surprised by what he'd heard. It wasn't bad enough that they were bullying her. No, it was a shakedown. A straight-up blackmail attempt. Screw waiting for the right moment, he was fucking going in there.

And he did.

The bullies weren't impressed and warned him to mind his own business or else life would get hard for him around here. Very hard. He told them to fuck off and die in a fire, or maybe it was something a lot wittier? Oliver couldn't remember that part very well. While he would've liked to have confidence that he was awesome and badass when saving that girl, the reality was more likely that he'd simply spoiled their fun, and they lost interest in their target. If he hadn't done what he'd done next, he could've gotten away with a proverbial slap on the wrist.

They tried to take the sketchbook with them so they still had something on the girl, and Oliver wasn't having any of that. He grabbed Stacy by the wrist, her eyes full of venom as she stared at him in disbelief. She warned him, really, she did, but he didn't care. He wrestled the sketchbook out of her hands even as the girl told him it wasn't worth it and that he shouldn't have gotten involved.

Stacy and her friends left, calling him a psycho and a future school shooter with a punk-ass haircut while threatening to make him regret this.

This left Oliver all alone with the girl he'd saved. She was Mexican if he had to guess. Chubby, too, and with a horrendous case of acne that made you feel sorry just looking at her. It wasn't just bad, it was 'yikes, that looks like it actually physically hurts' bad. Between her unfortunate skin condition and the greasy black hair covering most of her face, not to mention a pair of big dorky square-framed glasses and a mouthful of braces, well...

The girl was a walking bully magnet. From the moment she stepped foot in these halls, she was destined to get cornered by girls like Stacy and her pack of bitches. There was no escaping it, and that was without even getting into the sketchbook full of hard-core hentai drawings she secretly carried around everywhere she went.

Oliver remembered the drawings more than the girl. He didn't look much while handing it back to her, as it wouldn't have been polite to rifle through her pervy drawings right after she got bullied over them, but what he saw stuck with him all the way to the present day. Instead, he simply smiled as he told the poor girl that Stacy was just jealous that she had more talent in her pinky than she had in her entire body.

Strangely, the victim wasn't very happy about being saved. She thanked him but was adamant that he should've left her alone. She wasn't kidding, she'd told him. She's gonna ruin your life.

He had a good laugh at that.

I'd like to see her try.

Eight years later, here he was, trapped in a cold, dark, refrigerated truck as the very same girl he'd saved all those years ago sat straddling his lap. The world was starting to feel like a big, cosmic joke where his life was a continual punchline.

"You were right..."

"...What?"

"You were so fucking right."

"I knew this would change things, God fucking damn it, I-"

"No, I mean when you said that Stacy would ruin my life. You tried to warn me back then, and I-"

"Ollie, what the fuck are you talking about?!" Mia grabbed him by the collar and shook him angrily. "I thought you were talking about us!"

"What? No, I just... I had this thing just now, and-"

"A flashback?"

"I, um, I guess so?"

"Then how the fuck was I supposed to understand the context?! You just said, 'you were right', and I just about threw up, pendejo! I was so... so... ngh!" Mia was livid with him for making her worry her so hard. It would've been adorable if he didn't feel so bad about it. She continued shaking his collar, launching into the lengthiest tirade of Spanish insults he'd as of yet been subjected to.

"I'm sorry," he eventually stopped her by grabbing her wrists. "I didn't mean to upset you! Figuring out who you were was... it was shocking, okay? Let's just cool down for a second and talk this through."

Mia took a few deep breaths, and her head collapsed against his shoulder, giving up. "Fine. Still upset, but fine."

"God. I don't even know where to begin."

"Hm. 'I'm a stupid fucking idiot' would be a great place to start."

"I'm a stupid fucking idiot," Oliver gave her that one, which she seemed to appreciate. "But come on, it's not completely my fault I didn't recognize you. You didn't just change your hair or lose ten pounds. You look like an entirely different person!"

"I was gonna tell you. Really, I was..." Mia grumbled into his shirt. "Got nervous, though. Kept pushing it off, saying tomorrow would be the day until we'd been coworkers for so long that it would've been weird as fuck if I came up to you and said, 'Hey, Ollie, remember that fat, greasy nerd you saved from Stacy Lynn eight years ago'...?"

"Speaking of..."

"Yes, she knows," Mia confirmed. "Went to high school with her for a full four years, Ollie. Be weirder if she didn't recognize me. She stopped bullying me after what you did and even apologized in senior year... told her to eat shit, of course, but I thought I'd never see her again. Jokes on me, I guess. Still got my problems with the bitch, but she did offer to help me when she noticed I had a one-sided crush on you..."

"Seriously?" Oliver couldn't believe what he was hearing, but that did give kind of track with his recent experiences...

"Yeah. Told her not to get involved, though, cause I wanted to be the one to tell you. Well, no... that's a lie. Ideally, I wanted you to recognize me for yourself and figure out if you wanted to get involved with me on your own... didn't quite go how I wanted it to."

"You're sitting on my lap while we cuddle together for warmth. Hard not to call that a win, right?"

"...This is nice, yeah," Mia agreed, her hands slipping around his waist again to press her body even closer to him for precious warmth. "But you still haven't really said a word about what I'm most afraid of, Ollie. Does this change things?"

Oliver went quiet.

"Thought so..." she sighed, defeated and jumping to conclusions.

"Just give me a second, Mia. Relax. I'm trying to piece together my thoughts, but the short answer is no, it doesn't change much. I still like you, and I still want to be with you."

After a silence lasting several agonizing seconds, Mia asked, "...And the long answer?"

"The long answer isn't that big of a deal," Oliver promised. "It's just that you're tied to the worst part of my entire life, and I don't want to lie to you and say that doesn't make me a tiny bit uncomfortable. But so what? I'm already uncomfortable around you because I'm a nervous wreck who doesn't have any experience with women."

Mia held in a laugh, though Oliver felt her midsection contract as if she'd expressed it. "True... I just want to know if you can look me in the eye and tell me you don't blame me on some level."

"Not in pitch blackness, I can't," Oliver said jokingly, earning himself a halfhearted bop on the head. He laughed softly. "No, I don't blame you for what happened. I never have. You were the victim, Mia."

"Sure, but if I'd stood up for myself in the first place or dared to be your friend when Stacy turned everyone against you, then-"

Oliver took a deep breath, then did what Mia always did and placed a finger on her lip, shushing her. "That's all in the past."

"But-"

"Shh."

"But why, I-"

"Because I put in the work to stop obsessing about the past. It didn't come easy, and I definitely still have my moments, but I'm a lot better off for it. You clearly feel guilty over whatever role you think you had in what happened to me. I get it. I'd probably feel the same if I were you, and I won't give you unhelpful advice like 'you should just get over it' or tell you 'it's no big deal'. What I will do is say that you should try and channel that guilt productively instead of letting it eat away at you."

Mia melted against him, tension leaving her chilly body as Oliver's hand stopped massaging her back in favor of doing the same to the back of her head. It was getting easier. She wasn't so worked up anymore now that she knew he didn't hate her. Now, she mostly just felt embarrassed and drained over how emotional she'd been.

"Any ideas on how a girl might go about that?" She asked quietly.

"For a second, I thought I had a good one, then I realized it would sound kind of creepy..."

"How so?"

"Well, I was going to say, 'you could try putting some of that guilt into being the best girlfriend ever', but it sounded a little emotionally manipulative after I put some more thought into-"

"Dios mio," Mia slapped him upside the head lightly, suddenly reanimated by mild anger. "You should've just gone with it, estúpido! Now look at what you've done. Not gonna be a surprise anymore when you ask me to be your girlfriend, and for that matter, who the fuck cares if it was a little creepy? That line was romantic! Passionate, even!"

"Hey, get off my case. Didn't I already tell you I'm a nervous wreck who doesn't have experience with women?" Oliver joked, easing the tension by getting a pretty good laugh out of her. It was definitely an annoyed laugh, though. Mia obviously would've preferred it if he had gone for it, but what's done is done.

Ending her laughter with a long, exaggeratedly disappointed sigh, Mia told him, "You did. Feel like I should turn you down, though. Someone needs to teach you a lesson about ruining the moment."

"If I wanted to ruin the moment," Oliver smirked to himself, knowing she couldn't see it. "Then I'd point out how it suddenly makes a lot more sense that you didn't want to show me your art."

"...So you remember the two pages of my sketchbook you saw eight years ago but not my face? Really, Ollie?"

"We already went over this," Oliver playfully sighed. "You had the glow-up of the century, Mia. If you showed me the before and after pictures, I would never in a million years believe they were the same person."

Mia became quiet again and sank her head into the crevice between his neck and shoulder. "Acne cleared up on its own. Been years since I had any problems with it..." she mumbled. "Weight was a bit harder to deal with. Still overeat more than I should, but I get a lot more exercise than I used to."

"Biking?" He asked, remembering how she rushed to his place the other day.

"Sometimes. Mostly just like to take long walks, though... it's a lot better for you than most people realize."

"Whatever you're doing, it's working out great for you," Oliver said. Truthfully, he didn't mind the chubby part. He just felt that he should compliment her, and he was right.

She smiled at him in the dark. "My lingering self-esteem issues say otherwise, but you're always telling me how cute I am, so... guess I've gotta be doing something right."

Nobody said anything for a couple of moments. The mood was warm between them, countering the chill of their environment. Mia and Oliver both had mild grins on their faces, having navigated the ups and downs of this long-awaited conversation as best as they could.

"Been trapped for a while now," Mia said, barely whispering. "Think they're gonna get here soon?"

Oliver checked his phone, the light briefly hurting his eyes. "We're well past the half-hour mark. I wouldn't be surprised if emergency services show up any second now."

"Hm. Suppose we should probably start thinking about what we're gonna do when we get out of here, then."

"I was thinking we could go for a 'what happens in the cold, dark delivery truck, stays in the cold, dark delivery truck' approach. You know, pretend this whole thing never-" Mia punched him in the arm. Hard. He laughed it off, saying, "Nah, just kidding. I've got an important question for you, Mia."

"Yes, I will be your girlfriend."

Oliver was taken aback by her bluntness and also from having just gotten his first girlfriend. "Uh..."

"Sucks when someone ruins the moment, doesn't it?" Mia clicked her tongue.

"...Sure, but I could've been about to ask something completely different," he pointed out. "Maybe I was going to ask you out on a date and pop the girlfriend question there?"

"Mn... no, I don't think so. I mean, I'll take the date, but I told you I wanted labels, mi amor," Mia uttered the word with passion enough to tingle his spine. "Got my secret off my chest, it didn't scare you away, and now you're stuck with me. Deal with it."

"Can't argue with that," Oliver laughed, trying to ignore the entire butterfly house's worth of fluttering in his stomach. "Deal with it, I shall. Happy, now?"

"Reasonably. Be a lot happier if you had the balls to seal the deal, but-"

As they often did, a distraction appeared at the most inconvenient time. Someone started banging on the metal door again, completely ruining the mood and destroying the tension between the two new lovers as they reacted out of shock. Tessa's voice blasted past the barrier, saying, "All right, kids, make yourselves decent! The response team is here, and they're gonna use a plasma torch to get you out of there. Stand clear of the door, and don't be scared when some Star Wars shit starts happening."

Mia reluctantly got up from Oliver's lap, then extended her left hand to help him, snapping her fingers to indicate in the darkness that she was doing so. "Welp. Scratch that. Take what you've learned and surprise me later, got it?"

"I think so, but it's taking a lot of my mental faculties to process the information that Tessa has seen Star Wars," Oliver said as he sprang to his feet with his new girlfriend's assistance.

As soon as he did, Mia stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. "One more hug to tide me over, then. Hope you know damn well I'm gonna be clingy."

With a smile illuminated by an explosively bright flame penetrating the metal door, Oliver hugged her back, teasing, "Bring it on. You've got my permission to do your worst."

As they embraced for as long as they could get away with, a celebratory round of notifications manifested one after the other.

---

Mia's First Heart Event Completed!

Mia's Status Changed to Girlfriend!

Mia has Gained 15 Affection!

Milestone Achieved! Mia Became Your Girlfriend +30 LP

---

Oliver wasn't creative enough to think of a way to adequately express how happy he was. The best his thoughtless self could come up with came down to two simple words.

Hell yeah.