CHAPTER TWO - so we're dating...

Desmond whipped his head back in the direction of the voice and met face-to-face with over a dozen dark freckles on rich autumn-bronze skin, accompanied by a gap-toothed lopsided grin. Mercy, of course.

To his surprise, a teeny tiny smile tugged at each end of his full lips. He was happy to see her in spite of the implications of her presence in that specific moment.

Oof! How bitter's the sweet?

Mercy leaned her elbows on the windowsill and clumsily poked her head into Desmond's room (she just barely managed to avoid a smack against the windowpane), past his personal space. Had she leaned any bit closer, he would've seen the dried super glue she had struggled to put on the broken rim of her glasses last week. "And I must let you know," she continued to sing. "My love for you was pretend."

"Pretend love," he replied with a similar tone. It was the start of the song's chorus. The only part he had memorized so far. For a half-second he considered singing the rest of it, but a sudden thought pushed that to the side. "Wait, hold on. How do you already know the lyrics?"

Mercy blinked her way out of the fixed gaze she totally had on his face and shrugged. "It's a catchy song. An earworm or whatever." She then pulled her head back from the window with a sigh. "Sucks that it's such a bummer. The whole-ass movie, actually. And it didn't have to be that way. She was clearly in love with him! Why couldn't they just stay together and make it work? I know for sure they would've been happy together!"

A bummer?!

"I don't know," Desmond heard himself blurt out. "I don't know about all that."

Mercy's thick eyebrows, illuminated by both the dying lamp in the far corner of Desmond's room and the far-too-bright streetlights from outside, furrowed. Her long acrylic nails were quick to match the mood and tip and tap away on the crusty surface of the windowsill. "What do you mean?"

On any other occasion, Desmond wouldn't have taken another look at her actions. She always did the same exact thing when she was deep in thought or in cloud nine or quite simply existing or vibing. Her eyebrows would come together and the ends of her nails always made some form of noise when they stomped their own unique way through a flat space. And every now and then, she wrinkled her button nose as well. It was her go-to stimming behavior. Sure, at times, people would misunderstand it all as a scowl and he'd help her clear that up with others, but it had never come across to him that such a normal behavior of hers would ever come across as a threat to his own peace of mind.

Heat creeped its way up to his cheeks and ears as he cursed his entire being for its unfortunate ability to speak. Out of any single moment in the entire day, or even his whole entire fucking life, why did he have to go ahead and say what he was thinking right then and there? There were no words that could have left him and explained his stance on the movie. Not yet.

He fumbled around in his smooth brain for words."It's... relatable. To me. So it's good! To me, that is."

He glanced at Mercy and immediately regretted it, so he looked straight ahead in the hopes that she didn't notice, past the wide open window of her own bedroom. Her butterscotch-yellow curtains dared themselves to escape with the wind rather than slow-dance like his own, given the fact that they were out of their usual confines. Mercy must have rushed herself out of her window to meet up with him for that to happen. She had lost many curtains due to windy days. One of the many perks of being next-door neighbors for sure. It was funny to watch and not point out. Could that be considered a guilty pleasure?

" ...Relatable?"

Ah, shit. That's right. Back to reality. Desmond grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed. Hard. "It's universal! What she feels. The... not-feeling... the hollow... no, no, the uh, uncertainty of the search? For a passionately, er, beloved life partner── soulmate! But she'll find all that love and romance stuff someday! Definitely. I believe in her. Ximena, that is."

He, in fact, did not believe in her.

"Right, right! You get it!"

Mercy's head sprung back into his room and face. Or rather, it attempted to do so since it didn't go as easy as it seemed. No, scratch that, it didn't even 'go' at all. It clashed against the windowpane as the loudest gasp in the world escaped her. The spare words he'd scrambled together to continue to talk out of his ass fell apart at that.

"Hey, uh, wow are you okay?"

She groaned and rubbed her forehead with the palm of a hand. "I'll be alright."

Desmond let out a dark chuckle and shook his head. "Just not right now," he remarked. "Come here, let me see."

Wary of the window at last, Mercy bent before she leaned forward. "I should've paid attention. Done it before... I think?"

"Can't relate." Desmond stuck his tongue out at Mercy and shrugged as he inched closer to her. "I'm not tall enough to worry about all that── actually, nevermind on that, let me rephrase it. Not everyone's a colossal giant like you."

Mercy narrowed her eyes at him with one of her signature grins. "What was that?"

"Don't you have to look down at your dads when you talk to them? Ever since you were like, what, twelve?"

"Oh fuck you dearly!"

"Fuck you too."

With care, Desmond placed a hand on Mercy's temple and ran its thumb past her freckled forehead. He neither felt nor saw any significant bumps, save for the random pimples he knew she would address with her favorite star-shaped pimple patches overnight. He also asked for her to point out where exactly she hurt herself and screened that area for any sort of discoloration, which he failed to find.

After one final look around all sections of her mile-long forehead, he gave her a thumbs-up, then hovered and wiggled the thumb over the part she'd pointed out before. "Sana, sana, culito de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana," Desmond chanted. His mami used to say that sweet but odd chant over wherever he got hurt as a child to comfort him. Why he did it right then and there for Mercy, he had no idea. Mercy wasn't a child. But whatever, it didn't matter. Mercy looked like she was amused by it. There was a certain glow to her face. Ah, no. Was she embarrassed? Nope, no way. She wasn't the type of person to feel that way for something like that. "You seem fine but I'll still go grab an ice pack for you anyway. For the swelling, if it happens."

In an instant, Desmond turned his back on Mercy and widened the distance between them, more than excited to leave for the kitchen. Other than his dimly lit bedroom (or the self-proclaimed 'bright ray of sunshine' Mercy), the kitchen was his best friend. It was a treasure trove of homemade snacks and drinks and overall yummy goodness. Every third Wednesday of the month, his mami and Mr. Robinson; one of Mercy's dads, would meet at either of their homes to combine their blessed── no, godsent cooking skills. It would always result in, well, most if not all of the things he looked forward to when he stepped out of his cave.

Maybe while I'm in the kitchen I could go grab a couple of snacks for the both of us, Desmond thought to himself. Each thought, each step, led him further and further away from where he originally was in the room. I already know what I'm getting, but what would Mercy want? If I were a silly jolly giant like her who's obsessed with sweets and edible toothpaste-ish textures, dried-out dulce de leche would be perfect, especially since it would melt and crumble and feel a bit grainy if she lets it sit in her tongue for long enough──

"W-wait!"

Something warm and sweaty grabbed his wrist from behind. It stopped him dead in his tracks. In fact, it pulled him an inch or three backwards. Besides all of that, pointy (yet surprisingly merciful) prods kept a side of his seized wrist extra cautious. They were too close to his blood vessels for comfort.

From the corner of his eye, Desmond noticed no one other than Mercy (who else could he have possibly expected?), awkward and off her balance. She had clearly stood on the tips of her toes and leaned forward a tad bit too far in the span of a millisecond. The arm that had reached out to him trembled from how outstretched it was, and the free counterpart's hand clung to the chipped edges of his wall in an attempt to keep the upper half of her body from straight-up falling into his space face-first. Her hips── the last line of defense to avoid such an event── hung on the fine line between his room and the world beyond the windowsill; the one outside with her thin curtains, the wind, and the bright white streetlights.

When Desmond eventually chose to turn back to Mercy, he found an undeniably flushed expression on her face. It gawked at him from below as it nervously locked onto his bottom lip? Or chin. Or somewhere by or near that area.

He puckered his lips after a pang on his chest caught him by surprise. It pulled his lungs and heartstrings all the way down to where Mercy's desperate self lingered to keep him around for whatever she wanted to say.

Then a small sigh of realization hit him.

Mercy's stare rivaled his own from the time between the end of the commencement ceremony and the family gathering; when it was just him and Mercy and the words she uttered in the background of all the commotion; between the black and yellow sea of caps and gowns and tassels. It forced him to go right back to that moment, and oh fuck did he wish it wouldn't.

While he spit bitter side comments down at his fancy oxford shoes on the decorated cap tops that expressed people's career aspirations and eternal gratefulness for their family's undying support that totally didn't make them feel guilty and worthless (because he didn't know what to do with his own life), she had giggled and punched his arm in an attempt to shut him up.

"Oh shut up, don't be like that! Look on the bright side. Bask in the joy of this hell of yours being over for good. You won't have to come back to this shithole. We can sort the ins and outs little by little, we have all the time in the world now. It's a brand new chapter of our lives. I mean, wasn't this really just the prologue of it all?"

"Sure, whatever. I'm glad that at the very least the shitty author of my story had the decency to give me the best person to spend my time with at the start."

"Yup." There was a short pause between that word and the words that followed. One that was long enough to be felt. "And not just at the start! You'll never be alone with me around, and I'm here to stay."

In hindsight, he realized she might have been in the middle of summoning a happy-cry. Tears formed little by little with every other blink.

"Oh?" Desmond had placed a hand to his chest in the most dramatic way he could. "Did I ever say it was you? I was talking about Robus from the greatest farming simulator video game of all time: 'Tardew Valley.'"

Mercy had already scoffed and formed the widest gap-toothed lopsided grin her face was able to support by the time he was halfway through his response. "Oh fuck you! Fuck you very much. Fuck you dearly! Do you know how much I hate you? A fucking fuckton! And that's the one character that doesn't have the romance option. Trust me I tried. What's the point of that? It doesn't make sense!"

"Oh really? Fuck you! I hate you too! And whatever, I don't care about that. That's not why I play Tardew. Robus is Robus and I like them just the way they are in my save file."

And then one thing led to another and before he knew it, the stage was set for her to come close to his ear to "clear the air" and whisper that she actually liked him. He either hadn't heard or processed it at first, so he had scrunched up his nose and asked "what?" and soon after she repeated it he did a "huh?" and without hesitation she stood tall (as always) and yelled it out to him and the noisy sea of graduates at the top of her lungs.

"I LIKE YOU I WANT TO DATE YOU LET'S GO OUT!"

Yes, she had asked him out and it could not have been more obvious. There were no ifs, ands, or buts. No misunderstandings.

She had outright gone ahead and done it in the middle of all the prideful roars and overjoyed tears from almost everyone at the stadium, too, which included the family and friends that looked at the sea from above in their faraway seats. Was that considered a romantic gesture? If so, was that a grand one? Whatever the case, his jaw had dropped and his eyes had braced themselves to pop out of their sockets and follow it behind, right down to the polished concrete floor beneath his feet.

In the five seconds of silence that took up space between Mercy and Desmond's words, every thought and every conversation imaginable that he had planned to pave the way for with 'Pretend Love' crossed his mind.

The words that came out? Straight out of left field. "Cool. Okay, sure."

The right words failed to come out because he didn't have the guts to be as direct as she was when it came to the serious shit. They weren't even remotely near the tip of his tongue.

A gentle squeeze to his wrist brought him back to the present.

"Wait," Mercy repeated. Her face truly rivaled his own from earlier in the day. Through her eyelashes, restless pupils sprung up at him, then back down, then left and right at random intervals. On occasion she licked her lips. And like a literal fish out of water, her mouth opened and closed, but a little less often than one. Thoughts raced through her mind as his own did back at the ceremony. Some form of irrational fear rushed past his body from head to toe and made the whole room feel hot as hell. Desmond puckered his lips again. "I... didn't know you had a mole?"

No, scratch that. It was rational fear.

Desmond blinked. "Hmm?"

"Oh, uh, here." She pointed at her own neck. "I saw it when you checked me out... m-my forehead, I mean. It's cute?"

Rational for sure. Why the fuck am I doing this?

"Cool. Thanks. Anyways." Desmond quickly wiggled himself out of her grasp, which, to be fair, turned to nothing once she realized what he was up to. She put both of her hands up with a small gasp, then jolted out of his way and back to the window altogether in less than a second's worth of time, lost in what he assumed to be her own world. It was a miracle that she didn't hit the back of her head against the windowpane as she did so; no conscious attention was given to where her body moved towards. "I'll go get that ice pack for you. I'll be right back."

As he rushed to leave, he swallowed a good chunk of fully-realized dread and closed the door behind him.

So that's that. This is happening, it's real. I didn't say shit 'cos I'm a coward and we're dating and I feel nothing, unlike her.

---

hi hi! i'm indigo ivy, the author of this story. here's a cookie for ya: 🍪

from now on, i'll be here at the end of each chapter to recommend a story or two from other authors that are participating in the 2024 Open Novella Contest. below's the first~

News Flash by Zoe L. Grimm (@ zoe_grimm )

In this romantic comedy, an overworked personal assistant discovers his nepo baby client has a bigger crush on him than he realized in the middle of his mandated vacation.

that's all. ¡hasta luego!

;)