Oblivious as Ever

I've never been good at recognizing when someone is interested in me, and even when they're openly flirting, and everyone else can tell that I'm being hit on, I remain as oblivious as ever. When there's already a foundation of friendship to the relationship, it becomes even more difficult for me notice that anyone's interested in me, because we'll generally have a fairly flirty way of conducting ourselves around each other anyway, so...these chicks really need to just come out and say it already.

Britney and I rarely hung out together outside of a group setting, but we had grown to know each other little by little at parties, on the bus, at lunch times, etc.

Something that we found we had in common was that we were really good at complaining about things. It didn't even matter what we were complaining about, we could find something that we thought was wrong with it, and then we would just go on about how terrible it was. Naturally, it was decided that we would be great at complaining about the people that we knew -- and that's how the afternoon bitching-circle was created.

The afternoon bitching-circle started out very small -- Britney and I would get off the bus at the high school in our hometown, sit on the grass of the football field immediately to the left of the bus stop, and then just start going off on the annoying things that our friends did during the day at school. Since teenagers are inherently negative, our friends would come and join us, and then things would spiral into an out-of-control hate-fest. Things would usually grow to the point that we all got so worked up that we would have to break up the party within the hour or else grow so negative that we would hunt down whichever friend annoyed us most and beat them senselessly.

On days that it was raining, we had to quicken the pace of our circles by having them on the bus, restraining ourselves only slightly so that we didn't disturb the other passengers with how insanely terrible we actually were. But then came a day we weren't expecting: Jill got mad at us.

Normally, Jill would just ignore our monstrosities and not attend our negativity-festivals, but, since we were trapped on the bus together on this particular day, she just couldn't take it. "You guys need to shut up!" Every last one of us went silent and just stared at her. "I'm tired of what jackasses you all are! If you don't like your friends, then find new ones, but don't think you can change your existing ones by complaining about them behind their backs!"

We spent the rest of the bus ride in silence, each of us staring out the windows and avoiding each other's eyes in hopes that, if we were silent enough, we would stop being such terrible people.

When we got off the bus, everyone went their separate ways, waving short goodbyes and just trudging through the puddles on the ground. "Bye, Jill," I muttered, but she was so angry that she just ignored me. As soon as she was out of sight I turned around, preparing to walk back to my mother's car to spend the rest of the afternoon doing homework in silence and wait for her to get off of work and drive me home.

I turned and found myself face to face with Britney. "What the hell was her problem, today?" I would have defended her, justifying her freak-out by admitting that we were being slightly (read: very) awful, but I was kind of miffed that she ignored my goodbye, so instead I said "RIGHT?"

Britney walked with me through the rain to my car as we complained the entire way, wasting no opportunity to find anything else to complain about if we came across it (a car drove by us, splashing us even more, so we ranted about that for a good four minutes). By the time we actually got to the car, I assumed that she was going to go on her own way. Instead, when I unlocked the door, she opened it and climbed in.

I got into the car and sat beside her, and the tone of the day immediately changed. "I'm glad we got that out of our systems, the day just wouldn't be complete if we didn't." I agreed, and she started asking me about what homework I was planning on working on.

I couldn't really figure out where she was trying to steer our conversation, but I continued speaking with her amiably. Outside of complaining, we didn't have very much in common at all. We didn't like the same movies, didn't have the same hobbies, and, outside of our group of friends, we didn't really hang out with the same people.

"You know, if you need help, I make a pretty good tutor," Britney told me. "I wouldn't even charge you anything," she continued on in this manner for a while, all the while I was trying to figure out why she was stroking her finger up and down the length of the seat.

She and I continued having an awkward conversation for the next few hours, but it all came to an abrupt end when my mom got to the car and Britney left. "See you tomorrow!" she called as she wandered away from the parking lot.

The next morning, the first person I saw was Jill, and I apologised for complaining so often that it drove her insane. She accepted, and then immediately asked "so, are you and Britney dating or something?" This came out of nowhere, so I asked for clarification of why she would ever think that. "Well, I drove passed your car yesterday, and I saw you and Britney in the backseat. The windows were pretty foggy, I just assumed." That's how rumors get started, Jill.

"Plus, you know...she likes you." I'm sorry, what? That's kind of a flirting-fail, but...to each her own, I guess.