“Just hurl me off a bridge please.” Scott’s voice was muffled from the pillow he was holding over his face to avoid making eye contact.
Kelly hit him square in the pillow, just lightly, and laughed aloud enough for him to hear but secretly rolled her eyes knowing he couldn’t see her. Scott had been messaging with a girl from one of his creative writing classes and had misread the situation so badly that he had turned up to a group study session with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine, rather than the intimate date he had though he’d been showing up to. He was, of course, mortified. Rightly so, Kelly though. And it wasn’t as though this was the first time, that’s what was killing her empathy for him.
Scott and Kelly had met on their orientation day and two years later they were essentially inseparable. Kelly studied art and together they had started, but never successfully finished, several comics and had basically the same taste in everything. The only issue with their relationship, which was strictly non-romantic, that Kelly could see were these tendencies of Scott to completely blow out of proportion any interaction he had with girls. Any hint of basic kindness and he had pretty much planned their future wedding. It drove Kelly crazy, and the worst past was his lack of self-awareness or ability to take any of her advice. He would do the same cringy, over the top gestures again and again and when they blew up in his face would come moaning to her in his extreme embarrassment.
Though she’d told him many times, Scott just couldn’t seem to see his actions as anything but standard bubblegum romance. These were real women though, and he was making them achingly uncomfortable.