6
Faye
I
stirred in my bed as the morning light streamed through the window, my face almost sticking to the pillow with the tears that had been streaming down my cheeks on and off all night long. Angelo’s shockingly bad behavior had me sobbing hard. I couldn’t believe that he had spoken to me like that with absolutely no consideration for my feelings or work at all. It was unbelievable.
It seemed that everyone was right about him after all, Tia’s words hadn’t come from spite or been influenced by her own experiences, Angelo was a douche and I had been too blind to see it. It was difficult to fit him in the same mold as the nice guy I met in the library, but it was time to start doing it. The nice person was probably the fake one, the player who shot me down so he could ‘get wasted and hook up’ was the real Angelo and I didn’t like him one bit.
And now I had to spend time with him again, interviewing him, trying to make him look good. That was going to be damn near impossible, how would I be nice to him now? I suppose it was going to be a good test to check that I could do it in the future, work with people that I didn’t get along with, but that didn’t mean I was looking forward to it one bit. Urgh, it would be horrible.
With a deep sigh, I swung my legs out of the bed and I made my way towards the shower. My head pounded desperately, I had the sort of headache that came with a hangover, which wasn’t fair since I hadn’t been drinking at all. I’d been surrounded by booze and hadn’t touched a drop because I wanted to remain professional. Huh, what a damn joke. It made no difference at all.
Once showered and slightly more ready to face the day, I slung on some sweat pants and an oversized tee shirt and I made my way back into the room where Tia’s eyes bugged out her head at the sight of me. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with you? You look like hell, Faye!”
“I feel like it,” I admitted. “Last night was a bit of a nightmare… putting it mildly.”
“Oh yeah? Big party with the football boys, what happened? You hook up?”
“No I didn’t hook up, I was there in a professional capacity. I didn’t even talk to anyone, I simply observed to get the first YouTube video up, introducing the whole concept.”
“Is it up yet?” Tia grabbed her phone, probably ready to search for it to see what sort of job I’d done. My heart sunk again, if things had gone to plan there would have been something for her to see. I would have stayed up all night to get it online, but of course that hadn’t happened.
“No, it isn’t.” I couldn’t stand the idea of her logging on to see nothing. “Angelo sent me away before I could get any good footage, so I haven’t done anything. He gave it this big speech about how he basically wanted to control what was put out there and it wasn’t to be his partying time.” I sighed, hating myself for being so weak. “I’m scared I screwed it up, Dimitri was quite certain of how he wanted things, and I think that I might have blown it by allowing myself to be rail roaded.”
“I’m sure Dimitri knows as well as the rest of us how much of a dick Angelo is.” I couldn’t even begin to disagree with her this time, I just wished that I’d seen it earlier. “I doubt he’ll blame you because he had a hissy fit. Look.” Tia flashed her phone at me showing me some pictures on Angelo’s Instagram account from last night. In all three images he had a different girl wrapped around him for his two thousand three hundred and twenty one followers to see. “He’s okay showing the night on his social media, but not the YouTube channel. This doesn’t exactly paint him in a good light.”
I couldn’t stand to look at the pictures anymore, they made me feel oddly sick so I turned my eyes away. It wasn’t fair that Angelo felt like he could give me this job then take it away. What right did he have to play around with my future? Did he get a kick out of hurting me?
“Well, whatever, I’m supposed to interview him later on this evening, so I suppose I’ll find out more then. Maybe I’ll ask him why he was such a dick to me last night.”
We both knew that I wouldn’t do that, I was much too quiet for that, but it was nice to imagine that I might stand up for myself. It was good to fantasize that I could be brave.
“Right, well until then I think me and you need a morning of vegging out,” Tia said kindly, anticipating my needs well. “Watch some bad movies and eat chocolate. Chill you out before you have to go and suffer that hell. Sound good?” I nodded enthusiastically. “Perfect, let’s do it.”
I took the chair at the back of the classroom while I waited for the photography class to begin. I didn’t sit there because I didn’t want to listen, this wasn’t some high school scenario where the cool kids stay at the back to avoid detection as they messed around, I did it in the hope that I wouldn’t get called on to answer questions. I much prefered to blend into the background, even in class.
“Hello there.” I jumped as someone hissed into my ear. “Good to see you again.”
As far as I knew I didn’t know anyone in this class. I’d tried to persuade Dan to join me but of course he didn’t want to do anything that involved extra work, so it couldn’t be him. As I spotted who it actually was, my heart rose and sunk in my chest at exactly the same time. I felt ill.
“Angelo?” I asked in utter confusion. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I signed up to the class,” he replied with a shrug. “There were a few spaces left so I took one.”
“But... why? You aren’t interested in photography.” As I said that I realized that I didn’t actually know anything about Angelo, so I could have been incorrect with my assumption. “Are you?”
“Nah, not really.” He swung back on his chair, acting very childish. He didn’t have any equipment with him so I had to assume that this was something to do with me. “But I’m here.”
I wasn’t sure why but his childish attitude made me feel like being petty and angry myself. “Oh yeah? What’s it about then? You want some tips for Instagram? Need better filters?”
His expression hardened as he realized that I knew about his exposure of himself after he’d told me that I couldn’t expose him. As soon as he noticed that, I couldn’t stop myself from cringing. Now, I looked like a stalker, like I gave a shit what went on in his life. Damn Tia for showing me those pictures. Without knowing that they were there, I could’ve still been angry without the embarrassment.
“I don’t know what sort of person you think I am, but I’m not all about Instagram and my public appearance.” He rolled his shoulders back and slid his eyes closed as he continued to spill out more bullshit. “I know I probably gave that impression last night, but that isn’t me at all.”
“Oh no, not at all,” I replied in mock agreement. “You just gave me the impression that you were more focused on getting drunk and screwing around with as many girls as you like. From what I’ve seen it seems like you managed to achieve that much anyway.”
As the teacher came into the room, forcing our conversation to end, I cringed all over again. Now I’d made myself look jealous on top of everything else. I wasn’t sure that this could get any worse! It was ridiculous. I faced the front, refusing to look at him once more.
“Faye,” he whispered to me, clearly not letting it go. “Faye!”
“Stop talking to me, I actually want to listen to this. I give a shit, unlike you.”
He remained silent for a few moments, but I couldn’t soak in any of the words that the teacher was saying because my heart buzzed in my ears and my body was on edge, acutely aware of everything Angelo did. I hated him for being here in my private space, it really annoyed the hell out of me. I wasn’t supposed to have to deal with him for a few more hours yet, it wasn’t fair that he’d screwed that up.
“Faye, I came here today because I couldn’t wait any longer to apologize.” I clasped my hands together, not giving him the satisfaction of turning around to face him. “I was a dick yesterday. I took my anger for Dimitri out on you.” Still I refused to see him. Him saying sorry didn’t make up for anything, he’d been absolutely horrible to me. “I didn’t know you were going to be there and it threw me, that’s all. I didn’t mean to send you away so cruelly.”
“Can you just be quiet?” I finally shot back. “I don’t need to hear this right now. I want to pay attention in this class because it means a lot to me. I don’t want to listen to you.”
I turned back to face the front, just to catch the teacher glaring at me like I was the one in the wrong. I couldn’t believe it, how had I managed to become the asshole student at the back of the class who wouldn’t stop talking? I always hated those kids and after a few days of knowing Angelo I had become them. That was just marvelous. I wanted him to go, so I could get back to being me.
“You don’t need to be here,” I muttered out the corner of my mouth. “I have nothing to say to you right now. We can deal with this when we do our interview.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Angelo replied. “I need to learn all about filters.”
I didn’t mean for it to happen, but a giant smirk burst out onto my face at his words. Maybe that was a bit harsh of me to say, but I couldn’t take it back now. I’d made myself look like an idiot and now I had to deal with the consequences of that. At least Angelo didn’t hate me.
“I promise you I’ll do you such a kick ass interview after this class that it won’t matter,” he carried on talking to me despite the fact that I’d asked him not to. “I’ll make you look so good that Dimitri won’t even realize that the other video didn’t happen. Trust me, it’ll be fine.”
I sat back in my chair and smiled at him. Maybe he was right and we could make up for things. I wasn’t too blown away by his apology, and I didn’t expect him to be perfect in the future, but that didn’t change the fact that I still needed to do this stupid documentary. It would only be a few weeks with Angelo anyway, then I got to be with Kevin, which was what I was desperate for. I had to just do what I could to survive it. Kevin was the end goal, if I thought about him then it wasn’t too bad.
“Fine, whatever. Let’s do it,” I hissed back. “But you have to be good in this lesson, okay?”
“Yep, fine, I will. Whatever I need to do. Thank you, Faye, it means a lot.”