I'd made my decision. I had to fix things with Mai. And that meant using the FUCKABLE FRIEND coin.
But how to get it to her? I called her phone five times that night, the coin clutched in my hand like a talisman. On the fourth and fifth time someone declined the call within seconds.
I walked over to her house in the dark and banged on the door. Her mother opened up and eyed me with a dark look. "Is she there?" I asked.
Mai's mom nodded. "She doesn't want to see you."
"Please."
"She doesn't want to see anyone." Something like pity crossed her expression. "Please. No more. We already talked."
Then she shut the door on me.
***
I spent the night agonising over what to do. I inundated Mai with text messages, begging forgiveness and hinting at something important that we needed to discuss. I thought about mailing the coin to her or dropping it into her and dismissed it as far too risky- what if her mother picked it up? What if the mailman handling it counted as taking it?
I didn't sleep much that night. The concerned texts from my girlfriend shouldn't have helped. They did.
School. I stepped through the halls and felt the difference pretty much immediately. Little things but a
lot
of little things. Girls- pretty girls- said hi to me as I walked down the halls. Geeks and nerds I'd had casual friendships for years with were standoffish and I swore I saw a flicker of jealousy cross their features as they muttered in my wake.
I reached my locker and grabbed my books. Turning, I moved over to Mai's locker.
"Hello?"
I turned to see Dawn eyeing me. "Can I...help you?"
Her hair was a little shorter- why was that, exactly? She hovered next to me. "Um."
"Why are you at my locker?"
"Oh! I didn't- I just- how are you?"
"Fine," she said. "Um, how are you?"
"Hey, did you remember the girl who used to use this locker? Mai?" I wasn't even sure why I was talking to her about this. "Um, do you know if anyone still talks to her?"
"Wasn't she your friend?" Dawn asked.
"Yeah." And I retroactively abandoned her, apparently. "Um, I just-"
"Hey,
My
Nerd."
I turned to see Olivia standing a little distance away, eyeing me coolly. Right behind her was Tracey with a smile like the cruellest of cats.
"I was just asking Dawn something," I said. "It's about Mai- hey! Why are you walking away?"
***
It was later. Specifically it was lunch and I was in deep shit.
I shouldn't- by all rights- be concerned about upsetting a girlfriend that wasn't actually my girlfriend or
even a girl
. I should be focused on talking to Mai and giving her the magical coin that would fix help the issue that I created by using the
other
magical coin.
(Fuck my life).
Bottom line was that there was no reason for me to worry about Olivia getting upset. There definitely wasn't a reason for me to be shooting her texts all day and there absolutely wasn't a reason for me to be meeting her in the sports locker during lunch.
But I think by this point it was fair to say that I was, in fact an idiot.
I opened the sports locker room to find the olive-skinned amazon lay sitting atop a crate full of sports uniforms like a judge in a courtroom. "Hey, my nerd."
"Hey." I moved over. Her shoulders were hunched as I sat next to her. I took a deep breath and said, "I just wanted to ask her something."
"Okay." Her expression didn't shift. "Tracey said..."
"Tracey," I said darkly. I'd taken the time to sort through my new memories of Tracey. The more things change...
She'd still been dating Olivia in this timeline. (Had Oliver been bisexual as well? I don't know.) Olivia had dumped her to be with me.
That's right. I stole the school's amazonian lesbian sports star from her sexy blonde cheerleader lover with the power of my enormous dick. Big fat ol' me. I was beginning to understand how I might have started to get a reputation at school.
(It wasn't really like that, I knew. Olivia was bi, she'd been looking to break things off with Tracey for a while and we had a natural chemistry that had nothing to do with any size issues. Mostly. More or less. But guess which story everyone at school liked to repeat?)
So Olivia broke things off with Tracey- they'd only been dating for a little while- and I braced myself for the worst sort of spiteful response. Instead the blonde schoolyard princess just...gave in. Turned the other cheek, found herself a new boyfriend and accepted me as part of her social group.
...it was bullshit. Of course it was all bullshit. I remembered-
***
"Heya."
"Uh-" I turned to see Tracey in the doorway. Tracey, with her blonde hair and perfect breasts, her face like an angel and her heart like a Disney villain. Tracey, with pride enough for an empress and enough charisma to make it all work.
(No, I didn't know why she and Olivia were still friends.)
She was wearing her cheerleading outfit- of course she was. Somewhere behind me I could hear the noise of the party. "You said Olivia was here?"
She smiled. "Actually, stud... I wanted to talk to you. You wouldn't believe all of the stories your girl's been telling me about you." She stepped away from the doorway and into the room. I took a moment to look at her. Her blonde hair was loose and settled around her shoulders and her eyes were hot with a look I'd come to recognise all too well over the last few months.
She shut the door behind her as she murmured, "I figured I might want to check to see if they were real after all."
"Look, I don't think-"