What I Think of You pt. 08
Alex was returning from a rather pleasant lunch, he didn't dislike Sebastian, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't feel some sense of smug superiority.
His more interesting than usual lunch had reaffirmed his theory that if he just went with the flow, and took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves, it'd most likely end well, or at the very least, Yoshiko probably wasn't out to get him, from the start, he'd had some terrible sinking feeling that at some point, a TV crew or something stupid like that was going to jump out from behind the curtains and say "surprise, you're on weirdo pervert watch" or something equally stupid.
Alex knew that was paranoid, but it was a paranoia that influenced him heavily, his life had largely been a collection of mundane misery throughout high school, and his university life had been a slow gradual increase in self-worth, largely due to the deepening relationships he was building with his newfound friends, not to mention Olivia.
Simply put, he didn't believe that good things would happen to him for no real reason, that didn't make just didn't happen to people like him, to his mind, a relationship was earned, he'd done nothing to earn what had happened to him over the past couple days, he'd never really been close to Rachel, he'd tried to be nice to her when he could, but no real memories with her stuck out in his mind.
The lack of any real build-up went even further with Yoshiko, not to mention her roommate was a total unknown, it all felt like his recent sexual experiences came from nowhere, he hadn't built those relationships, they'd just offered themselves to him, for seemingly no reason, and that frightened him, he'd felt for the longest time now that he was stumbling in the dark, afraid.
But time had passed, the other shoe hadn't dropped, and he was beginning to feel like it wasn't going to, maybe it was okay to just... enjoy, the change in life circumstances, maybe he could just go home, fuck Yoshiko, and her roommate if he ever saw her again, and not have to worry about it quite so much, maybe it was all a bit beyond his grasp,
But maybe he didn't need to know,
Alex didn't know the science behind how his car worked, but he still drove it, he didn't feel the need to question it before he could use it, why did he need to know the inner workings of Yoshiko's mind? It's not like he was doing anything wrong per se, she told him to do it, if she called him a pervert, and tried to tell Olivia or pull anything along those lines, tried to socially ruin him, then he had the photos from earlier, the photos she sent of her body, captioned crudely and seductively... would those be exonerating proof, or would they just dig the hole deeper?
It was impressive how Alex's thought process tied itself into knots, deep down, he knew the problem, something had changed, something was bigger here than just Olivia leaving, something important had happened that he was unaware of.
But try as he might, nothing came to mind, and as his attempts at understanding his situation petered out, he came to a sudden realisation.
He'd been in a lecture for 20 minutes now and had paid attention to none of it.
So, he'd tried to refocus his attention, pay attention to his lecturer, and try and maintain his slightly above-average grades.
It was in vain, he didn't have any context for the words he was hearing, and he'd missed too much to reasonably recover.
What's more, as he turned his gaze towards the front of the class, something more caught his eye, there was a girl near the front of the class, he didn't know her name, he was pretty sure she was a member of the drama club, although he wouldn't bet anything of value on that half-remembered recollection.
She had black hair and eyes to match, along with a petite body, but with breasts that seemed notably big for her frame, what stuck out to him about her was the mole she had under her bottom lip, he couldn't put it into words, but he found moles to be plenty sexy, and one day he'd really like to properly articulate why.
He couldn't see any of her facial features from where he was sitting, he could really only see her backside, and her tantalisingly short skirt, but he didn't need to see her face to remember what she looked like, he'd never spoken a word to her, but he'd run into her on his first day of university.
This was before he had his heart set on Olivia, he'd met Olivia by that point, but at that point in his life, he still had feelings for another girl at the time. Those feelings had been rejected, and he was still reeling from the heartbreak at the time, looking for something else to latch onto, and when he'd accidentally bumped into her in the hallway, he caught a twinge of lust in his heart.
She'd seemed apologetic, she'd offered him a warm smile, she'd apologised, said it was her fault, and scurried off, wishing him a nice day as she did. It wasn't much, but at the time, Alex wasn't used to much.
He'd immortalised the image of her smiling face in his mind, and the hormonal part of his brain immortalised the fact she clearly wasn't wearing a bra that day, and with every word she spoke, her breasts noticeably shook, he silently hoped he hadn't come across as a pervert that day, but knowing his younger self, it was a possibility.
That had been the extent of their interaction, a momentary fascination with a pretty face, spawned from a brief meeting, in a moment of desperation.
Within the next month, he would start spending considerable amounts of time with Olivia and had largely stopped looking at other women. His eyes had no real need to wander, and in the past, thinking about this girl, whose name he didn't even know hadn't so much filled him with lust, as it had filled him with a sense of regret for his high school days.
His high school days were a time in his life that seemed bleak on reflection, a time of failing to fit in, and increasing loneliness, even as he found himself surrounded by people he called friends, he tried to forget those days and focus on the present, but some old 'friends' had recently kept messaging him about a reunion party, and so he'd had high school dredged up from the bowels of his memory.
He snapped out of his thoughts and came to the realisation another 10 minutes had passed, and he'd gotten lost in thought again. It was an hour-long lecture, and he'd missed half of it.
Putting party invitations from people he pretended to like aside, he tried to focus on the lesson, which was even more of a lost cause than it was 10 minutes ago. Hence, his attention deflected onto the nameless theatre girl he'd fantasised about years ago, he'd avoided thinking about her in the past because it just felt like a reminder of his own somewhat pathetic past. But he didn't feel pathetic now, he'd achieved far too much in the past week to feel pathetic, right now, all he felt was... lustful.