When had Lizzie gotten so nice? Had she always been? As far as Mao could recall, it seemed like a new development. Not that he'd complain, he needed all the support he could get.
Once at the bleachers, Mao sunk down to the ground, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. He hadn't cried in front of a girl since his mother. "I'll tell you...as much as I can. But I can't tell you everything." His words came out choked, as though even saying his former best friends name was painful. "It can't get back to James, okay?" Telling people things and not telling James was what got him in trouble in the first place, but he still had to be careful.
"...I can't tell you how he found out. But I didn't tell him. That's why he's so mad. ...And I said something...really stupid...and I don't think he'll let me take it back..." Mao dropped his head, burying his face in his knees, losing his battle to keep his tears at bay. This really sucked. He sniffed, then continued on, telling his story in a rambling kind of way. "..I was too embarrassed to tell him about Lukas, I mean, I hated him! He hated me! And he said, like, the shittiest things to me...But I'm so stupid..."
He lifted his head and wiped at his tears though fresh ones soon replaced them. "Did Lukas tell you about how we fought in the parking lot?" He wasn't sure how much Lizzie knew, he could only assume that she was left in the dark as much as James had been. "This whole..secret keeping shit started then. ...I think I started to like Lukas then...I knocked him out, and I don't fucking know, maybe it was some Florence Nightingale bullshit, but he looked really vulnerable and I just stared at him and I was really worried that I had really hurt him. ...I told James about the fight, but not that I walked Lukas home after, and that, I don't know, we were sort of a little nice to each other when he woke up..."
It felt good to be getting all this off his chest, even if it might backfire on him. Now that he had started talking, he couldn't seem to stop.
"Then, like, at the talent show, I guess Lukas felt bad for me, he took me aside after and gave me the coupons he won. It caught me off guard, I dunno, I started to like him more..." He scowled suddenly, "Then that fucking Ellie had to start shit on the journals, saying me and him fought all the time because we liked each other." Mao seemed to forget that Lizzie and Ellie were friends. "Stupid bitch was right, of course, but anyway...Me and Luke got into this huge fight online, and then he IMed me and we fought some more, and then, I don't know, he started to ask me if I liked him. I didn't know what to say, I thought he was, like, gonna blackmail me, I dunno, so I wouldn't say either way. He kept demanding that I tell him. It freaked me out..."
This story was longer than he thought it would be. The whole Luke saga had been going on for months. "Then he made me this certificate thing, I guess he felt really bad about the talent show, and stuck it in my locker...I found out it was him, and we talked online again...and I told him that I liked him." He groaned at his own stupidity. "So then at my party...I went to my room to put the stuff you and Ethan gave me away, and Lukas followed me, I guess...We were really drunk, and we were starting to fight, because I didn't talk to talk about me liking him, and he wouldn't say why he had wanted to know, and then..." Mao's eyes shot up to the sky as if he still couldn't believe it. "He kissed me. We kissed. It was..." He trailed off, uncomfortable. "Then the hurricane started and that was that."
Now he was finally getting to the present. "So, I dunno, we weren't fighting, and like, I dunno, I invited him out on Saturday for ice cream. It wasn't a date, but it felt like I was asking him out on one, so maybe it was...Maybe I kind of wanted it to be...It went really great, we went to the beach and had a water fight and threw mud and stuff and then we kissed again, and..." His tears had slowed for most of his story, but now he cried harder. "I was really happy.."