Author: fraidy bat
Rating: T
Pairings: Olivia/Viola, Viola/Duke, Sebastian/Yvonne implied
Summary: 98 percent of the time still leaves two percent in which anything can happen. A sequel to He's Not You. Viola POV.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from She's the Man. None of it belongs to me.
Notes: The more I thought about it, the more I really needed to write this. I hope it meets your expectations. This is a short intro chapter, but the whole fic will be at least a few chapters long. :)
Chapter 1
As someone who has screwed up a whole hell of a lot in the last six months, let me give you some advice.
Don't take no for an answer from some jackass soccer coach who practices sexism as a way of life. If there is no girls' soccer team and you want to try out for the boys' team, go over his head. Talk to the principal, crash a school board meeting, rally the Parents' Association to your cause, draw up a petition and pester all your friends to sign it, research this little thing called Title IX and see if it applies to your school, picket, have a bake sale—do whatever you need to do to play soccer. Just don't get drastic and take matters into your own hands like I did. That brings me to me next little tidbit of advice.
Don't dress up like your brother and pretend to be a guy for two weeks. You might think that a couple weeks doesn't seem like long enough to do much harm, but you would be catastrophically wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, my intentions were good and came from a pure place in my heart, but as we know (all too well), the road to fiery, painful, dear-god-just-let-me-die hell is paved with the good intentions of idiots like me.
And what exactly happened during those two weeks that was so bad, you ask? Man, let me tell you, I was busy. Busy messing up people's lives, that is.
First of all, it's not a good idea to live with a teenage boy who thinks you are also a teenage boy when in fact you are not. In the end, when the whole embarrassing truth comes out, he'll be royally pissed off that you a) lied to him about your true sex, b) let him tell you all kinds of sensitive things that could really ruin his rep, and c) watched him parade around in his underwear all the time. It's not a comfortable situation to find yourself in.
Second, definitely don't fall for the boy you're deceiving. It only makes things suck that much more when he learns you're really a girl and didn't tell him about it. Thankfully, things worked out okay for me and Duke, but it could have easily gone the other way and Duke might never have talked to me again.
Finally, if you must pretend to be a guy for a couple of weeks in order to play soccer and secure your future in college, don't be sweet, funny, or generally charming at all. Girls might fall in love with you. I learned this the hard way. I still can't believe I didn't notice how into me Olivia was (is…). She was practically sending up signal flares, and I had no idea. I had to find out in a ladies room, for heaven's sake.
When I told everybody that I was really a girl, I was so focused on how mad Duke was going to be that I let Olivia's predicament slip my mind. It was shitty of me, honestly. And then to gloss over the issue because she thought my brother was cute? Awful. If we had just sat down and really talked about the fact that she had fallen in love with me as a guy, we might have avoided some of the more difficult spots in our relationship. Maybe Olivia wouldn't have figured out in such a painful way that she was in denial about me and my brother and how she felt about both of us. She might not have started avoiding me. We might not have had that big fight where I had to hear some difficult truths. And…other things…might not have happened.
It's been a month and a half since Olivia and I got everything out into the open. Well, as open as it gets between the two of us. It's nice to see that she and Sebastian are pretty good friends after the breakup. He's even dating Yvonne (still!).
I can't read her mind, but I know it's hard for Olivia to be my friend at times. Duke and I are still very together, a fact I'm quite happy about, but sometimes when he hugs me or kisses me and I know she's there, it sucks. I'm sure it sucks worse for her, and I can't stand that. I'm such a weakling; if I had feelings for someone who was with someone else, I don't know if I could stay friends. Olivia kicks my ass in the emotional fortitude department.
It's funny the things you learn when a friendship hits a crisis. For a little while after our fight, it looked like Olivia and I were done, that she wouldn't even get within two feet of me let alone talk to me again. It took me a little while to calm down after certain…things happened, but once it really started to sink in that I was losing her, I just about went insane. I practically kidnapped her just to get her to talk to me. I don't think I can remember ever feeling more like a prize asshole than when she starting crying because I insisted that she talk to me. She was falling apart right there in front of me, and I had this scarily strong urge to hold her. So I did. For a long time. And it felt…scary, but a good scary, and that's what was so freaking scary about it. We talked, and we decided that as long as I knew her feelings weren't going to go away and I respected that, we could still be friends. I finally let her out of the janitor's closet, and I held her hand all the way to her dorm. I don't know why. Well, that's not true. I know why, and I also don't know why. It's all very screwed up.
Which brings me to my final piece of wisdom that I will impart to you.
Don't let a pretty girl named Olivia Lennox kiss you. Even if you've just had a fight and she just made you realize what a jerk you've been. Even if you love your boyfriend, you aren't generally attracted to girls, and she used to date your brother. Even if things will eventually work out (mostly) so you can be friends again. I managed to learn this the hard way, too.
Everything is supposed to be fine now. We have an understanding, and things should be perfect. We're just friends, and I'm happy with Duke. But my stupid mind wanders back to the three or four seconds when Olivia kissed me, and to those days when it seemed like I had lost her, and to that tiny supply closet where she was so close to me.
And now I'm more confused than ever.