Break Point

It wasn’t until I was walking to school Monday morning when I realized what Emma had told me before leaving. “See me Monday?” I muttered to myself as I walked. There was no reason for an after school meetup. Tests were done. Today and tomorrow were basically throw-away days as each class became a film studies class so the teachers could furiously work to grade before the long weekend. With nothing on the horizon and new units starting when we came back, I wondered if she was running on habit.

I suppose in the technical sense, she would see me today. We saw each other every day at lunch. She sat at her table. I sat at my table. Most of the time, she was too busy with her friends to notice me, but every once in a blue moon, she would glance over. She even smiled once.

As I suspected, nearly every class had a movie or some educational video to kill time. I spent most of the day sharing memes with the gang on Discord and planning out the next session. We were skipping this week since I would be out of town, so I wanted to make sure the next one was packed with interesting things to do. At the end of the day, I ended up walking to the library out of habit. With nothing to study, I almost left right there but decided against it. It wasn’t because I was waiting to see if Emma was going to show up. I actually wanted to look around the new releases section and see if they had anything interesting.

Finding something that caught my interest, I headed for my normal spot and started reading. It didn’t take long for me to get lost in the book.

“So you did come.” The familiar voice broke me out of the book's world as I looked up. Towering over me was Emma with a wide smile on her face. Engrossed in the book, I hadn’t noticed her approach.

“Was finding a new book to read over the weekend,” I said, holding up the book.

“Uh-huh.” Her smirk told me she thought otherwise. “For the weekend? Seems to me like you finished half of it already.”

Blinking, I looked down at the book, then at the clock off to the wall. It was nearly six. Crap. I was going to have to text Mom. That could wait though. I understood why I was still here, but Emma?

“What are you doing here?” I asked as she took a seat in the chair beside me.

“Honestly?” I nodded, making note of the page number before closing the book to give her my full attention. She leaned towards me and for the briefest of moments, I thought she was going to kiss me. “I wanted to see if you were still waiting,” she whispered. Chuckling, she pulled away at the sight of my frown.

“I wasn’t waiting for you.” She didn’t say anything, because she didn’t need to. I could see the disbelief in her eyes. “I wasn’t.”

“Okay. I believe you,” she said. “But I am glad you’re here since we won’t see each other until next week.”

“Going to miss me?”

“Maybe,” she said coyly. “But the important thing is your rewards.”

Stomach turning, I cleared my throat and shifted in my chair. “Rewards? For what?”

“For my tests. Three to be exact. You helped me, so now it’s time that I help you.” The way her eyes flicked down to my crotch told me exactly what she was referring to. Once more, she was enjoying my discomfort. That Cheshire smile on her face as she leaned towards me. “So? What’ll it be?”

Frankly, I didn’t want any of them. I didn’t care that I had yet to delete the other two she had given me, or the fact that the newest one got some use last night. I would delete them later. When I got home, actually. Yeah. I couldn’t let her torment me forever.

Right before I was about to tell her that, a new idea popped into my head. “And I get to choose?” I asked, buying myself some time to solidify my plan.

“That’s the deal.” Meeting her eyes, I could see the excitement lurking there. Oh man, she really wanted me to choose. She craved it. Emma wanted to hear me debase myself begging for her dirty pictures. I may have been keeping myself in this twisted web of hers, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t struggle every now and then.

“Great!” I said with a smile. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”

She was instantly on guard, her excitement pulling back at the joy in my voice. I may have been a touch over the top, but I was sick of her toying with me with no repercussions. Maybe it was time for her to have a little of what she was putting out served back to her.

“I’m thinking something classic; and that something is naughty schoolgirl. Short skirt, button-down, and a tie. I’ll leave the poses for you, but I’m curious what you would look like in a ponytail, so let’s have at least one photo with your hair like that. No nudity, but feel free to get creative,” I said with a smile and a wiggle of my eyebrows.

“Funny,” she said in a tone that suggested anything but, no longer smiling.

“You said I get to choose.” Before she could say anything, I exaggerated an epiphany moment. “Oh wait. Were you implying I could only choose from a limited list? I’m sorry. Maybe you should have been more clear.”

“That’s not how this works.” There was a dark undertone to her voice, but I couldn’t stop now. If I did, I would never work up the courage to try this again.

“What? Not used to someone calling you out on your bullshit?”

“Stop.”

My anger flared and I was barely able to keep my volume under control. “Or what? You’re going to cut me off? Fine. Do it. At this point, I don’t care anymore. As far as I’m concerned, this,” I said, gesturing to her, “was never part of the deal. You want to poke fun at me, tease me? Fine, I can take it. Whatever this is? It isn’t fun. It’s malice. You may be able to lie to yourself and separate this from friendship, but I can’t. When I look at you, all I see is my friend. I asked for friendship, not a toxic friendship.”

Her face went oddly calm as if all the anger was swallowed up. She slowly shook her head. “This was all it took to break you? Huh. Guess you weren’t as special as I thought.”

“You think I’m stupid enough to fall for that? I was never special to you. At best, I was just another stupid guy to string along.”

To my surprise, it actually looked like that hurt her but I was too angry to care. I never planned to quit, but it was clear to me that my outburst had turned from a controlled fire to a raging inferno that was turning the whole building to ash.

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Don’t sit there and play the victim card. I told you what you were getting into and I **** you to do nothing. You weren’t complaining when I was sending you pictures before.”

Fuck it. If this was happening, I might as well nuke the entire thing. On my phone, I pulled up the folder where all her pictures were stored.

“You mean these?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I could delete them all and not even flinch.”

She huffed. “Spare me the dramatics. We both know that you would never—” She didn’t even finish as in a surge of anger I deleted them. Her look of shock was temporary and she recovered quickly. “Nice try, but we both know they aren’t deleted.”

Predicting that, I was already navigating to the trash tab. Before she finished, I was clicking on the ‘delete forever’ button. In an instant, they were gone. All gone. I’d already scrubbed my phone. By now, my anger had faded enough to realize what I had done. The realization that I no longer had any pictures of Emma snuffed out the remaining anger, leaving only a hollow hole.

Her stunned expression slowly morphed to give me an impressed look. “Judging by the look on your face, those were the only copies you had.”

I was too dumbfounded to reply. I never had any intention of deleting those, and now that it was done, I was devastated. Sure, it was for the best to just be done with it all, but that would only happen after the grief and pain faded. After all that I'd been through, I had nothing to show for it.

Sighing, she ran her hands along her legs. “Well, I suppose that is that. While it was only for a short time, I had a lot of fun, Isaac.” The anger was gone, replaced by an amused smile. I suppose she got her fix of me embarrassing myself after all. “I’ll see you next week,” she said as she got up.

“No,” I muttered softly, still looking at my phone in disbelief.

“What?”

“No,” I said loud enough for her to hear. “You won’t. We are done, Emma. No more studying together. No more Dungeons and Dragons.” I stood up, forcing her to look up at me for a change. “I’m tired of you treating me like shit. I don’t need a shit friend like that in my life. I would apologize, but I’m not sure you deserve that, so I won’t.” I chuckled, but I wasn’t sure if it was from finding a nugget of humor in the situation or from finding a piece of my mind that had broken off somewhere along the way. “Wow. I can’t believe it. I actually feel better already. After all, my life was fine before you came and started fucking around in it. Goodbye, Emma.”

Grabbing my bag, I turned and headed for the exit without even the slightest desire to glance back.