Silent Treatment
We had been ignoring each other for 8 hours.
Eight. Grueling. Hours.
And yet somehow I still found myself walking into the junior high gym, searching for that stubble that covered his face and the blue denim jacket he had been wearing, when he walked out of my house. Before leaving for the school, I was close to just pulling up to his house, knocking on the door until he answered, but I knew I would get no response.
We had made plans to attend his sister’s basketball game together, but of course with us currently in the midst of a heated battle, Billy decided it best to leave without me, but if he thought I wasn’t going to show up, that was a stupid thought.
I had tried getting him to talk to me for hours, using my usual methods, but none seemed to work well enough. I wanted him to give in, for him to be the first person to speak, but Billy was pretty fucking stubborn. He knew that giving in would give me the upper hand and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Instead, he enjoyed watching me squirm and suffer while from my perspective, he continued on like it was nothing.
“Y/N!”
My head whirled around at the sound of my name being called and I could see Tommy, his best friend, waving me over from the home side bleachers. He had a bright and wide smile on his face while Billy seemed to roll his eyes and sulk in his seat with his arms crossed.
I wore a proud smirk and sauntered over to where they sat, making sure to apologize to anyone I walked in front of and made my way over to Tommy as he stood up to greet me with a hug. “I was worried you weren’t gonna come. This one said you wouldn’t be here,” he stated as he pointed to Billy who was still seated and avoiding my gaze.
“Yeah well I wouldn’t want to miss the game.” I purposely made my way to my seat next to my boyfriend by intentionally bumping into his legs, but he said nothing in return. He just drew his legs under his seat to avoid me hitting them again.
I sat in my seat and threw my bag on the other side of me.
Still no word from him or even a glance in my direction.
He knew I hated him when he was ignoring me and he was so damn good at it. Still paying me no attention, he leaned over and began to speak to Tommy. They both chuckled to whatever he had said, leaving me completely out of the joke.
That was annoying too.
I cleared my throat and leaned forward in my chair to gain Tommy’s attention. “Hey Tommy, could you please tell your best friend that it’s bad to be ignoring his girlfriend?”
Tommy simply chuckled and raised a hand to bring down onto his Billy’s shoulder, squeezing it tightly as he repeated what I said. “Bro, it’s a bad idea to be ignoring your girlfriend.”
All he did in response was shoot Tommy a glare and knock his hand off of his shoulder.
Tommy leaned forward to look at me, “Yeah. Seems like he’s not listening to me. You talk to him.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Billy warned as if I wasn’t sitting right there. I scoffed, unable to stop the slew of words that were firing out of my mouth and towards my boyfriend who I was supposed to be giving the silent treatment. “So now you’d rather I just stop talking to you altogether? That’s what you’d prefer? Because we can keep this bullshit going.”
Rather than responding or even looking in my direction, he gave a small shrug and continued staring on at the game, clapping as a basket was scored. As soon as the action settled for a timeout, he pulled out a cigarette and was getting ready to head outside for a quick smoke, rather than entertaining me.
Tommy gave me a sympathetic look. He knew how Billy could get when he was mad and he seemed mad enough, as he continued to ignore me, though I sat right next to him. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought coming here would mean he would give in and say something, but I seemed to be getting nowhere and it was annoying the hell out of me.
“You’re so childish,” I mumbled under my breath. I began to stand from my chair but once I was upright, a hand reached out to grab mine and tug me back into my seat forcefully.
His hand.
He dropped mine out of his grip and instead placed his hand onto my knee.
“You wanna know why we’re arguing?” Billy questioned lowly as he leaned over to me; his eyes still staring straight forward to the action beginning again out on the court. “Because you went and did exactly what I asked you politely not to do.”
And that was pairing up with Steve Harrington for a chemistry project. Billy had reason to believe that the boy liked me, and was after much more than my expertise, in a stupid science class. He wasn’t typically the jealous type, so when he was wary of someone, I tended to listen. Except this time.
I went to Steve’s house to work on our project and it didn’t take long for Billy to find out as by some stroke of bad luck, one of Billy’s minion friends saw us together and spilled the beans back to my boyfriend. His emotions caused him to burst out into a raging fit and an argument ensued from there as I refused to back down.
Hence why we were on this silent treatment ordeal.
“You know I can’t just ignore someone. It’s innocent. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”
Now, his eyes finally met mine for the first time in quite a few hours. Those blue orbs had definitely softened since the last time I was this close to him. “If you’re just going to combat everything I say, with the excuse that he doesn’t like you, there’s no point in continuing this conversation.”
“Well what do you want me to do?”
“I told you already. Pick a different partner. Stop hanging around Harringtits. Is it that hard?”
To be honest, it wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t as if I was getting rid of one of my best friends or something. The man was an acquaintance at best. I just didn’t feel like explaining to him that my boyfriend had a problem with us talking. That would be a tad bit embarrassing, especially if Steve didn’t like me at all.
“It isn’t,” I admitted.
“Great. Then please stop. I’d really appreciate that.”
The sincerity in his tone and those soft eyes made me feel a tad bit of guilt for having us going through this ridiculous argument over something so trivial, I could have fixed, simply by picking Nancy Wheeler as my partner.
I nodded somberly in agreement. “Okay.”
He gave me a weak smile back and removed his hand from my knee, instead wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me closer, placing a kiss to my forehead in the process. “Thank you.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tommy smiling, dramatically clapping his hands as low as possible without drawing attention to himself from the crowd. “Look at the two love birds making up.”
Billy grabbed a kernel of popcorn from the container in his lap and tossed it at Tommy’s face. “Shut up.”