valentina

You pause, contemplating your next course of action. You can't even fathom who, what or how you've been dialled, though you have an inkling of an idea.

"You have the wrong number," you sigh, hanging up. You didn't have the mental capacity to engage with whoever was on the other side of the phone tonight, being more than swamped by your own shit. Still, the phone rings again, and this time you toss it on your couch with more force than necessary, grateful it doesn't crash onto the floor as you sigh.

To make full use of your available force, though, you throw the marker in your pocket against the whiteboard for good measure. It squeaks miserably, making a curve and falls to the ground.

You're in that animated state of flow of talking when Oliver enters the large room. He's about 15 minutes late, and he blames the cab driver that stopped him for a selfie. Your hands are moving rapidly as you explain (what he assumes are hieroglyphs) behind you, making a joke about something called the Kuiper Belt that has everyone laughing. He supposes that it must be a very expensive belt. As he settles into an empty chair at the back of the hall, he tips the cap he's wearing a little lower, and pushes his facemask a bit higher. Selfishly, and subconsciously, he hopes that his motion distracts you for even a mere nanosecond, to recognise his presence, but he's imperceptible in the crowd of people furiously taking notes or nodding in agreement.

"...And though I don't claim to be prescient like those on Arrakis, but the similarity I have found with Dune is fact that the temperatures in Kolhar, just like...."

Oliver's doing the thing again. He catches himself before his train of thought leaves the room entirely.

He's never claimed to understand your work. He stopped trying after you tried to explain calculus to him in high school, but inadvertently overcomplicated the whole endeavour by quoting some axioms you were learning about in your dual enrolment course. Needless to say, though your teaching had become much better, Oliver would still find himself zoning out when you slipped into the jargon-y, super-science-nerd-y side of yourself. His mind would latch onto the words he would understand from the litany of complicated terms you'd use and play around with them instead.

Prescience.

He always thought that time travelling and the ability to look into the future led to an overcomplicated, never-ending loop of things. (He's watched enough in Avengers: Infinity War to realise that only a fool would want to look into the future). What good would warning your future self be when you had to come back and warn your younger self and so on and so forth. It hurt his head to think about this, and considering Avengers was one of the milder watches on your LSD-trip-esque watchlist of scientific nonsense, he's had to think about this quite a lot.

As you drone on about planets whose names, frankly, seem made up, Oliver takes a peek into his own future, dabbling in a bit of prescience himself. He's approaching his peak, his golden age, according to the pundits. A season more and he could be the most valuable defender in the world according to his agent. He'd be captaining the Japanese team for the fifth year straight, hopefully to Worlds once again. Finances were no issue for him. His agent was going to get a sneaker line customised after him from Nike, maybe a sports water he didn't necessarily believe in (he'd find a fine whiskey or vodka collaboration more tasteful), probably buy his mother her second summer home in the Swedish countryside for 55th birthday.

Though he knows about the call you'd got yesterday, a stupid slip-up by him, leaving his phone unattended and unlocked as he'd gone to fetch Yoko (one of his longer indulgences), he can still see you in his future.

You'd be there at Worlds, cheering for him from the friends and family box seats. You'd be the first person to make fun of his fraudulent brand deals. You'd advise him on the location of the summer house. Whether he was in Spain or Italy, you'd take the time out to make your stops on your increasingly frequent research-driven travels, and he would collect trinkets from the cities each away game was hosted in that would remind him of you.

He, never, of course imagines a future where you're not there. His mother might protest about the unnecessary luxury that is a second house, Nike might drop the deal given his sordid PR record, Sae Itoshi could finally ascend to captaincy — and Oliver would let him do so gracefully, because there was nothing more satisfying than a story coming full circle, and a new blossom of talent in a bleak landscape. He was just that kind of guy — but you were there, through it all, in your graphic printed longsleeves, low rise jeans and scuffed trainers.

Though he questioned the legitimacy of prescience, it was clear: all paths led to you. You'd forced him to sit through Dune 2, which ended up being less torturous than he'd expected, enough for him to ask you what happens next as he reversed out of the cinema's parking lot, and you'd propped a leg under your thigh, and turned to him with a moony sort of expression you reserved for very few things in your life.

You'd mentioned the Golden Path that Paul saw, a prescient interpretation for the universe that could lead it to salvation, even if it came at the cost of great difficulty, and Oliver now smirks into his mask as you wrap up your presentation with a polite "thank you."

Your energy has now simmered, leaving in its place a more nervous, hesitant force. He knew just how bad he fucked up yesterday by letting Yoko call you, because he knew how anxious you'd get before big events. In ordinary circumstances, it'd be him who'd be the guinea pig for your public speaking ministrations. You were not as charming as him, not as easy and comfortable under pressure in front of a large group, and he remembers you initially struggled to take your everyday classes, a burden that's eased with time. The words that you'd painstakingly chosen, the equations you'd solved with intentionality would turn to cardboard in your mouth when presented with the option of actually articulating your findings in a lucid manner.

Still, you manage tight-lipped, but genuine smiles at the students who file out and thank you for your insights, as well as your peers who'd occupied the front rows.

You've got your back to him when the midsized lecture hall has emptied itself out, and are busying yourself with packing up your laptop when he pads down towards you.

"That joke about the Kewpie Belt was hilarious," he drawls, and he expects to see you fall into familiar ways; your half-smile, a light punch to his shoulder, and a hopeless shake of your head. Then, you'd let him carry your bag and take you out to lunch.

You do no such thing. You stiffen, and turn around with a grimace. He knows your ashen face when he sees the circles under your eyes, a rare sight despite your friendship of nearly a decade.

You were hungover and pissed. Clearly, in no mood to entertain him.

All the more reason for him to press on, then. You beat him to it.

"Fuck off," you groan, and you sling your bag before he can protest. Apologies and grovelling are a part of his Circadian rhythmn at this point: he excels when he's on his knees.

"At least hear me out, I'm sorry," he says pointedly, taking an easy, loping stride to keep up with you where you have to make the effort of walking faster. You can't help the physical feeling of disgust that crawls up your spine, that makes you want to burrow inwards at the way the word rolls off his tongue so smoothly, as if it were completely weightless.

"It was a mistake! I broke up with her as soon as I figured it out. And your presentation was great, right? No harm, no foul," he blabbers, throwing his hands in the air sheepishly when you dignify him with a withering look. Oliver is a mediocre liar and a decent gambler at best, but what keeps him on the tables despite his losses is not just the cash he has to blow, but the excitement he attracts. Excitement is short-lived, however, and if anyone bothered staying past the party that was Oliver's lifestyle ended, they'd figure out his trade secrets.

Oliver's tells were as clear as day. You just had to want to look.

The exaggerated lilt in his voice, the cloying sweetness in his words as if he were explaining himself to his mother rather than a friend, the way his eyes flashed when he exclaims. This is a practiced routine, and you congratulate him on adding another feather to his cap: footballer, womaniser and actor.

"No harm, no foul?", you mimic, scoffing. Now he was just being obtuse. He knows you like the back of his hand, he knows you'd been up drinking to stave off the humiliation that had burnt through you from the call, coupled with your nerves about the presentation. (What he doesn't know is that you'd slept through three alarms and woke up drooling on the floor by your RA, who'd swung by to pick you up. Hot with embarrassment, you did not acknowledge the empty bottle of Merlot that had gotten you through the night. You'd barely made it in time for your lecture, and were a wreck for the first five minutes. You refuse to, however, divulge this information to him, lest he gains verbal confirmation to what he already knew in his gut: he had you hopelessly besotted.)

"All's well that ends well?", he counters mildly, breaking out his Sunday best smile. You treat him contemptuously, but he can hear the exhaustion in your tone.

"I'm tired, Oliver. Leave me alone," you said quietly, stepping out of the room.

You're staring at your miso soup petulantly, like a child peering into a mirror displeased by their reflection. Oliver prods it towards you gently. The soup is a metaphor for your heart's betrayal towards your head, a heady concoction that weaves together your weaknesses for this man in a salty, broth-y mixture. How you were persuaded to lunch was beyond you (You lie, you gave into his pathetic demands too easily), and as he fans himself with a laminated menu at this sidewalk cafe, you finally find it in you to glare at him rather than the poor hangover cure.

"How'd she figure out who I was?", you ask, glacially calm, though your expression betrays you.

"You and ma are the only two women on my call log. Most frequented, too," he says. It's simple. It's the truth.

"Did she go through our texts?"

"Nah. Face ID lock on the app."

You place your palms on the plastic tablecloth, a gaudy red with flowers. Your hands are sweaty. They stick. You're considering his words carefully, and he savours the way you look when the cogs in your brain are at work, doing what they do best.

"Dumped her, in case I didn't make it clear," he adds. He thinks he's being helpful.

You inhale sharply, and take a drink of the ice-cold water in front of you.

"Oliver," you begin, your voice controlled. "You do realise that Yoko wasn't in the wrong here? Objectively," you speak.

You love that word. Objectively. Factually. Logically. Empirically. Any part of the English language that gave you the illusion of control in this moment over the whirling shitstorm that Oliver is, the maelstrom of your life.

"If I were her, I'd also be pissed that my boyfriend was spending more time talking to some lab rat than me," you intone, and you hate the way your brain fires all synapses when you say the word boyfriend.

"I'm not her boyfriend. And you know I'm not good at this shit," he shrugs, and you feel the visceral, primal urge to reach over and strangle him.

Circles. That was how each one of these interactions went. You knew your place in Oliver's life, but many of his passing attractions did not. Some revered you, others envied you, while others still viewed you as a threat to eliminate. All perceptions were thoroughly embarrassing, since how could a lowly, unsexy, unfunny late-teen equivalent of a childhood best friend live up to the perfection of each woman that came tottering her way into Oliver's life?

Of all perceptions, though, you hated the last one because you felt that it was true. The word "side piece" is reductive, but the truth is at its finest when it is bare. You're no better than the any other person who's got their eyes set on Oliver, debauched and eligible bachelor Oliver, with his scruff and baritone and deep pockets and even deeper, more generous heart.

For someone who'd have a body count in the double digits, you find it baffling how all these years later, he hasn't developed some tact, some response other than "I'm not good at this shit."

"That's a fucked up response and you know it."

He shrugs.

"Would you rather have me lie and say that I'll cut you off every time I start a new fling? 'Cause you know you'll be getting whiplash every two business days."

You sigh, clenching the tablecloth again.

"That's not what I meant, Oliver," you seethe. For all his looks, his expensive taste and rationality, he behaved like the seventeen year old at the club more often than one would expect.

"You're an adult now. I'm an adult. Do you seriously still think you're going to be going into your thirties with this shithousery?", you say exasperatedly. "The calls, the lies, the embarrassment for everyone but you, your inability to be accountable and slide everything off with this stupid 'no harm no foul' attitude," you say, and before you can realise it your voice is gaining in pitch, in frustration.

"You can't fix me," is the only response Oliver deigns you worthy of, and you half expect him to leave.

"Get your head out of your ass. You don't need fixing, least of all from me. You need to," and you once again, grab at thin air for the words from every language that you knew, "treat yourself better," you sigh at the end, and the corner of his lips quiver up into a tentative smile.

"Look at you, telling me to treat myself better," he says, tilting back his chair smugly. You burn at his words, painfully reminded of your college days, punctuated with him forcing you out of your stuffy dorms to take a walk, grab takeout, do something other than kill yourself over differential equations.

"Ugh. This would be so much easier if I were a sentient superior species with mind control that could take over your brain and just force you to do what I tell you."

"Are we talking Ratatouille or Attack of the Brainsucker here?", he asks, and you roll your eyes in response.

Circles, squares, everything eventually came back to its beginnings with you. But in a distant yet near future he was inching closer to, Oliver could see the golden threads of fate winding in funny ways, taking him on his prescient path. He was sure of it.

"Brainsuckers. Duh."