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Lex had rehearsal with the band later the same day. The entire day had been on the edge of blah; from the juice accident to when her favorite CD broke in half after she accidentally stepped on it. Her friends were in school every day until two, which left her to do nothing between the time she woke up until rehearsal at four – if there was any rehearsal at all that day.
Spending all day with Fred would probably be a lot more appealing if that hadn’t been on the agenda every day since she got to the city; even more so if they actually did something aside from hanging out at the coffee shop for hours or stayed inside and watched TV. She had spent an entire day lying on the bed, flipping through old magazines and watching reruns of different daytime dramas on TV. Fred was loyally by her side, also lying on the bed but on his back, reading something from the magazines she’d already tossed aside.
“How’s it going?” she asked dully, just to have something to say.
Fred rolled over on his stomach and placed his arm around her. “I dunno.”
Lex quickly grabbed the pen he was holding so he wouldn’t start chewing on it. It was inevitable that the pen would eventually break; Fred was an expert at breaking pens. “Test’s not working out for ya?” she said, leaning over the page he was reading. She had assigned him to do one of the quizzes in the magazine to keep him occupied for a while, or he’d drive her crazy with his constant trying to cheer her up.
“It won’t even work out if I cheat,” Fred muttered and took back the pen.
“Well, useless quizzes can be tricky sometimes,” she shrugged. “I’m sure it won’t matter too much if you end up on ‘worst boyfriend ever’.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled thoughtfully, staring at the questions. “I will figure this out even if I have to look at the answers.”
Lex tilted her head to the side and watched him while he continued to ponder over how to answer the impossible questions. She was so well aware of how much she really loved him. “I meant that it doesn’t matter what score you’ll get. You will still be the best boyfriend ever.”
Fred glanced at her, smiling amusedly. “Yeah, but still… I like high scores.”
Lex moaned loudly and shoved at him. “Not everything’s about winning, Fred. Can’t you just settle with the thought of being a great person, despite what the test is telling you?”
“As soon as I’ve upgraded from lousy to decent boyfriend, I will,” he promised. “Can we eat soon?”
She rolled her eyes and decided to leave Fred with his test so she could devote her time to the TV again. How could one person be so focused on food? Fred wasn’t a very complex guy that way. His life surrounded food and the urge to always win. Sometimes he drove her crazy with his competitiveness; he could never let anything go if he considered it some sort of contest. Fred was a player. She knew that. And if his life was the ultimate game, she was the ultimate prize in the end. Or at least that’s how it felt at times.
Of course, she knew Fred well enough to know that he was more complex than he seemed to be. She couldn’t imagine that she’d ever find him interesting at all if his life really didn’t surround anything other than food and winning contests. Even if it could make her irritated, she still loved that about him. She knew him better than anyone and she knew how much he depended on her, how much he loved her and how much she meant to him. If that wasn’t complex enough, she doubted anything would be.
And even though he kept chewing her pens apart, though he was perfectly aware that she hated when he did that, she couldn’t help but feeling grateful for him being there with her.