Free Web NovelChapter 159: 159 | The Opposite of a Fuckboy
Jordan shifted closer, closing the gap between them on the sectional until his thigh pressed against Kumiko’s. He reached out and put his hand over where Chloe and Kumiko’s hands were joined, covering both of them.
Jordan’s hand sat on top of theirs, warm skin against warm skin, and his brain chose that exact moment to remind him that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
Like, zero. Complete void. He was an eighteen-year-old virgin-until-last-week whose romantic experience consisted of buying a Prada bag for a girl who didn’t know his last name, spending two grand on an OnlyFans account, and crying in a parking lot on Christmas Day. That was the resume. That was the full CV he brought to this conversation where two impossibly gorgeous women sat on either side of him waiting for him to say something meaningful.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out. fгeewebnovёl.com
His mouth closed.
He tried again.
"So the, uh. The thing is." Jordan swallowed. His throat felt like he’d been eating sand. "I really like you. Both of you. And I know that sounds like the most generic fuckboy thing anyone’s ever said on a couch, and I’m not a fuckboy, I’m literally the opposite of a fuckboy, I was the guy fuckboys laughed at in parking lots, but that’s. That’s beside the point."
Kumiko stared at him with those enormous brown eyes, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Chloe watched from the middle position, her blue-streaked hair falling across one eye, her expression patient in a way that said she was giving him room to stumble through this.
Jordan ran his free hand through his hair. The dirty blonde strands fell back exactly where they started because the Tune Up trait apparently came with anime protagonist hair physics. "I didn’t plan this. Any of this. Three weeks ago I was a disaster human being who hadn’t showered in a week and had a mattress the EPA would classify as a biohazard. Now I’m sitting here with you two and I keep waiting for someone to tell me this is a simulation or a coma dream or some kind of punishment for all the money I wasted on League of Legends skins."
"Jordan." Chloe’s voice was soft. The kind of soft she only used when they were alone, when the camera was off and the mask was down and she was just Chloe from Koreatown who missed her dad and drank chamomile tea before bed.
"Let me get this out or I’ll chicken out and we’ll spend three hours talking about bitrate instead." He took a breath. His ribs felt too small for his lungs. "Kumiko, I need to be honest with you about something before anything else happens."
Kumiko’s grip tightened on Chloe’s hand. Her knuckles went white.
"My family situation is. It’s complicated. My grandfather left this inheritance that I can’t get unless I’m in committed relationships with multiple women by the time I turn twenty-five. And I know how that sounds. I know it sounds like the plot of a bad harem anime, and trust me, I wake up every morning thinking the same thing. But it’s real and it’s legal and it’s the reason Chloe and I had that conversation in the first place."
Kumiko blinked three times in rapid succession. Her mouth formed a small O shape that made her look exactly like one of the emoticons she used in group chat. "Multiple... like how many?"
"Three."
"Three?"
"Three."
Kumiko’s gaze swiveled to Chloe, then back to Jordan, then to Chloe again, completing a rotation so fast Jordan was surprised she didn’t get whiplash. "And you’re okay with this?"
Chloe tucked the loose strand of blue-streaked hair behind her ear. "If I wasn’t okay with it, I wouldn’t have talked to you in the car."
"But. But you’re his girlfriend. Like, his actual girlfriend. You two are together. You sleep in the same bed. You built a computer together. You took him to meet your vocal coach. That’s real couple stuff." fгeewebnovёl.com
"It is real couple stuff." Chloe squeezed Kumiko’s hand. "And I’m choosing to share it. Not because the inheritance makes me, not because Jordan asked me to. Because I’d rather pick someone I love than watch Jordan get stuck with some random girl who doesn’t care about either of us."
The word love sat in the apartment like a physical object. Kumiko heard it. Jordan heard it. The LED strips behind the monitor pulsed purple as if reacting to the charge in the room.
Jordan picked back up because if he didn’t keep talking his chest was going to explode. "Here’s the part where I sound like an idiot. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know the right things to say. I can barely maintain one relationship without my brain telling me I’m going to screw it up, and now I’m asking you to trust me with two. That’s insane. I know it’s insane."
He looked at Kumiko directly, and her brown eyes were wet and luminous in the afternoon light, her lip trembling in a way that made something behind his sternum ache. "But I also know that when you sang with me at karaoke, you made me forget that anyone else was in the room. I know that when those guys bothered you at Best Buy, I didn’t even think about it, I just moved. I know that you watch my face when you think I’m not looking, and I notice every single time, and I never say anything because I didn’t want to embarrass you."
Kumiko made a sound. Small and wounded and full of something that Jordan couldn’t identify except that it was the most honest thing he’d ever heard.
"I’m not good at this." He laughed, the sound coming out ragged and real. "Obviously. I just told a girl I notice her staring at me and that’s either romantic or creepy and I genuinely cannot tell which one right now."
"Romantic," Kumiko whispered. "Definitely romantic."
