I decided to change up my Friday in two ways. First, I decided to skip every class Minghao and I shared. My official reason was that I was furious with him. Which, while it wasn’t incorrect, wasn’t the whole truth either. Not that I would ever admit it out loud, but I was scared of him. Not necessarily of what he could do to me, but of what he would—and has tried—to do to me. I knew that avoiding him was not a permanent fix. But I would worry about that when Monday rolled around.

The second thing was that I decided not to wear my brace. I wasn’t dumb enough to flash everyone the cuts on my right hand and I didn’t need to add to their worries by bandaging up my left hand, too. The drive to school alone was enough to convince that it was definitely a mistake, but since it was my non-dominant hand I figured I’d be okay until the school day was over. I just thanked my lucky stars that Jun didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss.

“Hey,” Lisa startled me from my thoughts as she slid into the seat next to mine and Jun slid into the seat across from mine. “So Jun told me about your date,” she continued in a tone of fake nonchalance that, after over a decade of friendship, clearly told me that my grave had already been dug.

Three years of emotional isolation and disinterest in dating in general seemed to affect Lisa more than they affected me. It was enough for me to smile at a member of the opposite and Lisa would want to know every single detail of every interaction we’ve ever had so she could determine if said specimen would be the one to finally break me out of my shell. It was actually kind of cute and endearing when it didn’t make me want to shatter both of my ear drums and cut out my tongue so that I wouldn’t have to answer any question ever again.

My eyes slid to Jun in a moment of confusion. “I never—,” and then it clicked. “Oh.” I shot Jun a dirty look. "It