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Cherri had never been particularly worried about her own safety. She tended to be a magnet for trouble, but the trouble was more… inconsequential. She would trip over a root that seemed to spawn out of thin air, or choke on her spit in the middle of an important presentation. All in all, the trouble she got herself into was hardly harmful.
So that’s not why she’s at this self-defence class. Cherri briefly wonders if she should come up with an excuse as to why she’s there at all. Will anyone be asking? Well, she didn’t really care if just anyone asked her. No, the more important question was would she be asking.
Yes, Apo Kuna looked radiant, even across the field that the class was being run on. Her wavy brownish, reddish hair is pulled into a stylish ponytail, and she moves as if she doesn’t know how beautiful she looks.
Cherri desperately wants to tell her. Except the reason she’s taking the class is because Apo is running it, and she doesn’t want to end up running her mouth to the point of no return. Haha- You’re like- really pretty and I just- well- I attended this class because you run it and I was hoping that we could talk? Or get dinner? Or like, just make out with me? Please?
No, she is not going to do that. So Cherri simply glances at Katie, her roommate, who agreed to come along because she just ‘had to see this.’ Katie is already looking at her with a grin on her face, and Cherri feels her face flush red, as she scowls back. “What?”
“You’re looking at her like she hung all the stars in the sky, that's what.” Katie snorts, continuing to stretch. “I was right. This is hilarious.”
It was almost comical, how long Cherri had been pining after the same woman. Apo wasn’t even in a similar program to her, hell, their classes weren’t even in the same building. No, Cherri was quite hopelessly enamoured with the architecture student, and had been for a few months now.
The words aren’t meant to be malicious of course, but Cherri winces anyway, giving Katie a sheepish smile. “Oh come on. Like you’re any better.”
“I’ll have you know, I have not once wilted under the gaze of a pretty woman.” Katie puffs out her chest, and Cherri fights off a laugh at her roommate’s ridiculousness. Her words are not only boastful, but also completely false.
“Whatever…” Cherri groans dramatically, drawing out the ‘r’ pathetically. Then, Apo’s voice rings across the field of scattered college students.
“Alright, thank you all for waiting!” Apo bows only slightly, as all attention is drawn to her. Cherri finds the polite gesture adorable, and watches as Apo’s brows furrow into the eerily familiar, serious expression she wears for most of the time Cherri has seen her. (The one time Cherri had seen her smiling, her heart nearly exploded).
Unfortunately, Apo is just as attractive when she frowns, so Cherri just stares, blissfully tuning out Apo’s voice, until the woman tells them to pair up.
Well, shit. She hadn’t heard a word of what Apo had explained. Cherri turns to Katie, and her desperation must show on her face, because her roommate's face breaks into a smug smile.
“Katie.” Cherri warns, even before Katie can even open her mouth. Her roommate’s face twists with innocence, and she smiles.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Katie says, and then her grin widens slightly, as she looks over Cherri’s shoulder. Katie whistles, “Oh, don’t look now…”
Cherri whips around, obviously. She turns quickly, and her hair hits her in the face, and as she’s spluttering, and Katie is laughing, she sees her. Apo is walking right towards them, and Cherri thinks she might die because she is just so pretty like wow.
“Katie.” Apo greets Katie by name, because of course she does. Apo is always polite like that. “I’m so glad you made it! And you are…?”
Apo doesn’t remember her name, which is fine. So Cherri opens her mouth, but as usual, runs her mouth a little. “Oh! Um- My name is Cherri. But you can just call me y- MMPH!”
Katie claps her hand over Cherri’s mouth, just before the word yours can tumble out, and Cherri is so, so, very eternally grateful for her roommate, teasing be damned. Apo raises a brow, her signature frown still on her lips. Cherri wants to run her fingers over it.
“Excuse me?” Apo says, and Katie nervously laughs, bringing her hand down from Cherri’s mouth.
“Nothing.” Cherri says, forcing steadiness into her tone. Apo seems satisfied with the answer, and the woman gives Cherri one last look before turning away to look at Katie.
“I’m glad you two accepted my invitation to attend class.” Apo says, and Cherri dreamily thinks in her head how stupid Apo sounds saying all those formal words, and how cute it is that she does it anyways.
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world!” Katie says, and the jab at Cherri isn’t lost on the art student, but Cherri chooses to ignore it for the time being.
“Why don’t you guys start the drill I mentioned?” Apo suggests, and Cherri feels her face go a shade paler, as Katie gives her an evil smile, and gets into position.
Cherri tries desperately to copy Katie’s stance. Feet apart, with one behind the other. She raises her fists. She feels leagues stronger in the position, but one look at Apo confirms she’s not doing it right.
“Ah- Not quite.” Apo murmurs, and takes a step towards Cherri, “Can I touch you?”
Cherri feels her ears grow hot, while everything in her screams YES OH MY GOD YES!!!
“...Yeah.” Cherri manages, and from the look Katie is giving her, it’s clear that her face is just as red as it feels. Apo takes another step forward, and places a careful hand on one side of Cherri’s waist.
Cherri is a very simple woman, it seems. She relaxes into the touch immediately, while the rest of her body seems to be focused on the words hell yeah, chanting them triumphantly, over, and over, and over. Cherri realizes that Apo is, in fact, speaking, and that she should probably listen so she doesn’t appear as a complete fool.
“-Shift your stance just a little, like this?” Apo pulls a little, and Cherri almost loses her balance, but catches herself just in time. Nailed it. “There. You got it.”
Cherri’s smile is crooked, and nervous, but there, and Apo smiles back, only a little. Cherri melts, and part of her just wants to blurt out hey your smile is like, gorgeous, by the way.
“Anyways, I’ll leave you two to drill.” Apo says, stepping away all too soon. Cherri almost looks wistfully after her, but fixes her face before it can show.
Katie waves, and then turns back to Cherri with an astonished look on her face. “Girl.”
“I know…” Cherri groans, dragging a flustered hand down her face desperately. “Don’t say a word.”
“You know I won’t but- Oh my god.” Katie laughs, “She asked if she could touch you and you looked like she proposed.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Cherri asks incredulously, “She’s hot, Katie!”
Katie bursts into giggles, just as Apo calls their attention back towards her. The woman almost seems to be standing up straighter now, and Cherri cranes her neck to see if the flush colouring Apo’s cheeks is just a trick of the light.
It isn’t a trick of the light, much to Cherri’s satisfaction. Apo looks very nice when she’s flushed.
“Okay, now I’ll demonstrate the next step in a moment.” Apo says, stepping aside for a moment to-
Oh my god, Cherri thinks, she’s taking off her shirt.
Obviously, she’s not naked or anything, it leaves apo in a simple white tank top. But unfortunately for Cherri, she then shifts into the fighting stance she demonstrated to Cherri. Cherri watches Apo’s arms flex in preparation, and she grapples for a hand on Katie’s shoulder.
“Katie.” Cherri hisses, feeling her face go hot, “Oh my god…”
And oh my god indeed, as Apo blows out a forceful breath, and Cherri remembers that just literally five minutes ago, her hand was on Cherri’s waist.
Katie laughs, and tries to say something, but Cherri interrupts her.
“We need to leave.” Cherri says, feeling a wave of guilt wash over her. She came to a class Apo taught, only to disrespect her like this. The lowest of the low, really. Katie looks surprised, and opens her mouth to respond, probably to protest, but Cherri tugs her by the arm away from the group of people actually participating.
“You cannot be this gay.” Katie giggles, as Cherri drags her away.
“I feel bad,” Cherri says, her brows furrowing. “She’s working, Katie. She’s working and I came to her work to stare at her.”
As soon as they get in Katie’s car, Cherri groans even louder, slumping in her seat. “She’s gonna hate me. I would hate me.”
“I mean… Not if she liked it.” Katie is a little more serious now, but there’s still a teasing lilt to her voice. Cherri sends a glare her way. Even if she did, it was still such an awful thing to do.
“No!” Cherri bursts, holding her head in her hands. “No, oh my god. Just drive, Katie.”
And Katie does.
“I seriously don’t know why you’re taking this so seriously.” Katie says absentmindedly, twirling a lock of her hair as she sits on Cherri’s bed, where Cherri is sprawled out, scrolling on her phone. “I’m sure she doesn’t mind.”
“I do,” Cherri says, staring at the post on her phone. Apo Kuna didn’t have social media. It made sense, obviously. From Cherri’s minimal interactions with the woman, Apo didn’t seem to care much for social anything. So, it came as no surprise to find out Apo didn’t have Instagram.
But Bek did. So the one post that had Apo in a photo was Cherri’s obsession. She had liked and unliked the post more times than she could count, but staring at the photo now, it feels a little guilt inducing.
“Even if she doesn’t mind, I feel so shitty. I feel like- like one of those creepy old men.” Cherri groans, unliking the post with finality.
“Well, you’re not.” Katie argues, “You’re not having creepy thoughts, right? Like ‘oh I want to eat a lock of her hair’?”
“No…” Cherri says mildly concerned. “I’m not thinking that.”
“Then it can’t be so bad, right?” Katie murmurs, and Cherri can feel her staring at the art student, her eyes practically boring through her skull. No, Cherri just stares at Apo in the background of the post. The architecture student looks surprised, as if she’s never gotten her photo taken before. Her surprised flush accents the faint freckles that are even still, just barely visible through the photo taken through the presumably shitty iPhone.
It can’t be that bad.
But oh, it can, because staring at Apo is kind of making her begin to rationalize her prior actions as well, I can’t really be blamed, can I? And that is a dangerous line of thinking for Cherri to go down. Sure, she had been crushing on Apo for like! Half a year! But she wasn’t going to do anything about it!
Unfortunately, every time Cherri interacted with the architecture student though, the want to, in fact, do something about it was always on her mind. It didn’t help that Katie consistently maintained that they’d be a cute couple or whatever.
Cherri double taps the post again. She likes it again.
“I guess it could be worse.”
Apo likes to focus on simple things. Her entire life, simple things have been the most constant things. Simple things like eating, drinking, reading. Yes, those were all things that Apo could completely control. So she tries to focus on those things, rather than complicated, unpredictable affairs.
Like feelings, like social situations, like anything, really. Apo just likes being in control. So she stays in control by focusing on those more uncomplicated affairs.
Unfortunately, that’s not always possible, as these things are in her everyday life. Actually being a person? Not exactly in her wheelhouse. So, Apo is reading an article in her room, on her laptop, trying to focus on something a little simpler than her life.
Neuroscience.
Her uncomplicated neuroscience study reading gets interrupted, unfortunately, by the loud sound of her door creaking open—she really needs to oil the hinges wow—and Bek enters. The mechanics student strides across the room to sit on Apo’s bed, and Apo turns away from her laptop, spinning in her swivel chair to face Bek.
“So, how was your class today?” Bek asks, in that way that means she's gearing up to say something important, but can’t get it out yet. Apo briefly wonders what it could be before answering.
“It went alright.” True, it had. She had invited Katie to attend, but her and her roommate had left pretty early on into the class. Apo suspected that Katie’s roommate, Cherri, wasn’t very in shape when it came to this sort of thing, so she wrote it off as diminished stamina. (Apo insisted her reasoning for this suspicion wasn’t because Cherri was an Arts major. There were plenty of very buff painters she knew.)
Cherri was an odd woman in general, though. Apo had only properly spoken to the art student around twice, but with how often she caught Cherri staring at her, and vice versa, it felt a lot more tense, like they had more than two conversations ever. Yes, Cherri was good at making uncomplicated things… well… complicated for Apo. Their relationship was strained, for reasons that Apo literally couldn’t comprehend. Cherri was generally nice! She was a good person, as far as Apo knew, and whenever she talked to mutual friends they shared, they would all say that Cherri and her would definitely get along.
So it was weird that they didn’t.
“Alright?” Bek presses, “Did Katie come like you had suggested?”
Apo nods, still unsure of Bek’s intentions. “Cherri attended as well.”
“Oh!” Bek says, and it seems like her shoulders lose a bit of tension, only to be replaced by a jittery nervousness. “How is she?”
“Apparently well, Bek, what are you trying to ask about?” Apo sighs, resigning herself to asking outright.
“Okay- Well- I know you don’t have social media, but Cherri has been- she’s been weird.” Bek says, her shoulder finally falling back into normalcy.
“She is pretty weird.” Apo laughs, trying to ease whatever tension is in the air.
“She’s been liking this one post of mine, but like- she’s been unliking, and liking it again for months now. That kind of weird.” Bek says, fidgeting with her hands. Seeing the usually confident woman so unsure makes Apo a little worried.
“Right. That’s pretty weird.” Apo nods, and Bek looks relieved, like she thought she was crazy.
“Right? And that’s like, only something you do if you’re interested in someone?” Bek says, gaining confidence. “And you know, I really hope she isn’t interested in me, because El and I are going like, super strong and I would never ever break things off with Eloise Obviously. Because she’s like, a goddess.”
Apo resists the temptation to roll her eyes as Bek grows off topic, a goofy smile on her face as she talks about her girlfriend. It was Bek’s favourite thing to talk about, her budding relationship with Eloise. To be fair, Apo would probably be ecstatic if her crush from high school both went to the same college as her, and fell in love with her after three years of hopeless pining.
What a situation to be in, truly.
“So you think Cherri is romantically interested in you?” Apo asks, trying to draw Bek’s focus back to her original point. The mechanic startles, as if she had forgotten about Cherri’s involvement entirely. (In all actuality, Bek probably had among her ramblings about Eloise.)
“I mean, I hope not. But yeah. Maybe.” Bek says, and Apo’s chest aches a little more than necessary about Bek’s opinion. It shouldn’t come as a shock, obviously. Cherri was always awkward around Bek, or at least from what Apo saw. Apo just always hoped… well, that it was her, not Bek.
Of course, Cherri was a pretty person. She was not only conventionally attractive, but Apo thought her character in general was… pretty. The way that she carried herself, the way she spoke. Apo had tried not to think about it, because she knew nothing would come from it, but… reality still stung, a bit. Apo hadn't even realized she was hoping for anything.
Maybe neglecting complicated things wasn’t good for her after all?
Whatever the case, Apo feels her heart ache a little at the realization that Cherri is indeed not interested in her. That’s fine. That’s okay.
Things that beautiful weren’t really meant to happen.