Never Good Enough (Part Three)

Friday was a short day, or at least it felt that way. Classes were the conventional Friday slog of most of my teachers trying to get us through to the weekend. More than usual actually, as we didn't even have any evening practice. Miss Pryde had to go with the X-Men to investigate something, so training was canceled.

I felt relieved all day. That meant there was less of a chance that I would show up to my planned outing later that day without being all beaten up. And speaking of my planned outing, I kind of had to let my team know where I was going to be.

"You're doing 'what'?" Eddie seemed out of sorts at the news, seemingly unable to accept it, "Bel, you've got a date? How? When? Where was I for this?" This seemed to be important to him for some reason. At least enough to raise a fuss over, which in all reality didn't take much. My boy was the bombastic sort.

I guided him back down into his lunchroom seat with one hand to get him out of my face. He was far too close, "Not working out, like you always are. Hit the gym and maybe you'll be around for more of my better moments," I did tend to make more of an ass of myself around others than when I was alone.

"Pixie asked him out, apparently," Hisako said, gesturing my way with her fork as she finished chewing her bite of food, "She was asking about what you like earlier today. I told her that I didn't know. I said you hate most things."

Wow. Way to make me look less than great. Probably for the laughs. Truth be told, I probably would have done something similar, "Thanks. Really. I'll remember that when some guy comes asking around about you," I told her.

Hisako grinned and leered at me from across the table, "What's wrong? Afraid you'll scare her off?"

She was picking on me, but was closer to the mark than she figured she was, "Yes," I said bluntly.

My stark admission caught her off-guard. Her and everyone else at the table, "Wait, really? Why? You're not that much of an asshole," It was as close to a compliment as I could normally expect from Hisako.

As confusing as it was for them, it was hard for me to put it into words. School, fighting, and missions were easy. There was something straightforward that you needed to do, and you did it. That was it. Give me an objective and an obvious goal and I was all over it. Anything that took more subtlety, and I'd overthink it and have more trouble. All the variables of dealing with people was way more complicated for me, and that was without ever getting into the whole dating thing.

Eventually, I just decided to go with that as an explanation. It was a sound enough reason by itself, "It's hard to say. I don't know how to explain it. I just feel like I'd be a crappy boyfriend," I said, stopping when I saw the look on Hisako's face. It was one shared by Eddie as well, "Hey, what's with those faces? I'm being serious."

Eddie and Hisako looked at each other before she gestured to him to speak up for the both of them, "No, I know. It's just you actually admitted that you might be bad at something. You never do that," He said.

Did I really come off as arrogant enough to imply that I didn't make mistakes? I didn't mean to. That was damnably inaccurate if that were the case, "I know I'm bad at stuff. I just never talk about the things I'm bad at. Accentuate the positives, hide the negatives."

Eddie waved his hands in a calming gesture, "Dude, it's fine. Just... don't be you."

I felt my eyebrow raise, wondering what exactly that meant, "Don't be me?" As opposed to being someone else?

Eddie nodded, fully willing to double down on what he'd just said to me, "Not all at first. Too much asshole-Bel right off the bat is overwhelming. Tell him, Hisako."

Hisako scoffed, "What do you mean 'right off the bat'? I still want to kill him sometimes."

Ruth giggled and gave me a pat on the arm, "Yes, Bellamy is an acquired taste," Even she got into picking on me too. It was the thing to do. I got no respect from my team whatsoever, I tell you.

Eddie flicked a napkin Ruth's way in response, "Right. A taste it took you all of ten seconds to acquire. He's always nice to you," He pointed out.

I shot the napkin out of the air with a finger laser. It burned to nothing before it could touch back down onto anything. I hoped it looked as cool to other people as it did to me, "I'm always nice to her because she's the only one of you who actually respects me," I said, leaning back in my chair to get an unobstructed view of Ruth, "You respect me, right?" She gave me a big smile and a nod, "Damn straight."

Eddie slapped his hand down on the table hard. He almost scared me into falling onto the floor, "You see? That right there. That's almost fine. Almost where you need it to be. Tone it down a bit, and you should be okay," He said enthusiastically.

Hisako nodded and followed up, "Girls eat it up when you're a little earnest. If you walk around with an ego the size of a zeppelin, it's not really a turn-on when they're around you longer than five minutes," She actually had real advice to give, and she seemed to mean completely well for once, "There's a time and a place for everything. Just think before you say something and you'll be fine."

Wow. That was really nice. It was probably ranked top five in the list of nice things she had ever said to me up to that point. Granted, off the top of my head, it's really hard to think of the other four. It meant a lot though. The squad had my back, and if that was the case, how could I ever consider failing? Not literally in this case, because none of them were going. But they had my back in spirit, and that was almost as good.

...Not really. Moral support wasn't good enough for this. I was not about to face down the whole Paragons squad for what amounted to a supervised date all by my lonesome. It would have to do though. It wasn't like I could just bring someone else on the Paladins at the last moment.

I would have asked Eddie, but he had detention for calling Miss Pryde a retard sometime earlier that day. I have no idea what the context was. I didn't want to know when I found out about it.

Besides, even if I could convince one of them to go with me, that would have been a wuss thing to do. And I was no wuss.