A date, what is it? A chance to see what another person is like? A chance to see whether you both are compatible? Wrong. It's a chance to get another person to fall madly in love with you in about an hour or so. Impossible you say? My eyes reflected against Abbie's beautiful brown eyes and I would have to say that it wasn’t so impossible.

I took her to a park because that would be where we could be alone, where we could talk. Here we were against the moonlight, her body seconds from mine as we walked down the dark paved road.

I know. A park at night? It was the best place to go when you were as famous as Abby. People tended to avoid looking at other people when they were walking at night.

She and I met on the edge of the park. A beautiful night with the woman I loved couldn’t be spoiled by anything, so I didn’t plan to do anything. Abby seemed happier out of her room already.

“Was it a good idea to get out?”

She breathed in the air. “Yea, this was a good idea. It's sad that we had to do this so late at night, but nobody can see me this late.” Her dark hair went down to her shoulders and shone against the moonlight while her clothes hung loosely around her body, tantalizing, suggesting but not showing anything. She wore little makeup. If I passed her by under the moonlight I wouldn’t be able to tell that it was Abby.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m doing horribly. That person…those people they all hate me. Isn’t it funny? To have someone hate you so much that they send you letters and throw bricks at your window.”

To have to go through something so bad, something so horrible. For what? Sometimes life was unfair. “None of them know what they’re doing. All of them just see someone like you, someone they can punch in their boring lives and they do it for fun. None of them even know you well enough.”

“Know me? Yea nobody really knows me.”

“Exactly, how could anybody hate what they don’t know? They don’t know YOU they know the idol you.” Except for me. I know you, Abby.

She stopped in front of a large lake that occupied most of the park. Her eyes were stuck on the moonlight shining off the lake. “Isn’t it weird? Idol. Celebrity. I could have been anything I wanted and now I’m stuck here. With so many people who hate me. What's the point?”

“People have different reasons. I have…mine is you.”

She chuckled and looked at me. “Really?” she looked back at the lake. “What about me? Why me? What gave you the right to fall so hard for me?”

“I don’t know.” I did know. But telling her that I had been obsessed with her since I had known she existed would never fly. “When we went out to the river what you said resonated. You were saying something profound.”

“Hmm…did I make you fall for me?” she turned her head to me and smiled. My heart skipped a beat.

“Y-yes.” I felt the blood flowing to my head. Maybe the dark hid how red my face must have been.

“I was an idol after all. I’m here to make people happy. Idol. Idol. Isn’t that a funny word? What does an idol do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t ever think about idols.”

“They make people happy, they trick them into falling in love. They are useless little things that survive on the love and hatred of other people. Like a…cockroach that eats the crumbs leftover by real people. They hope that one day the real people will leave enough crumbs so that they are happy and fed. Some even get so big that they start thinking of themselves as people. Big cockroach people. Isn’t that weird?” she stared back into the deep dark lake. “That they call a big cockroach an idol.”

I was having a hard time understanding the implications of everything she said but was she calling herself a cockroach? I couldn’t let her think that. She was a human! The best human that has ever lived. “You can’t call yourself that! You’re valuable!”

She looked back at me and chuckled. “Sorry. I have a weird sense of humor.”

She walked away from the lake and back to the path. I ran up to catch up with her. It was…a strange sense of humor but not something that I was against. “I think it's great that you have a sense of humor. Most people wouldn’t even say that, they’d be too scared.”

After some time walking she took a deep breath of air. The moonlight took away the darkness and now I could see her face clearly. Every time I got the courage to take a glance I would take a look. Happiness filled my head as I stole glances at her walking beside me. It made everything about my life okay. Every yelling, every annoying interaction, every moment of boredom, and a single sight of her so close made me realize that it was all worth it.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Thank you, again, Jake. I feel a little better.” I could see a smile on her face as she looked forward. Her black hair swayed against the gentle breeze. “This was a great-

“Hey!” Someone yelled ahead of us. There were two outlines coming to us. “Is that Jake and Abby???” Emily's voice rang out. Did she come here to mess up my date?! I clenched my fist, ready to attack her, but then I saw who was next to her. Was that Daniel?

“Emily?” Abby asked

“Yea, it's me! What are you doing here?!”

“I decided to take a walk late at night, Jake said he would come with me because of all the stuff that was happening.”

“Ah…yea…I can’t…I can’t believe that Clare disappeared like that.” She shot me a glance. “The group is doing worse ever since she left, but I’m sure she’ll come back.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no. It's not like you- it's not like she disappeared because of you.” Emily looked down to the ground. “It might have been my fault.”

Daniel put his arms around her to comfort her. “It wasn’t your fault Emily. Let's just forget it while we’re taking this walk, I’m sure she’ll come back.”

I glared at Emily “None of it is your fault, Emily. So…what exactly are you doing here? I mean it's kind of strange to be walking this late at the park. I know it was a good idea to take Abby here because it got her out of the house, but what about you?”

“Oh, I felt like coming here?” she put on a whimsical face. “I don’t know. Something told me this would be a good place to forget what was happening.”

“Really?” I should have let Clare bully her for the rest of her life.

“…would you mind if we joined you?” She glanced over at Daniel. “You wouldn’t mind right?”

“Y-yea. It's fine. The more people the better.” Daniel looked like he was saying it to please her but he wanted to be alone with her. This was obviously Emilie's bright idea.

“How about you Abby? Would you mind?” She glanced over at Abby with a smile.

I interrupted. “We would mind, we were about to get out of here. Why don’t you guys enjoy your time together.”

“Well I wasn’t asking you, Jake, I was asking Abby.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Abby replied. “The more people the better.”

I glared at Emily. She avoided my eyes.

The two of us become the four of us, and I never wanted to so badly shove my fist into someone's face. We walked and walked and I considered the finer points of murder. I could tell from the moment that Emily started talking that all she wanted to do was ruin this moment for me, maybe as revenge for avoiding her, maybe because she hated to see me happy.

She talked about how her day and Abby's day and “I’m glad that Jake finally got a chance to be alone with you, you know that's all he talks about?”

“Really?” she gave me a strange look, but I just looked away. If I denied it, it would be even worse.

“Yea, all he talks about is Abby this, Abby that.” With a smile Emily looked at me, her stupid face making me angrier. “It's really kinda disturbing.”

I interrupted her again. “And what about you and Daniel? Are you guys dating or something?”

Daniel looked at me. “We don’t really like labels, but we are definitely exclusive.”

“That's cool,” I smirked at Emily. “What happened to Clare again?”

“H-huh?”

“Didn’t you say something about her and Daniel getting along?” I looked at daniel. “Didn’t you like Clare?”

“I d-don’t know, not really. I mean she was cool, but I was never interested in her that way, and she wasn’t in me either.”

“That's cool,” I replied.

For a while, we walked in silence. I think I got my point across to Emily.

The conversation livened up before we reached the end of the road, but I could see Daniel looking away from the group, bored, maybe annoyed that whatever he expected from this didn’t happen. “Hey, I think it's a little late. Why don’t we call it a day?” He asked Emily.

“I’m fine, I can still keep going, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Daniel didn’t look shocked. I suspected that he was never shocked by anything, but he did pause. “Okay, I’ll see you later then. Bye.” Emily gave him a kiss on the cheek, and goodbye, then waived at him as he left.

Now it was just me, Abby, and Emily. My head felt like it was going to explode. But I couldn’t say anything. I would be risking everything just to get a moment of freedom from Emily.

I was surprised when Abby spoke up. Her tone was sharp. “Are you going to stay here while your boyfriend leaves?” Abby sounded exasperated. “You take this guy, I’m assuming someone who is into you, out to a walk and all you do is talk about Jake. That was a very disrespectful thing to do, and I’m assuming you did that because you thought, what? That he would take it?”

“H-huh?” Emily replied with a dumbfounded look

“You are better than that, stop treating people like playthings. Sooner or later you’ll find out that they don’t stay around just because you are beautiful and famous. Why don’t you go back and think about what you did? Come on jake, let's go.”

I looked back and mocked Emily. I couldn’t believe that Abby was so into me that she would tell off Emily for ruining our date. This must be a dream. I pinched myself. No, it wasn’t a dream.

We got back to our cars and I was ready to ask her to marry me one more time when she started apologizing.

“Sorry.” She said looking away from me. “I-I went- I got a little bit angry at Emily. I should go apologize.” She put one hand on her face. “I can’t believe I told her off.”

“No, no, I think Emily got it coming to her. I mean she came all the way here and interrupted her date with Daniel to…I don’t know, talk with you I guess?”

“Yea, but I mean it wasn’t something bad. Everybody does that at her age, every single one of us does it, I used to be the same with my **-******** he and I u-”

“Hm? Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Oh, I said I used to be the same with my ex-boyfriend he and-”

“Ex-boyfriend?” I nervously chuckled. “Y-you dated someone? I mean didn’t you say that you weren’t able to date anyone while in your group?”

“We started dating sometime before the group broke up, so it was-“

She had an ex-boyfriend? Ex-boyfriend. The word rang in my head like a never-ending bell. I would know if she had an ex-boyfriend, I would know. But she says she had an ex and yet I didn’t know.

She asked something. I nodded as I stared in between her eyes.

She had an ex-boyfriend. Did that change anything? That changed everything, or maybe it changed nothing, or maybe this changed everything and nothing at the same time? What did she mean that she had an ex-boyfriend? Who? When? Why? Where? What the fuck. She had an ex-boyfriend.