𝐑𝐄𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒 [a rini au]

one hundred and ten

"wait, did you say this one was rotary or reciprocating?" ashlyn muttered as she looked up from her physics worksheet. she was sat between ej and kourtney at the counter seating in the desert diner, itching for her waitress friend to clarify the answer she just gave her.

nina, who was scribbling acronyms for a pickup order she just got off the phone with, took her pen and underlined the first answer on ashlyn's paper before getting back to her notepad. "why did that feel so passive aggressive," ashlyn absentmindedly asked, writing the word rotary on the answer line.

"maybe because you're bothering her while she's working," ej, on the girl's left, sarcastically suggested, taking a sip of his coffee.

ashlyn kicked his shin, to which he shrieked pathetically. "well, your presence is bothering me."

"okay," nina huffed in satisfaction, ripping the tab off of her notepad, reaching behind her, and sticking it on the window between the dining room and the kitchen. she peeked over at the entrance, content with the lack of customers dining in for the night. "now you guys can bother me."

"this coffee is unreal, bean," ej snuck another sip, eyebrows arching over the front of his glass. "seriously, can i tip you extra for this?"

"it is not hard to make at all, but i won't object," she jokingly winked, crouching to fold her arms on the countertop. the brunette glanced over at kourtney, who seemed very invested in whatever her phone had to hold. "you good, kourt?" she questioned, eyes widening a bit.

kourtney quickly looked up, focus flicking between her screen and her friend. "yeah, totally," she appeared to be lying. ashlyn paused her work, leaning over to see what had kourtney so befuddled. soon her own brow was furrowed, causing nina to be more intrigued. "what is it?"

ashlyn dismissively waved a hand in nina's direction. "nah, it's nothing."

after a few seconds to think, nina remembered the last time her friends withheld something from her. she recalled who it was about, and she sighed when she realized that they were pulling the same thing. "if it's about ricky you can tell me, you know," she insisted, the eyes of her three friends popping. "i'm fine. honest."

kourtney glimpsed between ashlyn and ej before flashing her phone screen in nina's direction. "more paparazzi of jess and ricky."

"again?" nina inquired, a solid amount of genuine curiosity enough to make her grab the phone. "this is like the third time in the past week."

as the other three commented on the topic at hand, nina scrolled through the replies to popsugar's tweet. every other reply was a negative one, varying from being about ricky to being about jess; there were even a few that brought up her name. although she only caught her name a couple of times, there was a sense of relief that ran through her veins. wow, this would suck, she thought to herself as she pondered the idea of publicly dating a celebrity, nevermind ricky bowen. i dodged a bullet.

"earth to nina?"

the waitress was snapped out of her daze by ej, who clearly had just posed a question for her that she missed. "i was asking how you feel."

nina handed kourtney her phone back. "fine," she stated. "that makes me anxious, though."

"i knew i shouldn't have showed you," kourtney disappointingly shook her head.

"no, it's not what you think," nina assured, assuming her friend interpreted her response as a means of longing for ricky. "like, seeing them constantly photographed. people always commenting on everything they do. it stresses me out just thinking about that being me, if that makes sense."

ej nodded in agreement. "totally. that would definitely suck."

nina flashed a close-lipped smile. "i don't know. it seems like the more i see them together, the more it solidifies for me that ricky was right. luckily for me, when we were friends, it was something relatively new so we didn't get a lot of attention. this, though, with jess. that would be too much for me."

"i agree," ashlyn twirled her pen in between her fingers. "wait until his new song comes out, too. they're going to be all over her."

"yeah true," nina concurred, thinking of ricky's announcement of his song release that she saw on twitter that afternoon. "would hate to be her then."

"anyway," ej interrupted, clinking his coffee glass on the counter gently. "can i get another one of these?"

nina snagged the glass from him with an eye roll. "coffee number three coming right up, mr. caswell."