Pieces of Nine

7. Lunchtime Laughter

Thursday afternoon at lunch I was sitting amongst the boys, when the subject of the dates was brought up. I had been holding a side conversation with Kota and wasn’t really paying much attention to the rest of the gang when I heard several of them chuckling about heaven knows what.

“Well, shit. You can’t do that! It’s not fair.” Luke’s shouting refused to be ignored. When I glanced over, he looked beyond frustrated. All the others had varying looks of amusement gracing their gorgeous faces.

“You’re just mad that you didn’t think of it first!” Nathan guffawed next to Luke, who looked anything but amused. Gabriel gave Luke a half-hearted chop to the head. “Shut it, Lucian! You’ll have your turn.” Luke glared at Gabe for using his full name. I smiled at their playful interaction. It was never a dull moment with these boys.

 Kota, noticing my distraction, grunted in annoyance at our interruption. “What are you guys talking about?”

They all turned to look at me, and then focused on Kota. Silas was the one to clue us in and as he spoke he sent me a flirty wink. “Why, the only thing any one of us twitter pated fools can talk about, of course.” Several of the guys outright laughed at his declaration. By the look on his face Kota, clearly wasn’t entertained. “Which is….?” He flipped his hand around in a circular motion, indicating Silas to continue.

Nathan gave Kota a look of incredulity and spoke to him like he was maybe a little slow, dragging out the words a little more than necessary. “Dating Sang.” The ‘duh’ went unspoken. Immediately, my face flushed. They talked about dating me? With each other? It made me wonder. What other sort of things did they discuss amongst their tightly knit group?

As the snickering died down, Kota pressed for more information. “What exactly about dating Sang? What has Luke all heated?” Luke grumbled, muttering under his breath. I think I heard something about ‘rules’. But I didn’t have time to ponder further on those thoughts.

“Luke’s just mad because he hasn’t taken the time to think things through. Nothing but his own lack of creativity and forethought really.” Victor sent Luke one of those Academy looks, trying to indicate some hidden meaning.

Luke scoffed at his words. “ ‘Lack of creativity and forethought’, nothing! Our date is going to be amazing, you can be sure of that. You guys got nothing on me!” Now, Luke was grinning ear to ear. With that, North reached over and cuffed him on the back of the head, wiping Luke’s smug confidence from his face. “Hey! Watch it, Bro.” Luke scowled while rubbing the tender spot.

“Then shut up, Luke. If we’ve ‘got nothing on you’, then why in the hell are you freaking out like a fucking pansy. Suck it up and be a man about it.” North shook his head in disappointment at his brother.

Nathan, who was still chuckling, felt the need to clarify some things for Kota and me. “Don’t worry. You didn’t miss out on much, Kota. Luke’s just belly-aching because what I have in mind is going to take more time than we have tonight, so instead of taking Peanut out tonight,” Nathan looked at me and gave me a big smile, “I’m going to push our date to tomorrow afternoon and night.” School was out tomorrow due to teacher in-service meetings. While not so good for the staff of Ashley Waters, the students were all ecstatic- including me! This meant a whole extra day of spending time with my boys, so long as the Academy didn’t call them in. My fingers had been crossed all week. I hated it when they were away, especially on Academy assignments.

“Luke’s mad because this means his date will now take even longer to get here.” Nathan snickered and rolled his eyes. I had to admit I felt a little bit bad for Luke now, knowing that he was just as excited as I was for our date. “Sorry, Man.” He reached out to bump knuckles with Luke, in a ‘no-hard-feelings’ gesture. Grudgingly, Luke struck Nathan’s fist with his own, grumbling in mock irritation the whole time.

“Sorry, Luke.” His eyes softened when he looked over at me. He opened his mouth to respond, but the ringing of the bell interrupted whatever he was going to say.  Groaning in protest, we cleared up our trash and gathered our belongings. As Silas grabbed my hand, I waved bye to the rest of my boys. “Come on Aggele. Let’s get today over with.”