Of Hotshots and High School

Chapter 24

A/N - Hey y'all! I started playing around with cover ideas for my story, but I am by no means an artist. Anyway, I'm wondering I guess if any of you happen to have a love for cover design or any ideas! If you do, go ahead and shoot me a private message!

As always, thank you SO MUCH for all the love and votes and comments! It really helps me keep writing and keep enjoying Rory and Chase's story. We are making this story together--you and me and all of us :)

Love always,

Cinnamon

Rory's POV

Kyle and Lena had the most interesting form of flirting that I'd ever watched. Some people are gesture-flirters, with the leans and the hair flips and the head tilts. Others are music-flirters, some people are touch-flirters, and I've even seen some meme-flirters. None of those had anything on Lena and Kyle's experiment-flirting. Seriously. There should be nothing flirtatious about crushing Pepto-Bismol tablets next to each other, but somehow they'd found a way.

"Hey Leeeeenaaaa," I droned. It took her a minute, but eventually she stopped staring at Kyle and turned to me. "Pretty sure you're supposed to grind them into powder, not diamonds." She looked down at the mortar and pestle in her hands and the clearly pulverized substance inside. 

"Oh." She blushed.

"Next step is to get Ms. White to add the muriatic acid and water mixture." I read. I glanced over at Kyle and Kevin's Pepto-Bismol. "Pretty sure yours is ready, too," I quipped at Kyle, giving Kevin a knowing look. He rolled his eyes in a way that could only mean "tell me about it." Pretty sure he wasn't as clueless about Kyle and Lena as they seemed to be about each other.

"How much bismuth do you think we'll be able to extract?" Kyle asked, excited. Lena hurried to chime in, reciting in that tinny voice she always used when she was pulling something from her memory.

"Each pill of Pepto-Bismol contains 131 milligrams of bismuth." she blushed a little as she realized what she was doing before continuing on in her normal voice. "So, multiply 131 by the number of pills in the bottle, and depending how well we do with our extraction we should have several grams. I suppose that once we melt all the bismuth remains together that it might make about a dime-sized piece? That's my best guess anyhow." She looked up at Kyle and smiled a bit, and Kyle gawked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Wow Lena! Then do you think that we could test some of the chemical properties by..." I stopped listening as Kyle went on and instead turned to Kevin.

"So, are you gonna go grab Ms. White or am I?" 

"I'm home!" I called, as I dropped my soccer duffle on the ground. I kicked off my shoes and trudged through the mud room into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge. When I was 11 mom and I had cut a deal: as long as there was always bread, peanut butter, and jelly in the house, mom was free to experiment with her cooking as much as she liked. No PB&J? Well then, dinner was either coming from the freezer and cooked by me, or we'd be ordering in. 

I pulled a plate from the cupboards and started slathering my bread. I was two bites into my sandwich by the time mom walked into the room. Her hair was up in a towel turban and her makeup was half-washed from her face. This was a pretty common way for me to see her, and it was probably my favorite way. Nobody else got to see Maggie Landon like this. To the world she was always her put together, perfectly smoothed self, but to me she was a wet-haired, semi-smudged mom who gave the best hugs. It was nice.