Spirit Grows When Love Goes Away

2

The pack met up with them at the big pizza restaurant in town, Cheesus Crust that night to celebrate the news. Scott came straight from work at the clinic and the others did their best to arrive reasonably on time.

Stiles secured their corner booth and Lydia secured the waiter’s attention although they were practically run off their feet and the two waitressing staff had been determinedly ignoring their table for five minutes. The guy practically fell over himself handing out menus, and stood at Lydia’s end of the booth looking like at any second he was going to try and slip his number next to her phone on the table.

It was too bad for him that she was already engaged to the woman on her left. But that was on the waiter for not looking too closely at her fingers for the engagement ring or the way one of her hands was resting on Allison’s thigh under the table.

They ordered quickly, because the pack visited often enough to know their favourites, and the waiter looked at little surprised and then nervous at the sheer amount of pizza they’d asked for.

“Don’t worry,” Isaac insisted, with a wink. “We know what we’re doing.”

The waiter looked confused for a second but nodded and took off to place their order with the kitchen. Derek wondered if the waiter realised that if he’d only directed his romantic attention a little to the right, in Isaac’s path, he probably would have been going home with him.

Isaac had a bit of a crush on that guy, a fact that most of the pack seemed to have picked up on and made fun of him for at nearly every opportunity. As they proved a second later when Erica and Cora dissolved into kissy faces at Isaac behind the retreating waiter’s back.

Isaac flicked table napkins at them in revenge, but the flush to his face was enough to show they’d gotten to him.

The pack ordered drinks for the table and dissolved into conversation to pass the waiting time. Usually it took fifteen minutes to make their food, but with the rush of customers Derek was expecting it to take double that amount.

Stiles chatted away to Cora on his right but his thigh was pressed up along Derek’s under the table like he wanted him to know he was still there. Derek turned to Boyd and started asking him about the new job he’d just started. It was outside Beacon Hills so he had to travel an hour to get there and back again every day, so Derek knew the commute was getting to him.

Boyd was explaining about his role in the chem lab at UC Berkeley when the waiter returned ten minutes later with their wine, setting down the extra glasses carefully onto the table, with one last hopeful look at Lydia before he disappeared back to the kitchen oblivious to the man at the table across as he attempted to flag him down but went on unnoticed.

Isaac poured out the two bottles of wine and he’d barely set the empty bottles onto the red table cloth before Jackson was abruptly lifting his glass to toast Stiles’ success with an expression of unconcealed insolence. He’d been a little shit as soon as they’d sat down since he didn’t like having to wait so long for his meal, Jackson was accustomed to faster service.

“Congratulations, Stilinski,” he said coolly. “We’re happy to inflict you on the undergraduates of Stanford. Let’s hope you make some friends for once and never come back.”

More than half the table was already glaring at him, though Jackson seemed uninterested in his own audience, nor their reaction to his comment as he downed his own glass.

“Cheers to Jackson walking home,” Scott suggested instead, and the table cheered and downed their classes, ignoring Jackson’s heated protests when he tried to bring up that damn Porsche again.