Quiet Not Innocent | ✔︎

Chapter 20:

A S P E N  ♡  W I L S O N
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Walking through the cafeteria to get to the lunch line, I see April sitting with her fuckface of a boyfriend, eating each other's faces instead of their food.

It was nice to see she was doing okay after everything that had been happening recently.

Pilling a bunch of French fries and two peanut butter sandwiches on a tray and grabbing an extra one for Saint, I grab two lemonades and walk to the back of the cafeteria where he is sitting.

We sat together for lunch everyday after that day I crashed his table. I don't know when or how it happened but it was kind of a thing now. He was my only friend at this school anyway so it's nice.

"Hey," I greet before plopping down in my seat, diverting Saint's eyes away from the pages of his book. "Whatcha reading today?"

Saint really has a thing for books. Almost all of our lunch time conversations have been about the books he was reading and I didn't mind a bit. It was actually nice to hear the things he had to say about his books. It was clear how much he loved them.

Plus it was the only time he would talk for such a long time. He had a passion for his books, truly, and the way his eyes would light up or he'd make these faces when he talked about something he didn't like was something I found wholesome.

"Amy and Jamal," he tells me their names first and I nod, listening while pushing his sandwich to him. "They're in love, obviously, but Jamal's mom sucks. She won't let them be together. And Amy doesn't really know how to stand up for herself, especially against adults, so she lets his mom walk all over her. I'm only like three hundred pages in, but the main thing around this book is Amy finding her own voice and Jamal having to choose between love or family."

"Why won't she just let them be together?" I frown, taking a bite of my own sandwich.

"For one, Amy is white and Jamal isn't. He's Pakistani and from a very strict family that holds culture and old tradition to heart, so they want him marrying a girl within their culture. And second, Amy's father and Jamal's father are enemies. They've hated each other ever since high school."

I roll my eyes. "The hell? They're grown men, they need to take their issues and separate it from interfering with the happiness of their children."

"Right?" Saint shakes his head. "All the adults in this book get on my nerves. They're all stupid."

I hum in agreement, focusing on eating my fries. Saint puts a crappy folded paper inside his book as a bookmark before he sets it aside which makes me stare because it was just so ugly.

He catches me looking and answers an unasked question, "I lose bookmarks all the time. So often times I use random things instead. Also, Wilson, why do you keep doing that?"

I freeze, my hand that was putting fries on his tray using a fork pausing. "What do you mean?"

"That." He glances at my hand. "Whenever we sit together, you get extra food for me."

I shrug, finishing putting his fries on his tray. I counted it exactly so we'd have the same amount.

"I just don't like to eat when the people I'm with aren't eating. We either eat together or starve together. And I ain't starving so I have to make sure you're going to be eating."