Jade Awakening

Catching Up Cat

I walked with a brisk pace to the Grub Truck so that, on the off chance Ryder would intercept my path, he wouldn't have time to stop me to talk to me. I made it through the hallways and through the exterior doors perfectly fine, but was still afraid he might be lurking somewhere nearby -- it felt much like my childhood fear of sharks swimming where they couldn't be seen in public pools. My nerves didn't subside much when I finally reached Festus at the truck window.

I ordered myself a veggie burger, paid Festus, and turned to go to the table Cat and I always sit at. I barely moved two steps forward before I found a male standing in my way, causing shock to set in.

"Hey Jade. I missed you yesterday -- where did you go?"

I hated confrontation. I was sure he could see that I was flustered and I tried lying on my feet.

"Um, I just had to get home. I had some chores to do." Awful excuse.

"Hmm, okay." He took a step forward, making me take a step backwards, forcing my back against the side of the Grub Truck.

Leaning his head into my ear, he whispered "Too bad though, I could have gone for another round yesterday."

He stroked one of my arms with his hand and I froze, feeling nauseated. I simply did not respond.

"Anyway," he said, thankfully, pulling away, "how did the script turn out? I know you're a way better writer than me, so I'm sure it's great."

"Uh yeah, I think it turned out pretty good." No thanks to you. We all turned in our scripts before class was over and I definitely was not about to tell him that Cat would be receiving credit for it rather than him. Speaking of Cat, I could see that she was now at our table and I saw my way out of this conversation.

"I'm going to go sit with Cat now, if you'll excuse me."

I didn't wait for him to excuse me though -- I wanted distance as quick as I could get it. I felt a little safer sitting at the table across from Cat and seeing that Ryder did not follow. She clearly saw some of our interaction because the first thing that came out of her mouth was:

"Ooooh!"

"Oh my gosh, stop doing that, Cat!" That came out a bit more bitter than I had intended, but I was still flustered. She appeared to be a little wounded, but bounced back quickly.

"Sorry. But tell me what happened already! The suspense is killing me."

"Okay, but just promise that you keep this between us. It wasn't a great weekend."

She nodded and took a sip from her drink.

"During lunch on Friday, after Ryder and I had become partners for the script, he sat down with me here. And he sat really close, and I mean really close. And he was being kinda flirty with me the whole time, and then he invited me over to his house to work on the assignment together. We could have worked on it anywhere, you know? But he wanted me to come over to his house while his parents were in Santa Barbara."

"Oo-"

"Stop that!"

"Right, sorry," she corrected herself. "It just sounds like he liiikes you," she giggled.

"That's what I thought, too, so I got excited to go over on Saturday. And when I got to his house, he was just in his pajamas, which he honestly looked great in. But we barely got any of the script started though because I stupidly made a suggestive comment about his... thing."

Cat's eyes widened, wanting to know more stat.

"What --what did you say?"

"Oh, Mr. Gradstein said that we needed to have some element of food in our script, so I was throwing out a couple suggestions and one of them was about a vegan eating a weiner for the first time. I think I made the connection between the weiner and his 'thing' a bit obvious."