PLAY THE PART | mileven

fourteen

"he was so bad at playing the games, max.  dustin and lucas were laughing their ass off, even i beat him multiple times!"

el was giggling as she took a bite of her chocolate croissant, the memories of the other day were clouding her mind again as she was telling her best friend about it.

the two girls were sitting in the bistro, eating breakfast (well, brunch would be more fitting) together before having to part for their first class of the day.

max suspiciously raised her eyebrows as she took a sip of her cappuccino. "he's not good at video games?"

el chuckled. "i guess not if even i could beat him when i've never played those games before."

he was a disaster. they played some game where they had to kill each other and he never managed to dodge her, she won over and over again.

honestly she enjoyed that afternoon together with them a lot. lucas and dustin were really funny to be around, she couldn't help but snort at all the comments they had left for the whole day.

mike seemed to be annoyed at their teasing but that was simply the cherry on top. his facial expression was simply priceless.

max rested her cheek against her palm, silently observing the way el's lips didn't stop curving into a smile ever since they sat down. "i haven't seen you this happy in months — mike really is a good influence on you, isn't he?"

at the sound of those words, el stilled for a moment. her face started to relax and she began to notice how her cheeks were hurting from smiling for too long.

"i really don't want to bring the past or kai up again but i think enough time has passed that i can finally say this — even before you two broke up, your happiness around him didn't seem genuine anymore." she paused for a moment. "but lately you're beaming and i can't tell you how happy i am to see you truly happy."

hearing that almost made her stop smiling altogether, it almost made her blink in confusion to ponder what she had just heard.

was she just that good of an actor to fool her best friend like that? or was it that mike's presence just started becoming more amusing?

without dwelling on those thoughts any longer, she forced the smile back on her face. she needed to be as believable as possible. "yeah."

"but—" max said, removing her palm from her face. "i'm kind of hurt that you didn't call me over. i thought meeting up as a group was our thing now."

el shook her head, cleaning her fingers with a napkin. "oh, no, it wasn't like that. mike and i had a disney marathon together and it simply got so late that he stayed over. in the morning we spontaneously decided to go back to his dorm together."

"wait, hold up. " max raised her hand with creased brows on her face. "there's too much going on in that one sentence you said — you guys had a disney marathon together?"

"yup, can you believe he never watched a disney movie before? such an uncultured swine, i had to educate him."

max gasped. "i can't believe this. what movies did you watch together?"

el stopped to think for barely a second. "finding nemo, the lion king, ratatouille, snow white and the seven dwarfs and, my favorite, of course, tangled."

"yes!" max cheered, "please tell me he reacted good to tangled — if he didn't, i'll need you to dump his ass."

el snorted and playfully rolled her eyes. "he was too busy wiping my face clean after i sobbed over the movie for the hundredth time."