Bar Red's Redemption (Edited)

14: Goofy Questions and Friendship

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."
― Bob Marley

I know it's been a while but here is the next chapter!! Please don't be scared to give me some feedback!

Chapter 14:
Goofy Questions and Friendship

Bar and his friends were slowly getting accustomed to sitting with such lively and carefree people like Fen, Eli, and Clementine seemed to be.

Bar, Law, and Gus had a hard life—but the little goddess' group? They didn't appear to have such challenges, but if they did, they haven't allowed it to derail their lives.

They were all so easily happy. They smiled and joked and were ambitious for life and eagerly wanted to know what would come next. Besides Fen, the group didn't swear much, they didn't have dark senses of humor, and they weren't so hot-tempered. The three of them weren't used to people like that.

They were used to making ostentatious jokes and brushing off bruises. They lived through pain and didn't care if they were uncomfortable; life was uncomfortable, they knew that first hand. They didn't care if anyone heard their jokes about death, vulgar cusses, or brassy shows of violence. That's just the way they lived.

The way they always have been.

They've grown insensitive to the hardships of life, numb to other's opinions about them. They didn't care what anyone had to say and if, by chance, they overheard some fucker talking shit about them, the answer always resulted in busted knuckles.

But sitting with Clementine, Fen, and Elijah made them... civil, or at least made them want to be civil.

It was easy, joking around at lunch like there wasn't a weight holding down the trio's shoulders.

They liked it.

Law often switched between everyone, as did Eli. Gus either annoyed his friends, started a fight with Law, or flirted with Fen—and Fen? She ignored him and focused on her hot Cheetos or had a thought-invoking conversation with one of her best friends.

Bar and Clementine usually sat off and talked to one another, as he didn't really talk with anyone else, too anxious to talk with his people like normal and too wary of the new ones to try to get close.

The little goddess, however, paid attention to everyone else and talked to them but she was mostly content watching the different waves of conversation and stupidity unfold.

But today was different.

Today―although Gus was in an argument over trees with Law, and Fen was reading while Eli acted as a referee between the fighting teen like any other day―Clementine was literally bouncing in her spot and beaming up at Bar with a tiny blush on her face and she had been giving him this adorable excited look all day.

Bar was confused. He didn't quite know why she was looking at him like that, or if he had done anything to provoke that expression out of her either.

Nothing that he's done deserves the excitement, or would earn it.

He asked her about it in their classes―they shared everything up until the last two classes of the day when Bar went to his Home EC class and the little goddess went to her gym class before then they switched, same teachers and everything―and Clementine refused to answer, which frustrated him and only made him feel really fucking stupid as the expression grew until she was bouncing off the walls when they got to their free 'tutoring' hours.

While both of them really just spent goofing around with the other and occasionally doing what they're supposed to, it was something that relaxed him before he was forced to go back home.