NO Love Club (Boy × Boy) ✔

50) WE'RE DATING. COLE AND I.

X Bélizaire's POV 

"I still don't understand how the zombies can bite through skin with their rotten teeth." Wilder insisted, pushing his half-eaten lunch aside.

He and Brandon, the lastnamer whose last name I didn't know, were dictating the conversation with a debate about some new zombie series. I hadn't seen it, or played the game it was based on, so I let my thoughts wander.

"Well, obviously, it has to do with the fungus." I still heard Brandon saying matter-of-factly. "It doesn't just change the brain chemistry, but also.."

I had a friend group in my old school. Some of them I had known since primary school, and even the newest members from the beginning of secondary. We had our differences and we kept our conversations from deep, achy stuff, but we hung out and saw each other daily. We promised to keep in touch after the move, but none of them had. A years-long friendship, and it was all washed down the drain. It made me rethink the entire concept of friendship and how I had never really known those friends of mine. 

I didn't want to move in the first place, especially not in my last year of secondary school, but I knew mom's new job offer was too good to pass up. After the first weeks or so of sulking, I decided I could take everything out of this new opportunity as well. I could try to make friends who actually texted me after the school year was over, and not just said they would. 

And so, at the beginning of the school year, I desperately clung to the first two people who were nice to me. It didn't matter that Noah barely talked, as he was smiling and welcoming me to their company in every other way. Wilder was, and is, easy to be around with. There's never a quiet moment with him, in good and bad, and he knows how to make people to laugh.

"You do know it's fantasy, right?" Declan joined the conversation, studying his nails with a bored expression on his face. "They're literally zombies, and yet, their teeth are the thing that doesn't seem realistic to you?"

"Well, I —" Wilder and Brandon started talking over each other, neither of them willing to accept what Declan had said. Next to me, Cole sighed heavily.

The mixed bag I was spending my lunch time with was far from what I had expected my new friend group to be like. First of all, don't let me get started about Declan. He had changed a lot in the past weeks after the whole ordeal with Wilder was over, but he was still very much Declan. Noisy, at times annoying and always ready to give unsolicited advice. 

Wilder explained to me why he had finally started to believe that maybe his brother wasn't as straight and mistreated as Wilder had thought he was. Wilder had wondered where Theo disappeared during all those weekends, because it hadn't been at his girlfriend's place. Theo had always claimed he was at Abby's, except one day Abby had come to find Wilder to ask him if he knew where Theo disappeared to every weekend.

Wilder had shrugged it off at first, thinking that Theo was seeing some other girl or just needed time away from their parents and the limited opportunities he had in this town. But then, after Declan's explanation, it had all clicked into place. 

"..I think it's cool that the fungus started spreading because of climate change and.." The conversation went on, making zero sense to me.

I hadn't even dared to dream that Wilder and Declan would start getting along so well. They were practically inseparable at this point, their new friendship threatening to drop Cole and Noah to second place in the best friend ranking.

"Hi, Cole." A chorus of voices brought me back from my thoughts, only to find Maddie and her three friends swooning at Cole. Gail, Maddie's best friend, was patting her eyelids in a way that was supposed to be flirty. It was anything but. The red-haired twins, whose names I still couldn't remember, were hiding behind Maddie, shy in the face of a group of older students.