Try Me

Chapter sixteen

"Oh, so your girlfriend doesn't want you to have friends who are girls?" Aria furrowed her eyebrows, trying to understand why Akia had blocked her.

"I guess so, but I don't think she means any harm from it."

"Well, does she have guy friends?"

Akia thought for a second before nodding his head. Tyra does have guy friends—a lot of them, actually, and Akia knows because he hangs out with them from time to time; he just never actually befriended them. But don't get it wrong. Tyra doesn't hang out around them often.

"I don't see how that's fair—I didn't even know you had a girlfriend!" Aria realized this and lightly punched Akia on the arm. She didn't have any romantic feelings for him. Before they started talking, she did find him attractive and she still does, but it never crossed her mind to take their relationship any further.

"Her name is Tyra, she's pretty and nice."

"How ironic! I knew a Tyra, but she was a bitch, anyways, what school does she go to?"

"She's in college—"

"You like older girls?!" Aria practically yelled, looking up from her lunch tray.

Akia's face started to heat up from the assumption. "She's only a year older." He mumbled, placing his hand under his chin. And then his mind started to wander to Khalan. Khalan is older than him by a couple years, and they did things together—is that bad?

But no, Akia didn't think so because regardless, he's still of age.

"Tuh, I prefer the male species to be a year older than me and for girls, I like my age." She paused, "But I've never been in a relationship before, so I guess I won't actually know until then."

"You've never been in a relationship? Wait—girls?" Akia asked, shocked. Aria laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

She had no reason to lie to fit in with anyone. She's never been in a relationship, and she didn't plan to be in one anytime soon. She's focused on school, and she's planning to keep it that way for as long as she can. She did do some talking stages, and that's how she found out she had a liking for girls too.

"I'm bi. I thought I told you."

"It doesn't matter to me, really. I didn't offend you, right?" Akia was worried. Offending her wasn't his intention.

Aria brushed this off, reassuring him that she wasn't offended at all.

"But back to the problem at hand: we can't hang out? Tell your girlfriend I don't mean any harm. I don't have any friends in this big ass school. I want to hang out with people and shit too. We could all hang out together."

"We can hang out, she won't mind. We settled everything out." Akia smiled, excited himself to actually hang out with someone else his age, someone who is similar to him.

But Aria wasn't having it. With an eyebrow raised and a smug look on her face, she said, "You sure? Don't get me jumped, Akia."

Akia shook his head, "Tyra isn't like that."

"Well, what are you doing after school? Let's go do something."

That was perfect for Akia because he had planned to get Khalan's Christmas present today, but he didn't want to go alone. Yes, he knows Khalan made it clear that he didn't want anything, but Akia had his mind set on getting the man something.

"I was going to get a late Christmas present for Tyra's brother. You want to come with me?"

Aria agreed almost immediately. One thing she loved was shopping, and one thing that made shopping more fun was helping others shop.