The girl next door

Chapter 21

Riley-
"Riley could you answer number 9?" The teacher asks in the cold quiet classroom, after noticing my face being held up by my hand and my eyes staring at the ground, disrupting my zoning out. "Oh um." I say lifting my head from my hand and looking down at my paper. I realize I have nothing from this lesson written down. I look back up at my teacher and he gets the point from my expression and accepts the answer from another girl with her hand raised. I haven't been focusing at all. Just remembering what I felt when I saw Lucas come out of Emily's room. Knowing what they did. Emily comforted me that night, she knows how I feel about Lucas. I don't understand how she could do this to me. Her sister. Dad and Laura don't know anything's going on. I'm not about to tell my parents Emily isn't a virgin, that's just cruel. But we haven't talked in days. She takes her dinner up to her room to eat. If I did that I'd get yelled at, but they let em do it for some reason. But because our dad and his girl friend don't know, she still has to drive me home. So we just sit in silence waiting for the car to pull into our driveway.

"You ok ri?" James asks me while he stands by my desk waiting for me to pack up. The bell had rung and lunch was next. I put my laptop and note books into my backpack and zip it up. "Yeah fine." I say throwing the backpack over my shoulder and walking with him out of the classroom. My eyes are on the ground, my heart is pounding, and my hands go up to my j necklace to fidget with it, but James pulls my hand down and holds it. "I know you. Your not fine. You never not know the answer on the math assignments ri." James says. I sigh and rest my head on his arm. We walk with our hands intertwined to our lunch table. There already sitting down is Tiffany, Stephanie, west, Eldon, and hunter. Our friend groups have kind of merged since everything with Emily. We take our usual seats next to them. The boys on one side, me, Steph, tiff, and James on the other.

"Hey love birds." My friend Michelle from English class says noticing me and James as her and her friend group walk past our table. I wave back at her in response. "Who's that?" Eldon asks looking at her walk away and laugh with one of her friends. "My friend Michelle, I have English with her." I tell him. "Ooo he has the googly eyes." West jokes as he pushes Eldons shoulder. "Googly eyes?" Eldon asks. "Yeah bro, James gives them to Riley all the time. Eldons got a crushhhh." I smile at wests explanation while James looks down at me. He puts his arm around my shoulder and I connect his hand with mine. "I can ask if she's talking to anyone." I tell Eldon. "I don't have a crush on her, just thought she was cute." Eldon defends. We all laugh since we can totally see him blushing. My smile fades as soon as I see Emily out of the corner of my eye. But she's not alone. She's walking down the hall, with Lucas's arm around her. James's looks at me and sees my expression, and changes his focus to where mine is. "Bro..." he says after spotting Emily with Lucas. The rest of our group look over to see what we're studying. Emily sees us, and our eyes meet, until she pulls them away and puts them back on Lucas.