Once Again

Chapter 6

Bentley

Friday morning while I got ready for school, I waited for my parents to call my name. All last night i waited, but not once did they come to talk or yell at me. I knew it wouldn't be long until they found out what I did though, and I felt on edge. When I walked out the door for school I was slightly relieved, at least I had eight hours until I risked facing them again. what I did was cruel, and my half siblings probably hated me for it. How could I have been so selfish?

When I got to school, on instinct I went to wait for Aria and Emory. After a few seconds though I decided against it. I wanted to see Emory, but I wasn't quite ready to talk to Aria yet and I knew that ignoring Aria and going straight to her sister instead would only cause issues between the two. So instead I went to my first class and texted Emory asking if she wanted to have lunch in the hall again. When she responded with a thumbs up smiley face, I smiled myself. I still definitely had a crush on her, and I was going to have to restrain it as much as I could if I was going to be friends with her. I didn't want to mess up our friendship just as we were building it. Something about her just felt different though, when she was around I felt so relaxed, like I could tell her anything. She had different smiles too, there was the one she gave people every day, and then the one she only gave you when you truly made her happy and at ease. You had to work for that smile, the one that lit up her entire face. 

By the time lunch rolled around and she met me in the hallway outside the cafeteria not far from the vending machine, I had let all my problems at home be just that, problems at home. At the moment all I could do was stare at her as she laughed, barely being able to make it through her own story. After she finishes I glance over at the cafeteria doors, when a question comes to mind. "What happened to your friends you normally ate with?" I was happy she was choosing to eat with me, but something told me it wasn't necessarily a choice, but more a lack of options.

She looks away, "I did something stupid, and now I'm avoiding them." She says sheepishly.

"I'm sure what ever you did couldn't be any worse then anything I, or any other kid at this school has ever done." She plays with the rubber of her shoe as I say this. I notice now that her shoes are a bit ragged, and clearly falling apart. I'm Distracted for a second thinking about how odd it was that the Jacobs haven't bought her new ones yet, since I've never seen Aria with run down shoes.

I snap back to the conversation just in time to barley hear what she says next. "I had a crush on one of the guys I was friends with and I feel so stupid now because it turns out he was secretly dating Arielle our other friend, and I made a fool of my self because I kissed him at that party and turns out he was just using me to make her jealous, but now I've probably blown up all three friendships." She says quickly and then groans at the end, laying her head back against the brick wall.

The first thing I think about when she tells me this is the night of the party. Both of us staring at each other after I kind of told her how I felt. How I was about to lean in and kiss her when Aria threw up on our shoes.  Would I also be avoiding her had Aria not interrupted? Our situation wasn't really the same though. "That guy sounds like a jerk," I say deciding that I hated him. However I wasn't sure if I hated him because of what he did, or if it was because Emory had liked him the way I wanted her to like me. "And you're better off with out him."

She smiles a bit and turns her head to look at me, despite it still being up against the wall. "But I really liked him, and he was kind of a hot jerk, I just feel like a big idiot now."

I roll my eyes, "you're not an idiot, your just human. You had a crush is all, he was the idiot for not liking you back." I was treading on thin ice, but I couldn't help it.