Not The Life I Wanted

Rainy Afternoons

~~~~A week later (Max's POV)~~~~

Max could barely keep his eyes open, let alone keep them on the sketch book in front of him. School work had gotten real intense real fast, and he ended up having to save his art practices till nighttime. What didn't help was the weird looks Bobby and P.J. had been throwing his way for days now, always looking like they wanted to bring something important up but never actually saying anything. It was starting to get to him.

"Max.....Max!" A hand snapped in his face. He glanced in the direction that the hand was coming from, before realizing that he was pressed up against the one and only Bradley Uppercrust III.

Max sat up with a jolt.

"Sorry!" He squeaked, "so sorry!" He felt wide awake now.

"You good?" Bradley gave him a suspicious look, pink tinged his cheeks. "You randomly slumped on me, caught me off guard."

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm just really tired. Schoolwork's been piling up 'n stuff."

"Ah. Why didn't you mention anything? We can always reschedule," the Gamma offered.

"I know, I know. But these meet ups are sorta the....highlight of my week?" Max quickly turned his head to stare at a scratch on Bradley's bedroom floor, terrified of seeing the older boy's reaction to that statement.

After a few moments of silence, Max finally decided to risk it as he slowly looked back up at the Uppercrust's face. He had a stunned expression, eyes wide and jaw practically dropped.

As soon as he noticed Max meeting his eyes again, he shook off his surprise. He proceeded to look anywhere except for Max's face. "Oh...Well, sleep is important. So you best be heading back to your room so you can catch up on it." Bradley got off the bed, brushing his sweater vest off.

"Wait! What about the less-"

"We've done plenty this time around," Bradley stopped him, "Come on. Let's get you back before-"

The loud pouring of rain on the Gamma Mu Mu frat house roof interrupted him.

"-that."

Max looked at him, feeling sheepish. "I didn't bring an umbrella."

The older boy rolled his eyes, grabbing two from his closet.

~~~~~~~~5 minutes later~~~~~~~

The two finally made their way to Max's dorm after they had finally deemed to rain calm enough to walk through.

"You know, thanks to all these art lessons, I've actually been inspired to draw more in my free time myself," Bradley mentioned.

Max looked at him with a wide grin, before taming it as to not give away that he had fallen right into his trap. "Really? That's great! What have you been working on?"

"Mostly nature scenes. That genre is a favorite of mine, for some reason."

"Well, you'll have to show me sometime. Maybe it'll inspire me or somethin, " Max suggested.

"Sure thing, Maxie," Bradley snickered.

"Ugh, not you too," Max groaned, "Speaking of, how come you hate people calling you Brad so much?"

The older boy went silent. Only the pitter-patter of the rain against their umbrellas could be heard. Max turned around to find that he had stopped walking.