Marriage of convenience

Chapter 7

Do you how it feels like when you sip in an aromatic coffee and realize that there is no sugar in it at all? That was almost the way I felt when I walked into the cafeteria along with Hunter. If not for the fact that I was almost at my wit's end that he was holding my hand and was leading me into the cafeteria, it was the stares and gasps we received that ticked me off. This was official. Almost the entire female population hated me right now and there was no way that I could undo it. No way.

It all started with Hunter's decision of suddenly and abruptly being nice to me and bringing me back to the guys. I was suspecting Thomas as the main reason, but you can never trust Hunter. He was the most unpredictable guy that I had ever seen. On top of letting me sit with him and the others and let me ogle at him as much as I want, (I'm sure that he didn't agree for the latter but it is okay to assume), he was also willing to forgo Ray's dislike towards me and entertain me as an equal along with the others.

The moment when he held my hand and began dragging me out of the class room he pulled me into, I was sure that rumors began to spread. He didn't let go of my hand even once and didn't pay attention to all the murmurs which were happening beside us. People seemed to automatically give him way to walk by and he just did without thinking twice. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy that short span of bliss, but then, the consequences were nagging in the back of my mind. I didn't want my life to become a Mean Girls' sequel. 

As soon as we walked to the table that the guys usually sat on, I spotted the person whom I didn't want to come to face. It wasn't Ray. I saw him everyday even though I didn't want to. It was the person who was sitting beside Ray looking like the perfect match to him. Long brown locks flowed down her shoulders to her waist, a small frame, shorter than me, and all the cute features which one could never find in me. All in all, she made me feel guilty about marrying him even though it was unknowingly. 

There was another girl sitting beside her looking as pretty as her, but my sole concentration was on the way she was sticking herself to Ray in an elegant way, which seemed a little too hard to achieve in reality. How could someone stick to someone else in an elegant way? Ray was distracted from his girl as soon as we arrived and stiffened when he saw me there and even more when he saw Hunter hold my hand. I felt like as if I were watching something which was forbidden for me to see. I knew that Ray had a girlfriend all too well. I knew that he was serious about her. I one day even caught a glimpse of her in his phone, but then why was I feeling so suffocated when I finally got to see them in reality? 

A partial reason of why I began to make new friends and accept their lunch invitations was because unknowingly I heard Thomas talk about Ray's girlfriend's arrival from a trip. I didn't know why I did that myself, but I felt like my time with him came to an end when I heard that his girl was back. Somehow the feeling of me being an intrusion planted itself into my mind and before I knew it, I began avoiding them altogether.

Now that I was there and was seeing everything in reality, it felt all too different. As soon as Ray's eyes landed on our joined hands, an unfamiliar instinct took over me and I shrugged off Hunter's hand off mine as if it staying there would become something bad.

"I was just leaving," I forced a smile and tried turning back, but Hunter held my hand again and pulled me to his side.

"You aren't leaving anywhere. You are sitting with us," he said with an air of finality and made me sit beside him. Ray's girl and her friend gaped at us, but I could let them slide because I had a difficulty in trying to pull myself together when I was stuck so close to Hunter.

"Who is she?" Ray's girl asked with her honey sweet voice as she looked at me.

"Just a nobody," I said and turned to Hunter, "let me go?"