Play Date • afi

1

"You tell me to come over there's some games you wanna play."

[btw if you're liek uncomfortable with smut or something u prolly shouldn't be reading this book lol   - it's not in this chapter tho just to clarify that ---- i'll let you know which chapters have it]

L A L E

"Lale, we'll be having guests over tonight, remember to wear a nice dress." I nod, not looking up from laptop when my mum pushed open my bedroom door. The guests were probably just going to be our cousins or something so I didn't really care that much, but family was a big deal to my parents.

You see, my dad came from Turkey and my mother's parents were also from Turkey, so we're very strict about the culture and how things run around the house, although we're a Catholic family. My name is also Turkish, pronounced Lah-Leh, and it means 'tulip'. 

My whole family just looked kind of different to everyone else. Our neighbourhood was a fairly... um excuse me, but white area, so we did look a little out of the ordinary. Everyone in Turkey has the same sort of features though. We would have fit in there. The dark hair, light eyes and tanned/dark skin. 

I'm in my eleventh year of high school and I'll be in my twelfth in a little over four months, which I'm so pumped for. My best friend Ashton is in the year above me and it's going to really suck when he leaves. Ashton and I had been best friends ever since we could walk and this was partly because his mother stood up for mine at a grocery store when she first moved here,  which resulted in friendship at first sight.

Ashton and I had been through everything together. He always stood up for me against the racist comments and I always stood up for him against the people who teased him about his dad or his acne. I was there when he first got his job at KFC and he came home crying (it was a rough day). He still works there right to this minute. He was there when I applied for the bookstore and he was there when I found out they accepted me. That was the day we kissed for the first time. 

Now, I wouldn't call Ashton and I a 'couple' and I wouldn't call us 'best friends' exactly. I would go more for something like 'Friends with Benefits'. It started the first time he kissed me and now it had become a regular thing, where whenever we needed each other, we were only ever a phone call away. It was a good system even if most people wouldn't agree with that.

I checked the time, groaning when I saw I only had about ten minutes to get ready. I pushed my laptop off of me and stood, stretching before walking to my wardrobe and pulling out a long blue and purple dress that had slits up the front, back and sides around my legs. I slid it on and tied the drawstring around my middle, undoing the first two buttons to show off my cleavage. 

"Lale, Kelebek, Baris! Our guests are here!" My mother shouted, her accent heavy. I didn't know Turkish yet, only little things, but my parents were both fluent. 

I huffed and checked myself in the mirror by the door, playing with my curly hair before sliding on my light blue converse. I hoped it would be someone at least slightly interesting... but no. It was just the neighbours, who were an elderly couple with an over-excited dog that they took everywhere with them.

I knew that tonight was gonna suck.

I hugged them both, murmuring a hello and answered their basic questions on how I was, how school was going, if I had a boyfriend (that question always confused me because of my situation). Mother called Baris and I into the kitchen as we were both the oldest and she made us get the salad and chicken to put out onto the dining table.