Troubled

Chapter 10 - He's so frustrating.

Today was freaking meatloaf day, and it didn't help that my head was still reeling from the crazy homeroom period. Totally absurd, really, that it diminished my appetite completely.

I pushed a sickly yellowish-green pea across my tray, not wanting to touch the disgusting chunk of meat on my plate. My stomach hurt so much; I silently prayed that I wouldn't pass out.

"Screw this." I gave up and stood. "I'm getting a soda." Getting a coke now wouldn't help my stomachache, but I needed the fizz now.

"Sour skittles, too," Janet said.

Taylor nodded. "Two bags," she added.

The table was mostly empty. The guys were late. I sighed and made my way to the vending machine, and fed the darn thing with some change. Clutching my Cherry coke and two bags of sour skittles, I was soon back at our table, with Cameron on one side of me and Taylor on the other.

Janet and Taylor tore their candy bags open immediately.

"So," Janet started. "Where's Connor?"

"Riiight here." Connor suddenly swooped in, and settled beside her, in front of me.

I automatically diverted my eyes downwards, and watched as Janet separated all the red and yellow sour skittles in the bag into a pile, and the purple into another. Taylor fished out the greens and oranges in hers, and added all her purple ones into the purple pile. Janet pushed the reds and yellows toward Taylor, and she dropped the green and orange ones into Janet's eager hands. Janet scooped up the pile of purple sour skittles and gave them to me.

We divided our candy this way; our color preferences so ingrained that we never had to ask anymore. We were major candy fetishes, too.

"You've met Connor?" Sam asked me, and I squinted and nodded slowly. Of course I've met him, but not in the type of scenario that's in Sam's mind.

I realized that I never told him my name, so I turned to look at him, but was careful to avoid his eyes. "Hi. I'm Nicole," I smiled a little, you know, to be friendly. I didn't want him to think I was a snob or something, even though he was the one who barely smiled at me when we met during homeroom.

"Hey, I'm Connor," he answered warmly, and his mouth tugged up in a smile. My heart melted.

"You've met already, right?" Janet looked at us. We nodded, and he was smiling mysteriously. The nerve. He was thinking about that meeting. The one on Oxford Street, where he almost managed to fool me into falling for him. I'd spent the next remaining days pretty much wasting my time thinking about those amazing eyes. I pretended to not notice the smirk he gave me.

"I'm glad to be back, seriously." He smiled and ran a hand over his adorably messy hair. Get a grip, Nicole. Shut your feelings out.

"There, the weather sucks, the traffic sucks, and there's weird people living on the streets. The place is really really old, too. Like a ghost town or something."

Taylor chewed on a skittle slowly. "Welcome back, Con. And speaking of weather, it's gonna rain tonight." She smoothed her white v-neck sweater. "Damn."

I had to giggle at that. Taylor might be feisty and fierce, but I swear she might be the only person under twenty in the whole state that actually pays attention to the weather forecast.

"At least the ice had melted," Cameron said. "Nic, pass me a purple one." He gestured toward my candy pile. "The weather's not really good these days."

I popped a skittle into his mouth and my fingers went in too deep. "Ew. I touched your tongue," I grabbed a napkin automatically and made a face. "Gross." Everyone laughed, even Connor.