Diamond Names (ON HOLD//EDITING)

Twenty

When Julia woke up the next morning, three things surprised her.

The first was the sound of the rain pounding outside her window. Granted, she lived in the middle of Florida; rain was normal. But still, it had been so nice for the past few weeks; it caught her off guard.

Secondly, she had a splitting headache. She hadn't had anything to drink last night, so to wake up already feeling so crappy threw her off.

The third thing that surprised her was the fact that she slept through her alarm.

Julia sleepily rolled over, not wanting to get out from under her blankets. The room was quiet, almost too quiet...

Her suspicions were confirmed when she glanced over at her alarm clock, which flashed 9:34 in block letters. "Are you serious?!" she whispered to herself. She jumped up out of her bunk, practically hitting her head on the ceiling. How could she have slept through her alarm? Classes started almost half an hour ago! She raced over to the closet and pulled out a pair of jean shorts and a white tank top, and gathered all of her curly red hair into a bun on top of her head. She didn't even bother brushing it; she didn't have the time.

She grabbed a pair of flip flops from by her bedside and sprinted out the door, nearly tripping several times because she was in such a hurry. If she only missed one class, maybe she wouldn't get in as much trouble...

As soon as she slammed the door behind her, Julia realized with dread that her room key still laid on the kitchen table. "No!" She groaned and repeatedly slammed her hand on the door, even though she knew nobody could open the door for her. This was turning out to be the worst day ever.

I don't have time for this, Julia thought to
herself. Maybe the cafeteria would still have something she could grab for breakfast...

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Not to her surprise, the cafeteria had closed down breakfast after classes had started. Julia groaned in defeat. Not only was she going to be late to her mother's class, but she wouldn't be able to eat anything until lunch, and she would have to wait another three hours until then.

"Hey, Castle."

Julia whirled around and found eye contact with Liam, his face only inches from hers. "Having a rough day?" he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

Julia rolled her eyes. "Look, Liam, I don't have time for this," she hissed. "I woke up late, and I'm hungry, and I'm going to be late to my mom's class which means she's going to kill me."

"Relax." Liam grabbed her by the shoulders and lightly shook her. "Eva turned off your alarm on purpose. We all take the day off after a heist." He gestured behind him to one of the tables. "I saved you a plate of breakfast. I wasn't sure what you liked, so I got a bunch of different stuff."

"Are you crazy?!" Julia asked, moving out of his grip. "I can't just skip all of my classes. In case you haven't noticed, everybody here knows who I am. People are going to notice that I'm missing."

Liam rolled his eyes now. "Are you done?" he asked coolly. "Just sit down with me and eat
some food. You know you want to," he teased.

Julia thought it over for what seemed like a long time. People definitely would notice if she had cut classes all day, but she was really hungry, and the food Liam had gotten her looked really good...

She sighed. "Fine. I'll skip the morning, but I'm going to all of my classes after lunch." She sat down in front of the tray and immediately took a big sip from the bottle of orange juice. Liam took the seat next to her, and went between messing around on his phone and watching her eat.