How Could This Be Real?

115. Leave Me Alone!

A few days later, the lot of us piled into our cars, picnic baskets and blankets in hand, and made our way to the local park. Everyone had agreed to come, including Tom though David still wasn't exactly hyped about it, and so I'm sure it was quite a sight to see when we all poured out of the vehicles and onto the grassy lawn. However, no one in our group seemed to notice all the stares we were getting, or if they did they pretended not to.

The moment one of the blankets was spread out, Amy collapsed onto it, spreading out as much as she could like a lazy cat. She sighed happily, "Oh, this is so nice. It's beautiful out here!"

Ash chuckled as he looked down at her, his head tilted a bit as if in curiosity. "Yeah, it's pretty nice," he agreed before shoving her over with his foot so he could have room to sit next to her.

"Hey!" she protested as she was rolled out of her comfortable position. "You could've at least said 'excuse me'!"

"Yeah, I could've, but what fun would that be?"

She huffed and sat up, glaring at him and he just smirked back at her. The two of them had been becoming pretty good friends over the summer, much like Sqaishey and I, although their relationship was much more filled with jokes and pranks, mostly courtesy of Ash. I was starting to wonder if there could perhaps be something more going on between them, but then there was Tom.

He'd sat down between Amy and Netty, which he usually did, and at first I wasn't sure why he always did this, but now I think I was starting to understand. When Tom first arrived and for a few days after, he'd been trying to get Netty's attention. I of course now knew that they'd been in a relationship before, but how or why or when it had ended, I didn't know, though I was pretty sure it didn't end well.

When Netty kept persistently ignoring him, he'd switched his attention more in Amy's direction. Whenever this happened, the two would flirt for a minute, and this would be met by two distinct looks- an impassive look from Ash, and more or less a glare from Netty. This always made Amy feel guilty and she'd try her best to ignore Tom for the rest of the encounter, but recently she was starting to talk to him more and more and Ash's looks kept getting less and less impassive.

Did this entail a love triangle or two within our group? Perhaps, though I couldn't be sure. But either way, I was definitely interested in how it would turn out in the end.

During all of this thought processing, the rest of our group had sat down in a hodgepodge of people and food and I'd somehow managed to find my way under David's arm with my head leaned against his shoulder. He smiled down at me and I smiled back, tilting my head up to give him a quick kiss.

Seemingly satisfied with that, he turned his focus back to the group and I did the same, grabbing one of the sandwiches and nibbling on it as I listened to them all bicker and laugh. However, it didn't take long for our group to start gaining a new kind of attention. I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to us before, but it was hard enough for one youtuber to go out without being noticed, but a whole group of them... that could turn into utter chaos.

Two little girls wandered over to our group from the nearby playground and tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Are you Stampy?" one of them asked in her cute kiddy voice.

He gave her a big smile and said in his YouTube voice, "That would be me! And who might you be?"

I didn't get a chance to hear their names because a young boy that I hadn't noticed standing next to me cleared his throat and I looked up at him. He looked so nervous, the poor thing. "H-hi..." he whispered, then cleared his throat. "I-I'm Justin... I'm a b-big fan of you both..."

David and I gave him friendly smiles and I said, "It's nice to meet you," to which he blushed and held out his phone.

"C-can I get a picture?" he asked sheepishly.