A Blessing In Disguise (BoyxBoy)

Why The Sudden Change?

Ch.9

It's funny how some minor things catch your attention. How they raise questions and always remain in the back of your mind, constantly nagging until you give in to it. I mean, what does it matter why Jake has laid off with the constant name calling and trying to pick fights? Isn't the important thing that he has stopped? But no, I can't stop thinking about the reason for the sudden change in attitude. It seriously happened overnight, he went from hostile to cold. Where he used to try and push me into lockers and call me stupid things he now just flat out ignores my existence and walks past me like I'm not even standing there. So can you blame me for wondering why it happened, and now of all times. What triggered it? Did I do something? Did something happen? I hadn't noticed any other oddities, so no one else but me thought that something strange was going on. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, but again I was too curious to just accept it and move on. And apparently it showed.

   "Dude, what's going on? You've been spacing out like every other minute for a while now." Nick said, annoyed. He was stretched out on top of one of the benches outside with his hands under his head, while I sat beside him. Students were scattered all around us either on benches or on the lawn. The day was one of those hot, lazy ones where school was the last place you wanted to be, or anywhere inside for that matter. That's why everyone seemed to take every chance they got to go outside, even if it was only for five minutes.

   "I don't know. Something's not right with Jake. He's been ignoring me for these past couple of days, it's weird." Nick just frowned and peeked at me like he didn't understand what the problem was. But that's the thing, there was no problem. Everything was too normal, kind of like when they say that something's too good to be true, this was too normal to be, well, normal.

   "Shouldn't you be happy about that?" he mumbled.

   "I should. But I'm more suspicious. What if he's planning something?"

   "Look, I've known Jake since way back, and he's not the type to make up some mastermind plan to destroy your life. If he doesn't like you, then you'll know it. Simple as that." Nick explained matter-of-factly.

   "What, so suddenly he has taken a liking to me?"

   "Who knows."

   "Yeah, right." We were interrupted by a shrill scream followed by a panicked voice. Nick was so startled that he nearly rolled off the bench.

   "Take it off, take it off, take it off!" a girl sitting close to us on the lawn said, holding out one arm and flailing around with the other. Nick got up and went over to her, squatting down beside her to look at her arm before he laughed.

   "Stop laughing and take it off!"

   "Calm down, it's just a spider." he reached forward carefully, still chuckling, and grabbed it, "Hello little guy, are you lost? Did the big, scary girl hurt you? It's okay now, run along." Nick crooned like he was talking to a baby, before he released it in the grass. The girl let out a relieved sigh but looked at Nick like he had been dropped one too many times as a kid.

   "Um, thanks." she said, tucking a lock of her short, auburn hair behind her ear, extending her hand making the chain bracelets around her wrist jingle, "Melody." A small smile made its way on Nick's lips, his eyes glinting. He took her hand and held it.

   "Nice to meet you, Melody. I'm Nick." The side of Melody's lip quirked up in a smirk.

   "I know." They both fell silent, just watching each other with matching smiles.

   "As fun as it is to see you two fall for each other at first sight, I'm afraid Nick and I have to go now. I'm Marc, by the way. Nice to meet you." I grabbed Nick's arms and pulled him up. Melody looked confused for a while before she seemed to come back to reality and realize what was going on, and a cute blush painted her round cheeks.