Cuts and Bruises

Chapter Fourteen

"You're not wearing that, are you?" Jane asks me in disapproval, scanning my outfit once more before she purses her lips.

I shrug. "Why not?" I ask. "I'm friends with all the guys on the team. Whoever it is, I'm sure I don't need to dress to impress them."

"But what if it's Vincent?" She presses.

"What if it is?" I ask sarcastically, rolling my eyes. "I certainly don't need to impress him," I spit, although I can't help but notice the shift in my stomach after she says his name, and suddenly all I can think about is our fight in my bedroom, when I kicked him out. "Anyway, he's not going to come. I promise you that."

Jane sighs and looks at me. "Well, don't you want to dress to impress yourself?"

I give her a blank stare and ask, "What are you going on about, Jane?"

"You know," She says with a tiny smile, shimmying up to me. "Look good to feel good. It's like, my motto."

I turn so that I can see myself in our shared mirror, and see the way that my sweatshirt makes me look fifteen pounds heavier than I actually am, and how the sweatpants do absolutely nothing to accentuate my figure. After a moment, I huff in annoyance to myself, mostly because I realize that Jane had got to me.

"I'll put on some jeans," I mumble to myself, and I can see her smirk out of the corner of my eye as I turn toward my closet.

In the end, I was wearing a long sleeve white v-neck and a pair of ripped jeans with, of course, my favorite pair of Converse. Jane was much more dressed up than me in a sundress with a nice jacket that was the same length as the dress, and a pair of light gray booties.

When I catch her giving herself a look-over in the mirror, I smirk. "Getting nervous for your date?"

She catches my eye in the reflection and smiles, but it isn't her usually confident smile, the one she always wears before a date. And then I realized that maybe she was a bit nervous, and my joke became reality as I watched her shift on her feet. "A little, actually."

I stared at her in surprise for a moment. Jane was one of the most confident girls I've ever known, who had dating down to a science, and never felt nervous before seeing a boy.

"Trevor is just so..." she trails off as her gaze shifts. "Different."

"In a good way?" I wonder curiously.

Still with a faraway look in her eyes, Jane smiles a little. "Yes," She turns to me and the smile brightens a bit. "A very good way."

I smile to myself giddily, for the first time actually approving the idea of Trevor and Jane together. Previously, I wanted Jane to avoid Trevor at all costs— I knew how she was with boys, and I didn't want her to ruin Trevor. But now, with my best friend as a little bundle of nerves, I was excited. Maybe he was the one to ruin her ways.

Before I can continue to pry for information about her little crush, Jane seems to snap out of her thoughts and straighten up. She glances at the clock on her phone and looks back at me. "It's time to go," she declares.

I check the time too and see that we were supposed to be there five minutes ago. Quickly, I gather my purse and sigh, "We're late."

"That's where you're wrong," Jane says with a crooked grin. "We're fashionably late, which means we're right on time."

I roll my eyes at her logic and follow her out the door. We were meeting the boys at a cute diner on the edge of campus, which would mean another fifteen minute walk if Jane hadn't offered to drive.