Love is a Losing Game

Pretty Woman

I love my parents. I also hate my parents. 

Ever since they blatantly lied to my face last night, I've ignored their calls and texts. I left Mom's house this morning without speaking to her and drove to the nearest diner so that I could eat breakfast, meeting Joshua there after I text him to come and meet me. He questioned why we were in a dive diner but when I gave him a blank stare, he simply shrugged off the lack of reply and ordered a stack of pancakes and bacon with maple syrup. I gagged when his food arrived, going so far as to push my own plate away. I'm usually an oat or cereal kind of girl so forcing something greasy down my throat so early in the morning wasn't a good idea. 

My dad had tried to ring me a couple of times today, asking if I wanted to hang out with him tonight. Movie night. Games night. Father-daughter night. No matter which way his texts tried to sell it to me, I ignored his questions and tried to forget that they even existed. It wasn't until I placed my cell on the table during lunch that Joshua finally snapped and told me to answer the 'God-damned text!' 

Joshua Archer was usually so chilled out that, to see him snap at me like that, I decided I'd better respond to at least one message or missed call before Joshua killed me, or worse, threw my phone at a wall to shut it up. I declined Dad's invitation to hang out and then quickly messaged my mom to let her know that I was going to hang out with Joshua after school. 

"I didn't know we had plans," Joshua said, frowning down at me as he read the text over my shoulder. "I mean, I'm free and we can totally spend time together because you are the love of my life, it's just, I had no idea that we were doing that."

I turned my cell to the vibrate only setting and threw it to the bottom of my school bag. "Well, we are now."

Joshua and his friends now ate their lunch with Ashley, Mariam and me. They theorized that since Joshua had announced to the student body that he was in love with me and I was the only girl for him, they should come sit with us and spend their free periods chilling with us if we had them together. As it happened, the only two that shared a free period was Mariam and Seth Duncan, the quietest of Joshua's friends. Seth was one of the nicest guys I've ever met and the complete opposite of Joshua and the other three boys; he's polite, has a genuine interest in people and is the smartest kid in our class, which isn't to say that the others aren't but... well, they aren't. 

Micah Moran is the quiet, brooding type who knows that all the girls- including Ashley- are obsessed by him. He loves the attention that his moody, too hot- too cold personality gives off and he certainly can play up to it. With girls, one minute he's interested and the next, he's not. He's what I like to call a fisherman. He reels the girls in, gets a kick out of catching them but then he likes to drop them back in the ocean. Plenty more fish. 

Aaron Gill, meanwhile, is a brutish jock. Don't get me wrong, he has his qualities but for the most part, he's a neanderthal who only lives for ice hockey, beer and all the groupies that follow him around during the hockey season. Aaron's family own Gill's Diner and while that is sometimes a source of embarrassment for him- I think it's because all the other wealthy kids at school come from banking money or tech money whereas Aaron doesn't- he sometimes wonders if that is the source of his popularity. If there's one thing the girls around here love, it's boys who come from rich families. If there's one thing they love more than that, though, it's a rich jock. Aaron will never have to worry about girls wanting to jump into bed with him. Unless that girl is Mariam Esfandiari. He's got a huge crush on her but she won't go within a mile of him.