Peraltiago/Dianetti AU

Looking Back

Amy's POV

The group and I all went to our favourite hangout place after school-Shaw's Cafe-and celebrate another exciting year of learning or as Gina likes to call it "Surviving the first day back at that hellhole and dreading having to live through that every day for the next ten months."

I have a feeling that the rest of the group may not like school as much as I do.

Are you kidding me, I'm smart, I haven't gotten less than a 95% on anything since I failed recess in first grade. I still remember Ms. Hathaway saying "teachers need a break too, Amy". Ugh. It wasn't me being a bad student, it was because she was a bad teacher.

I remember the way Jake had laughed at how stupid and sad it was. In response, I stuck my tongue out at him. Looking back, it was stupid and immature, but that's okay when you're six years old. Not when you're thirteen.

I'm talking about Jake right now. Gina commented on how his showing up late on the first day was super embarrassing and lame. She also mentioned how she put it on her snapchat story and now everyone in our grade heard about it by now. Gina only mentioned our grade but we all know it also reached the younger kids-who fear her-and the high schoolers-who are friends with her. Gina's always been way more social than the rest of us. Anyways, Gina's mentioning of his being late must have annoyed him, because he stuck his tongue out at her. Like an immature little first grader.

My only other friend outside of this group (Kylie, she goes to the other middle school on the east side of town) says that I focus so much on Jake's joking around because I like him. I deny her constant questioning of my feelings toward him, which I always tell her are completely platonic.

They're not platonic. I realized that this summer when I heard him lecturing himself about me behind a couple of tall bushes. 

Flashback time Y'all

Jake, Rosa, Charles, and I (Gina was staying at her grandma's beach house in Hawaii) had this really nice picnic at the beach this summer. I can't remember exactly what happened, but Rosa went to go change into her bathing suit I think (terrifyingly, it was turquoise with watermelons.) 

I, being Amy Santiago, was prepared enough to wear my bathing suit underneath the dress I was wearing. Unfortunately, I hadn't considered that the wind does not like short, flowy skirts. Thank God I had been wearing the swimsuit, or I would have never been able to live that down. I took off the dress when we were about to go swimming by pulling the skirt over my head revealing the strappy black bikini underneath. 

Less than a minute later Jake ran away. He just said "I need to go" and dashed away. No, he sprinted away. Once he had reached grass he found some tall bushes and slipped behind them. While he was doing this Charles and I exchanged concerned and confused looks before I offered to go check on him.

When I got to bushes I was about to talk to him when I heard my name and a couple of cuss words. Jake was facing away from me, and I was able to hide on the other side of the bushes without him noticing. A part of my brain had always felt self-conscious (yeah guidance counsellor, I'm not entirely happy with myself) and I felt like my friends didn't really like me, so I thought that Jake's rant was going to be about how he actually hated having me as a friend.

Boy was I listening in with the wrong attitude.

"Fuck you" 

My heart broke when he said this, I guess my best friend couldn't even accept me.

"You're so stupid"

My stomach felt uneasy.

"How could you do this, you idiot"

I wanted to cry. What did he mean 'how could you do this.' I didn't even know what I did to him.

"Jake, why do you keep on torturing yourself"

I got confused. Were the things he was saying about himself?

"You can't do this, Jake, this is your best friend you're talking about."

I'm pretty sure he was referring to Charles, but I was very confused about what he did to Charles.

"She's your best friend"

Ok. Not Charles, me or Rosa, or Gina. Nope, not Gina she's not even here.

"Fuuuuuck, why is she doing this it's torturing meeee"

I don't think I was doing anything to torture him, so I'm going to assume it's Rosa. She seems like the torturous type. It was then that I saw Rosa come out of the changing rooms wearing the turquoise watermelon bathing suit.

"Oh my god, Amy"

Wait what

"You're killing me"

I don't know what I did. I'm so confused.

Then I heard him groan, which shook me to my very core.

My brain connected everything and my mouth dropped open. I turned around and started running towards the beach. 

No, what? No. Maybe? There's no way. Why would you even think that?

It was that last thought that got me. Why did I think that?

It clicked later that night, I realized that I liked Jake Peralta. Stupid, immature goofy Jake Peralta.

Flashback over, back to real time

"Hello?" snapped Izzy (the waitress who seems to always be waiting our table when we come here, which is a lot of the time) "Amy?"

"What? Huh?" I mumbled as I was pulled back to reality.

"You were kind of looking at your napkin and not paying any attention to our in-depth conversation about binder tabs" Jake teased. 

My heart skipped a beat when he mentions binder tabs. I might like organization a little too much.

"You were having an in-depth conversation about binder tabs!" I practically squealed.

"No, but I'm very happy you fell for that!" He said.

"Seriously, guys, there are other people in this café, can I get you something or not?" Izzy asked.

"A vanilla milkshake, please," I said.

She scribbled it down and walked away, annoyed. Izzy doesn't like us. She used to. But then she realized that we knew nothing about her. We didn't even know her last name.

Basically, we're garbage.

Izzy returned about five minutes later with my milkshake, Jake's orange soda, Charles' weird drink that I'm not even going to go near, Rosa's coffee, and Gina's lemonade.

And then we just spent the next few hours talking and laughing. I was so happy that nothing had changed. We were still the same group of people we were last year, and that was exactly how I wanted it to be