High Heels and Battle Plans

Two

- a n -

I skipped last week (sorry), but I'm back.

This part is, thankfully, a little bit longer than the other two, and there is also a thing or two to keep in mind while reading this chapter.

1. Finn calls Aria "Ria"

2. This story is being told in third person limited, and mostly the character being followed is Aria, but, in some chapters, Finn is being followed. You can figure out who is being followed with context clues, such as Aria being called Ria.

Hope you like it!

- t w o -

Finn was surprised to see a pair of gold heels sitting on his seat when Ria came to pick him up. He had known that she had multiple pairs of heels tossed around on the floor of her expansive walk-in closet, but had never even thought about her actually wearing them. He had just figured that they were all gifts from Ria's mother, part of her life-long attempt to make her only daughter an exact copy of herself. Judging from the outfit she was wearing, Finn thought that this attempt wasn't exactly working. While the outfit wasn't trashy or extremely revealing, it was no where near the professional outfits that Ria's successful-businesswoman-of-a-mom was constantly sporting. While Ria had obviously inherited her mother's social skills, there wasn't much else that Finn could find that the two had in common, except, he figured, their heel-wearing habits.

"Oh," Ria noticed Finn's stare at the shoes, and waved her hand at them. "You can just drop those on the floor or something." Ria seemed to guess that the reason he had just been standing there was because of the shoes being in his way, instead of Finn's still-waking brain just being lost in thought.

But, after a glance at the clock, Finn's thoughts were now very much in the present. He speedily tossed his bag in the back seat, right next to Ria's, and picked up the heels as he quickly slid into the passenger seat. He put them by his feet as he closed the door. Putting on his seatbelt, he turned to Ria. "Do you plan on wearing those?" He supposed that the gold color of the shoes went with the gold trim on Ria's sleeveless shirt, but that didn't change the fact that the last time Finn saw her wear heels, they were twelve and she almost fell over, due to her mother wearing a much bigger size than she did at the time.

"No, I'm going to donate them to the drama department." Ria joked, sarcastic.

Finn laughed, leaning over a little to fiddle with the car radio. Searching through a few stations, Finn went with a pop music station, turning the volume just low for background noise. Satisfied, he leaned back in his seat, trying a lazy, casual smile as he listened to the sound of Ria drumming her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of a song he surprised himself by recognising.

"You're nervous, aren't you?" Ria's question didn't surprise him; he just figured that his attempt at seeming laid-back wasn't going to plan.

"How could you tell?" He may not have been surprised by the question, but he was a bit disappointed in his inability to act calm. "Was my smile that fake looking?"

She let out a short laugh. "Well, yeah, there was that." She turned her full attention to the road for a moment, then continued, nodding towards his legs. "There's also the fact that you keep furiously bouncing your leg."

Finn glanced down to find that his left leg was, indeed, moving up and down at alarming speeds. He had a habit of moving around when he was nervous, but he knew that she did, too. Watching her fingers continue to drum on the wheel, he asked, "What are you so nervous about?"

Her eyes first widened, obviously not expecting his question, but then her face transformed into something that seemed both impressed and almost guilty. "It's just," she paused, the drumming stopping as she gripped the wheel tightly instead. After sighing, she continued. "I haven't gone to school with you since before we started middle school. We were in 5th grade the last time we went to the same school, and that was a long time ago. I guess it will just be weird." She shrugged, then added, "Be careful. Stay away from Kiera."