Habits Of My Heart

Chapter 27

Another victory and they were already in the quarter finals. They had been there three days and Adrian was already sick of Bailey hanging out with Peter. The previous day they had hung out at least half of the day, and left him with his football pals for the rest. Honestly, he felt betrayed. Okay, yes, maybe he was being childish and letting his jealousy get the best of him but really, Bailey had left him after the match to go out for lunch. Alright, fine, "left" isn't the best way to put it, Adrian was invited, but he had no interest in being with Peter and he definitely did not like how much Bailey was hanging out with him.

Yes, it was unfair of him to not even give Peter a chance, but he just couldn't bring himself to think that maybe he was actually a good guy and he was jumping to conclusions. In fact, Adrian did know he was jumping to conclusions, leaping, really, he was good at it, it was like mental parkour. But in all fairness, he was correct about 90% of the time. At least that's what he believed.

Mason put his hand on Adrian's shoulder, "You alright, bud?" he asked, sitting down next to him in the dining room.

"Huh?" Adrian said, snapping out of it, "Oh. Yeah. Yeah I'm great."

Mason raised an eyebrow in suspicion, "You sure?" he asked, "You literally were staring straight ahead, with your eyes open, like, wide, like they were big, and your mouth would keep opening and closing really slowly. Here, look, like this." he demonstrated, and Adrian whacked the back of his head.

"Okay shut up, stop, you look like a retard." he said.

"That's the point! That's what you looked like!" Mason exclaimed, almost snorting from laughter.

"Okay, s-shut up." Adrian mumbled softly.

"Hey." Mason pressed, nudging his arm, "What's wrong? Is this about Bailey?"

"No, fuck off." Adrian said, a little too quickly.

"Adrian, relax." Mason said sternly, taking Adrian by surprise, "Bailey can have his own friends. Not every boy only thinks he's a good piece of fuck-meat."

"What the actual fuck are you guys talking about?" Blake asked, sitting down across them.

"Peter and Bailey." Mason explained.

"Oh yeah." Blake said.

"Look, I don't trust Peter." Adrian grumbled, not in the mood for talking about this, "There's just something about him."

"Maybe the fact that he's friendly with your boyfriend and you're jealous." Blake said with a mouthful of food "Let it go, Peter seems like a good guy."

"I don't see why Adrian didn't come, he loves hanging out with people, he's a real people's person, he's probably just tired or something." Bailey said somewhat frantically, for what seemed like the thousandth time, "He's not mad at me or anything, right?"

Peter couldn't care less, in fact he wished that Adrian was mad at him since it would make his job easier. But, obviously, he wasn't going to say that out loud. He laughed pleasantly instead, "No, of course not. You're right, he's probably tired. Now let's order and sit down, you can tell me more about yourself."

And so they did. Peter didn't want to hear more about Bailey, he didn't care one bit about the details of his life, but instead of letting that show, he nodded and widened his eyes with false interest. He actually knew a lot more about Bailey than he let on, at least the major information about his life. He was told that Bailey opened up easily and completely to people he trusted, and it seemed that was correct.

"So what did you do for your dad?" he asked, after having waited for Bailey to finally get to that part of the conversation.

"Uh, I, um..." he trialed off, and Peter looked at him expectantly. He moved forward abruptly, his hands on the table, "Can I... Trust you? Can you keep a secret?"