Laugh Until You Cry

12 More Trouble

“Do you think that he’s mad?” Drew wonders from across the booth as we both watch Andrew storm out of the ice cream shop.

“I… I don’t know,” I mumble in confusion. He looked angry but I’m not so sure why he would be. I’m putting my money on the fact that I’m sitting with Drew right now and he knows about my promiscuous past with the guy. We messed around a lot during the summer, just before I got together with Andrew. If he just stopped and let me explain, I would have told him that I’m only sitting with Drew right now because he walked into the ice cream place as I was eating and decided to sit with me to catch up since we haven’t spoken in months. His new girlfriend goes to Vaughn, so he was hanging out with her but on his way back to his house, he decided to stop for ice cream and that’s the only reason I’m sitting with him. I wish I could explain that to Andrew.

“If you guys broke up, why would he care though?” He asks as I continue to watch out the window where Andrew is walking back towards campus with his back towards me. I wish that if I just stared at him long enough, I would be able to figure him out, but that’s not possible, unfortunately.

“It’s complicated,” I mumble, standing up from the booth. “Anyway, I should get back to campus and take a nap. I’m finally feeling all of the jet lag from this morning. It was nice catching up, Drew.”

“Yeah, you too,” He says as I start to leave. We part ways without exchanging phone numbers or planning to meet again because we aren’t friends or anything, we just had a thing for a little while about forever ago so it was just a polite little conversation but now, all I can think about is Andrew.

When I get back to campus, I just go up to my room and lay down, really pretty tired from the flight I had this morning. I don’t want to think about the extremely long Thanksgiving break I had and I certainly don’t want to think about Andrew, so I just lay down on my bed and go to sleep.

I wake up again just after lunch time, which means that I’m very hungry, so I text Sienna and Mason that I’m back and that I’m going to the food court if they want to meet up there for food. They both text me back saying that they already ate but when I’m done, they’re all in the game room so I should meet them there.

I agree that I’ll be there in half an hour and then slip on some shoes and go to the food court. Because it’s not during lunch, the area is pretty empty which means that the lines are pretty short and that’s amazing because I hate how terrible the lines get during school.

I breeze through the large salad bar and then sit down at one of the many small two people tables and eat my salad. As I’m walking towards the trash can to throw away my trash, I pass a group of four girls eating tacos and I’m not eavesdropping but it’s not like I can just not hear them as I pass.

“You know Andrew Haggerty?” I hear one of them wonder curiously towards another one of them, causing me to inconspicuously start moving slower towards the trash can. There aren’t many people in the cafeteria still, so it’s easy to hear them even though I’m not incredibly close and it’s not like they’re trying to talk quietly.

“Yeah, he and Stella just broke up,” Another one says. “Why?”

“He’s outside with that new chick right now,” The first girl says. “The British one with the twin.”

“Nel, you’re just looking for trouble,” One of the other girls says. “It’s probably nothing.”

I speed up now, walking past the table to throw away my trash. They all look over at me, finally realizing that I’m in hearing range and all four of them pale a little bit, looking petrified that their conversation wasn’t as private as they thought it was. Ignoring their mumbles and gasps, I hurry towards the exit of the food court to look for Mason.