Writing's Second Taste

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Adam and Sienna

When we arrived at the restaurant they told me about, I could see them on the long table near the middle. They were talking amongst themselves and while I knew they didn't mean to be rude or annoying, the accumulation of their voices created a noise.

"You mean all of them are here?" Adam questioned once he saw the big group and I nodded. Not one of us turns down an adventure and it was reminiscent to the ones we used to do when we were back home – they just took it to another country.

I gave his hand a small squeeze before plastering a grin on my face and walking up to them, "Hey guys."

They looked up from their conversations and I was greeted with a bunch of smiles and hellos. I held onto Adam's arm and gestured towards him, "I'd like you to meet Adam, he's the guy I've been talking to you about."

Majority stood up to shake his hand or give a friendly hug and this did not bode well with the other diners. We were already obnoxiously loud but pair it up with our various scraping of chairs and moving around, we were just asking to be kicked out.

So I tried to act as the mediator by urging them all to take their seat again, "Calm down, he'll be here the whole time."

While they all shuffled around back to their chairs, I introduced them one by one as we took our own seats, "Then that's Justin and this girl right here is Gracie."

"It's actually Grace but no one ever calls me that," she laughed, "It's so nice to finally meet you in person, Sienna has told me a lot about you."

Just not the latest happenings.

"Good things, I hope," he chuckled playfully and I internally cringed at myself because we all knew the answer to that.

The way they were conversing made it appear as if I wasn't sat smack in the middle of them. While I knew Adam wouldn't expose me, I wasn't so sure about Gracie because we all knew that as my best friend, it was her job to embarrass me.

I quickly glanced around the table to observe my other friends and my eyes suddenly met Justin's, who I failed to notice was sitting right in front of me. I gripped onto the edge of the table when I saw his concerned expression.

I'm okay, I wanted to tell him. I had to convey that I wasn't forcing myself, that I no longer felt like I wanted to crawl my way back to bed at any given moment, that I didn't want to hide from the world anymore.

And that Adam wasn't the cause of worry anymore. In fact, I've been too drowned with what happened so recently that it completely slipped my mind that Adam was first of all my comfort. He had been my escape and while he did admit that I was the one that saved him, both of us discredit how much he helped me.

Now we were back to being like that again. He could have easily denied my request since I basically broke his heart and it was wicked of me to keep on lying to my friends. Instead, he accepted with no hesitation.

"Sienna, your order?" Gracie called my attention and I snapped right out of my trance. I tore my gaze away from Justin and turned to my best friend as she looked at me expectantly. I looked up and the waiter was also waiting for my words.

"Uh," I stammered, frantically looking around for my menu and guess what, it remained untouched on the table.

Can you believe in my frenzy, I almost dropped the damn thing? Why was their menu so offensively large? I almost elbowed Gracie when I practically tore it open.

"She'll have the special burger with the side of sweet potato fries," Adam jumped in and I could have hugged him right there when he rescued me from future embarrassment, "Did you want the dip with that?"