Dream Team Plus One

Part Sixteen

The rest of the stream went pretty well, under the circumstances. The Dream Team stans were now convinced that Grapnap was a real thing, which hurt Clay even more. After they had finally gotten through all of the donations, Grace decided to end the stream.

“I’m gonna be in my room if y’all need anything. I might mess around and take a nap,” she giggled to herself and walked off upstairs.

Clay and Nick awkwardly made eye contact, “George, we’ll be outside,” Clay walked off first, Nick followed closely.

Once they were outside and shut the door, Nick spoke first, “Why, you knew I liked her. Did anything happen between you while you two were alone?”

“No, I swear. Stop treating me like I planned this”.

“What are we going to do about this?”

“We aren’t going to do anything about it. I’m going to try and step back. My friendship with both of you is more important to me,” Clay looked at the ground, “I’d rather keep both of you in my life then be forced to chose”.

Nick looked at his friend, “you shouldn’t be forced to give up your feelings, that isn’t fair,”  he sat down on one of the chairs on the deck, “how did this all come to this?”

Grace sat on her bed, staring at the wall. Feelings and thoughts raced through her mind a million miles a minute. Never in her life had she put herself in a situation like this. Every move she made was carefully thought out and calculated. “You screwed everything up this time,” she picked up the pillow next to her and threw it at the wall. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes, she knew she needed to get over herself, dating in a friend group never ends well. Her self loathing was interrupted by a knock on her door, “come in”.

It was George. Grace and George had an interesting relationship. The combination of not having much in common and their shy personalities kept them from forming a close bond. That didn’t mean they weren’t good friends though. “Is everything ok?,” he glanced down to see the pillow on the floor, “I’ve never heard a pillow hit the wall so hard”.

“I’m just incredibly overwhelmed right now, I’m sorry if I disturbed y’all downstairs”.

“You didn’t. Nick and Clay went outside to talk about something, I was getting kind of lonely”.

Grace walked over to her window, opened the blinds, and looked down at her two friends, clearly having a heated discussion about something, “do you know what they’re talking about? It looks intense”.

“I have no clue,” he lied, it wasn’t his place to tell her how his friends felt and he knew it, “how do you normally destress, maybe I can help?”

“You’re probably not gonna like it,” Grace sat back down on her bed and motioned for George to come sit with her.

He just stood there staring at her, “tell me what we’re doing first”.

Grace burst out laughing, realizing what she accidentally insinuated, “I read fanfics when I need a distraction. I had the perfect one up next on my list”.

“And that would be?” George joined her sitting on the bed.

Grace pulled out her laptop and logged onto her secret Wattpad account, “Grace x George,” she smirked.

He rolled his eyes, “I wasn’t even aware that people shipped us, this should be good.”

After a few chapters, they finally reached the part both of them were dreading, smut. Neither of them could keep a straight face as Grace read out the author's description of their wild night together.

“I am not this basic!” Grace complained, “This is honestly insulting. If they had seen my personal twitter they would know I’m way better than this”. She was not one to hold back when it came to her personal accounts. They were all set to private so she felt free to talk about anything and everything.

“You have no right to complain, they made it seem like I had no clue what I’m doing!” George half yelled.

By the end of the fanfic, George and Grace were happily married with two kids. Grace wished her life could be as simple as people thought it was.

“It’s getting late, I should probably go grab the others and see what they want for dinner,” George got up from his spot on the bed, “I hope you’re feeling better”.

“Leave supper to me, just tell them to get ready to go out”.

George opened the deck door to a heated argument between his two best friends, “Grace says it’s time to get ready for dinner. She says we're going out”.

“Fine,” Nick walked inside.

Clay and George stared at each other. George was the first to speak, “you have feelings for her don’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Not to Grace, her mind seems to be elsewhere. I’m going to assume all of this was about her?”

“Yeah, we still have no clue how to handle this. We don’t want to give up our friendship, but it’s unfair to expect each other to give up our feelings”.

“Want to hear my advice?”

“Yeah”.

“Both of you slow down, let Grace work through whatever she’s going through. Then when she seems like she’s in a better place, you both can talk to her about it. You two can’t leave her in the dark about this”.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on with her?”

George knew exactly what was going on, at least he thought he did. He could see the way she looked at both of them, she was just as conflicted about all of this, she was just better at hiding it. Nevertheless, he knew it wasn’t his place to give out this information, “I have no clue, but it’s best to let her work through it herself unless she asks for help”.

Clay nodded, with that the two boys walked inside to get ready for supper.

The four of them all climbed into Grace’s car once again, George sat in the front with Grace to prevent any issues. “Since it's Tuesday, we’re going to get Tacos! I know the best place and it has the perfect view of the ocean”.

Thankfully Grace’s excitement for tacos distracted her from the tension in the back seat. Nick and Clay didn’t want to talk to each other. They were so frustrated with each other, it was a miracle Grace didn’t catch on.

Once they were seated, they all quietly looked through the menu. The sun was slowly setting over the ocean, creating the perfect atmosphere, if only it was the perfect situation. Before anyone ordered Grace made an announcement, “Y’all better order whatever you want, I’m paying”.

This caused an argument at the table, “You’re funny, I’m paying this time,” Clay argued.

“Too bad, I already took my credit card out,” Nick flashed his wallet.

Grace watched their waitress start to walk toward their table, when she noticed the fighting going on at the table, she quickly turned around and walked to another table. Grace laughed to herself, for a brief moment she forgot about her internal turmoil and simply enjoyed the chaos of the moment.

As the time passed, so did the tension. Grace refused to let anyone try the white salsa (VB people know what's up), Clay and Nick finally started letting loose, and George ended up paying for everything. The friend group was finally starting to feel like the dysfunctional family it was meant to be.

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1264 words