Oh, It's On

Chapter 13

I come in peace. This is my please-don’t-kill-me sacrifice. So, please don’t kill me. My deepest apologies and babbles at the end of the chapter. Happy reading!

 

Chapter 13.

“Tater tots too.”

The lunch-lady shoots me a dirty look.

I smile. “Please.”

She scoops a spoonful and dumps it onto my plate. A single piece hits the rim of the plate and bounces onto the edge of my tray, and wobbles off the edge. It’s in mid air for a second before a hand catches it.

“Can’t waste food now, can we?” Josh laughs.

He puts the tater tot back onto my pile and I contemplate throwing the whole thing out. It’s a shame I hate wasting food.

“It’s not the moral thing to do,” I tell him, pulling my tray off the line and heading to the cash register.

“Of course it isn’t.”

“If you’re here to make fun of me…” I begin.

“No.” He pulls out a twenty and hands it to the girl at the cash register. I look and see that he doesn’t have anything. “I’m buying you lunch.”

“Huh.”

The cashier fumbles with his change and, where he flashes a smile at her, she nearly drops it all. Charming. Really.

“You know,” Josh says as we weave our way out of the school ‘food-court’, “where I come from, when a guy buys you lunch, you’re obligated to sit with them.”

I roll my eyes. “You know where I come from, free food is free food without any obligations.”

“Listen Stella…”

Josh pulls me to the side of the hallway, where there’s an opening to a door. My back hits it slightly and it creaks open. He steps into the empty room, and after a minute, I slowly follow him in.

“Alright,” I sigh. “What do you want?”

He studies me for a second.

“If you pulled me in here to stare at me—”

“Why have you been avoiding me?” he says suddenly.

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Didn’t see that coming.

I try to think of a reasonable explanation, but I don’t come up with one. It’s best to be straight-forward anyways. I clear my throat. “I haven’t been avoid—”

“Yes. Yes you have.”

I shift uncomfortably.

It’s not really ‘avoiding’ per se. So what if I just decide to take a detour when I see him coming down the other end of the hall. So what if I suddenly develop serious cramps when he sits down at lunch. So what if I'm showering every time he calls. It’s not avoiding-avoiding, so really, it’s not avoiding at all. I just haven’t been talking to him, or looking at him, or acknowledging his existence. Totally different.

“And now you’re ignoring me.”

I stare at him and his eyes search my face. For some reason, I feel my pulse quicken.

“Okay look,” I begin slowly, choosing my words carefully. “You left—”

He sighs. “We’ve been over this—”

“—yes but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen—”

“What was I supposed—?”

“Let me say what I want to say first,” I say. When he’s silent for a while, I take a deep breath and continue. “I’ve had a crush on you for so long that I don’t remember when it started.”