Pillow Talk

9~ Try

"Try. I mean, what's the worse that can happen?" Daisy asked, sending Parker a sideways glance across the lunchroom. It had been the first day in years that we had been forced to eat inside do to the cold front that had blown in fresh snow.

"It's Parker Diaz, I can name a lot of things that can go wrong." I replied, turning to look back down at my plate. Daisy opened her mouth, already starting to speak when she broke off mid sentence. I didn't realize why until I felt someone fall into the empty seat beside me.

"Hey." River said, winking at Daisy when he saw her gawking over his sudden appearance.

I didn't know what to do, my cheeks were probably bright red too.

"What are you doing over here?" Daisy finally managed to say, "Did you get lost again, Moore? I think you're supposed to be in class right now." I had two parts of me fighting back and forth as I stared at my best friend. One part wanted to reach over and high five her for not becoming another one of River Moore's toys, but the other half wanted to defend River, to say he wasn't all that bad and could sit with us if he wanted too.

"Actually, I wanted to see my favorite person and her little sidekick." Daisy rolled her eyes, huffing out a laugh.

"It's not very nice to call Scarlet my sidekick." She joked, smiling at me. I returned her smile and turned to River.

"Why are you here?" I asked. He shrugged, stealing a chip from my plate.

"It's Gym for me right now." Is all he said, and he really didn't need to say anything else. Daisy looked beyond confused, as did most of the cafeteria.

"Gym? Isn't that like your favorite class? You're a football player." She mumbled, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. I spoke up before River could, completely cutting off whatever excuse he was going to come up with.

"He's sick. That's why he was gone all weekend. He's got mono or something." I felt River pinch my thigh, catching him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

"Is that contagious?" Daisy moved away at the question, feeling as if she had answered it herself. I yawned, shrugging my right shoulder.

"I don't know. Probably not unless you're Delia and shoving your tongue down his throat." Daisy still looked freaked out as she pried herself out of her seat and grabbed her bag.

"I'm not taking the risk. And, Scarlet, babe." She paused and sent me a worried look, "I don't think you should be hanging around him." Then my best friend waved and darted out of the lunch room, leaving no sign that she had been there at all.

*

I felt ready to fall asleep when I got home. Not only had we had to run in P.E, but we had a fire drill during that time and had to hurry out of the complete opposite side of the building.

"Carls! Wait." I felt a hand wrap around my wrist as I reached for the door knob. I turned to find Steven sitting in an old broken rocking chair on the porch, holding a Sherlock Holmes novel in his hand.

"Hey." I waved, yawning. He marked his page and stood up, towering over me. Not only was I shorter the more then half of the population, but my brothers all seemed to get the tall genes and made me feel like the baby of the family.

"I saw you with River at lunch." He said, getting straight to the point, "Why the hell are you with him? Are you two dating or hav-"

"No." I cut him off quickly, "Please just leave it alone, Steve." He started to shake his head, then stopped, his eyes growing wide.