Crushes

Chapter 7

I wake up Monday morning, another day of school. I walk to my dresser and change out of my pajamas and then walk to the dining room table.

I take my seat next to Tessa, she hadn't talked to me all weekend, "come on Tess, you cannot possibly be that mad."

"How would you have felt if I told Kate you like her?"

"Tess, she was sitting right there, Ezra wasn't even there, it's different."

She gets ready to say something, but gets interrupted by our parents, she just glares at me. "Morning you two," our mom says as she and our dad sit across from us.

"Morning," Tessa says quietly in response. The morning is usual, we all talk until our dad takes us to school.

Once I get out of the car, I see Skye pulling Kate by the wrist, I can't help but follow them. "Kate, what is wrong with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've known you since we were kids, you can't hide things from me."

"I've hid it long enough, what's stopping me from hiding it any longer?"

"What are you hiding?"

"I don't want to talk about it," I hear Kate's feet coming around the corner and I start walking towards my first hour, band, trying to make it seem casual.

I see her walk by me, avoiding eye contact, "hey," I holler as casually as I can.

I watch her stop in her footsteps as she turns back to meet my eyes. Her brown eyes sparkle as she walks towards me, "is Tessa still mad," she asks me, playing it off as if nothing just happened.

"Yeah, I honestly don't know what her problem is," I say.

"She's just being a girl, but trust me, if it's the Ezra I think it is, then you want to keep her away form him."

We get to the band room and I hold the door open for her, "what's so bad about him?"

"I've heard that he just gets with the 'easy' girls, to, you know," she makes awkward hand movements as we walk over to a wall with instrument cubbies.

"I really hope that she's not falling for someone like that," I say, reaching for my trombone.

"Wait," she points to where Mr. Parks usually sits, "we have a sub."

"That's surprising," I'm cut off by the bell and see everyone start to pour into the classroom, I catch Skye looking at Kate with a sympathetic look on her face, I look at Kate, who is avoiding eye contact. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I know she's lying, but I don't want to pry.

"Alright, your teacher left a worksheet to do, he asks that you sit in your sections, once you finish the worksheet, you can talk quietly and they will be turned in tomorrow," the sub says. We all hurry into our sections and the sub hands us our worksheets, I sit next to Tyler, like usual, but today, Sky sat on the other side of Tyler and Kate sat on the other side of me.

"Are the inseparable two in a fight," Tyler says to them, neither of them answer.

"I can't believe any of you are qualified for this," Luke sneaks in a comment.

"It's band, not the olympics," Skye says.

"We have to stay serious about this if we want to keep up our winning streak," he says under his breath.

I glare at him, he always ruins things, I catch Skye glancing at Kate, "Kate, I know somethings wrong," she says.

"Let's just work on this stupid paper," she says, obviously getting annoyed with Skye. I looked down at the worksheet and realized it was just a word search with five words, I was able to find the words withing three minutes.

"How exciting," I say sarcastically.

"Yeah," Kate laughs.

"Are you gonna make a move with her," Tyler whispers in my ear, I shake my head no.

"Kate, please tell me what's going on."

"If I didn't tell you when we were alone, what makes you think I'd tell you in front of everybody?"

By now, Luke had gotten up to go talk to the sub, like he usually does, "there are two other people, far from everybody."

"You think you can tell every major issue with me, but since school started, you haven't cared a single bit. You've been too involved with crushes, all you wanna talk about is guys and what I look for, I hate talking about that kind of stuff," Kate pauses, glaring at Skye through her oversized glasses, "we all know that you're just eager for me to get a boyfriend so that you can have one without feeling guilty about it."

After an awkward silence, Tyler says, "meow."

Both girls glared at him, "you need to watch what you say," I tell him.

"You think that's right? You think think the only reason I'm trying to get you a boyfriend is so that I can have one? Well guess what," Sky says angrily, the next moment later, Skye and Tyler are both kissing.

Once they pull away from each other, Tyler is in shock and Skye is glaring at Kate, "you're disgusting," Kate says as she walks to the sub.

I sit in silence, staring from Tyler to Skye, glancing back and forth between the two of them, "you should probably go check on her," Tyler tells me, I can't tell if he's trying to get rid of me or if he sees it as a good opportunity for me to make a move on Kate. I look up at her, I see the sob shake her head at her and she slouched by a wall. I looked back at Tyler to get his consent, but he and Sky are extremely close, they aren't kissing, but I still feel very uncomfortable, so I walk over to Kate.

When I sit, she doesn't say anything, at first, "I can't believe her."

I don't know what to say, "what was that all about?"

She looks me in the eye and then she looks away, "in eighth grade, she started going out with someone. It didn't last long, it ended over that summer. Since then, she's talked about her crushes to me, I told her I don't care who she dates, but she insisted on trying to set me up with people."

"Why didn't she just date someone?"

"When she dated that one guy, we got into a lot of fights because she was spending all of her time with her boyfriend, blocking me out when I needed her the most. I developed the theory that she didn't want to be single, but she didn't want me to feel like a third wheel, so she stopped dating and started trying to set me up with people."

I stared at her, "I'm not sure what to say, I'm not good with this kind of stuff."

"Figures," she says, laughing.

I join in on her laughing, "what was happening at that time?"

She tensed up, "I've never told anyone."

"Really."

"I had gotten over it by the time Sky as back to helping me, or maybe I just told myself that," she says, I want to wrap an arm around her and comfort her, but I don't want to push it, after all, I just started talking to her.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I want to, I probably do need to tell someone about it. Just not here, not with a bunch of other people around. I'll tell you in ninth hour, I swear, it's not like they'll pay attention to us anyways," we spent the rest of the class sitting next to each other, taking the occasional glance at Skye and Tyler.