Didn't Know It Before( An EJ Caswell/HSMTMTS Fanfiction)

Chapter Sixteen: Don't Know What To Think

I didn't know if anything happened with Nini, because I never ran into EJ the next day. I just carried on my day with the couple's well-being in the back of mind, until Rehearsal, when we were stuck waiting outside for Natalie to find her emotional support hamster. They weren't here now either.

"Hey, Nini." I looked up as I saw Nini coming down the stairs with EJ trailing behind her. "Hey, wait up."

"I don't wanna be late." She said.

"What's going on? Where were you at lunch?"

"I had a costume fitting." She said shortly.

"But why haven't you answered my texts?"

"Can we not do this right now, please?" She asked, turning to face him so that her back was to us.

"Do what, are you mad at me?" He asked. She didn't respond, but I knew she was making 'that face you make when you're mad at me'.

Sooo mad at me.

"You're mad at me." He said. "Look, there was no fitting at lunch."

"Fine. Wanna know where I was at lunch? I was in the computer lab, bribing some hacker to  crack into my phone to recover a message you deleted, when you stole it."

"Wait, why do you think that I-"

"OH please! Gina's not the wonderstudy I need to worry about, is she?" Ashlyn and I exchanged a look.

"Can we talk about this over-" He went to put a hand on her shoulder, to guide her further down the hall, but she pushed his arm off.

"Don't." She walked further down the hallway, and he followed her.

"Nini, I was spiraling, ok? I told you I loved you and you couldn't even say it back. You said it to Ricky, and now I see the way he looks at you, and I know you guys have a lot more history, and-"

"Ricky would never steal my phone."

"No, I know, he just leaves sad-face messages on it asking if you shared a moment over a song." This is going very wrong, very fast.

"Don't make this about Ricky!" She exclaimed.

"That is what this is about!" He said. "I was just trying to hold on to what we had over the summer."

"Yeah, I was too, but you know what? Summer's over." She opened her mouth to say more, but we all knew what that meant.  "Hey, um, is the door locked or something? Why can't we get in?"

"Oh, Natalie Bagley's missing her emotional-support hamster. He got loose. Carlos and Gina are helping her find her. Him. It." Ashlyn explained. Suddenly, there was a high pitched scream, making us all jump. "I think they found it."

EJ put a hand on Nini's arm, turning her to face him.

"Sometimes a relationship needs one person looking after the other. It wasn't divine intervention that got you into Marian the Librarian's costume." My eyes widened. What?

"What does that mean?" Nini asked. EJ's face displayed that he had said too much. "You were responsible for Emily Pratt spending opening night with her head in the toilet?"

"I believed in you." He said, taking a step closer to her.

"Answer the question."

"Ok, take it down a notch. I slipped her a bad deviled egg." I looked at Ashlyn with wide eyes.

That could've killed that girl. This isn't just an invasion of privacy, this is intentionally poisoning someone. Had the situation escalated he would've been charged with Manslaughter, this is very much an entirely different animal.