Lauren's stomach ached horribly as she navigated her way through the halls after school. It was the day after her "intervention", and she'd yet to come to a decision as to what she was going to do in regards to the whole Joey situation.
She'd originally driven home after her fifth hour to study, but had found herself so distracted that she'd wound up getting into her car and driving back to school. She was going to talk to Joey, and she wasn't leaving until this whole mess was resolved and behind her.
She rounded a corner as she searched the theatre building. She could usually find Joey hanging around the building at this time of day, almost always in the company of Brian and Corey. Once she finally made it to the choir room, she aggressively pushed the door open without hesitation. To her at first excitement followed immediately by disappointment, she walked in to find Brian and Corey sitting on the floor talking, but Joey was nowhere in sight.
"Madame president," Brian greeted, extending an arm and bowing his upper body.
Lauren feigned amusement, even though she was way too wound up in the current moment for jokes. "Thank you thank you," she greeted, giving a half-assed bow. "What are you two doing?"
Brian and Corey exchanged a nervous look, Corey sitting up and closing the notebook that they had lying open on the floor. "Just, tinkering around."
"Working on a passion project," Brian summarized, knowing that Joey would flip his shit if they told Lauren about their play before it was ready.
Luckily, Lauren didn't appear to be interested. "Ah, cool. So um, is Joey around? Or is it just the two of you?"
Corey and Brian both breathed out a sigh of relief. "He's around, um, maybe check the theatre? He was talking to some people for us."
Lauren nodded, smiling in relief. "Thanks." She waved them goodbye, setting off towards the theatre. Her feeling of relief was brief, replaced immediately by a knitted feeling in her stomach. She frantically fixed her hair as she approached the door to enter on to the stage, realizing in this moment that she still had absolutely no plan for what she wanted to say to him. Was she calling the whole thing off? Should they just take a step back from their friendship? Could they not be friends at all anymore?
She opened the door slowly, poking her head in to see Joey standing in the center of the stage. Her heartbeat picked up and her face grew hot at the sight of the younger boy. Lauren sighed, knowing that she needed to just rip off the band-aid and move on with her life. She stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind her incase there was anyone else in the room, which she quickly got confirmed.
"So when do you think auditions will be?"
"We're hoping to show it to Davidson by January... definitely early next semester. Hopefully if all goes well we can set up auditions for sometime in February." Joey answered, running a hand through his hair nervously.
"When will the audition material be available? I definitely want to get on board with this!"
Lauren slowly crept her way away from the door, staying offstage and out of site. Joey was talking to three girls; one with shoulder length blonde hair that was tied back into pigtails, one with brown shoulder length curly hair, and one with mid length flaming red hair. Lauren had never seen any one of these girls before, and could only guess that they must be underclassmen. She couldn't help but observe that they all were very pretty.
As Joey continued his discussion with the three girls, Lauren couldn't help but feel a string of jealousy surge through her chest. Who were these girls? Were they friends of his? Did he like them?
She shook her head to clear it. After all, it matter to her—it's not like she wanted them to be together. Joey getting a girlfriend would be a good thing; it could assuage her guilt.
But then why did she feel so sick and enraged at the sight of him laughing and chatting with these admittingly cute girls?
Eventually the discussion ended, and all of the girls hugged Joey goodbye before heading off in the opposite direction. Lauren especially found her face heating up at the sight of the girls hugging him, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out why she was feeling this way. She liked Joey, but not to this extent. Besides, she wasn't the jealous type!
She had all but decided to abandon her plan to talk to Joey and head home. Clearly, Joey was having no issues getting over her, and she was way too heated to talk to him about any of this now. However, before she could make her getaway, Joey turned around, spotting the small girl. "Lauren?"
Lauren froze, closing her eyes in frustration. "Goddammit." She whispered under her breath as the handsome boy approached her.
"Hey, have you been here long? Do you need the stage or something?"
Did she lie? Did she make a run for it? What could she do? "Oh no, it's okay, it's all good."
"Are you sure? I'm done—sorry, I should have reserved it."
"No no I'm not here for the stage, I was here for you." She said before she could stop herself. Her emotions were running too high, and her filter was completely off.
Joey raised an eyebrow at her, suddenly feeling very light as butterflies swarmed around inside of his stomach. "You were... waiting for me?"
"So, who were those girls?" Lauren interrogated, ignoring the question entirely. "Are they... friends of yours or something?"
"Who, Mary Kate, Esther, and Tessa? Surely you've met Tessa; she's Moses's girlfriend. She's a junior in the choir, wait—" Joey stopped himself, noticing the blush spreading across Lauren's face. "Why are you asking?"
Lauren shrugged, staring down at the floor to avoid his eye. "No reason. I mean... you just seemed super friendly and familiar with them, and I've never seen them before. You've definitely never mentioned them. So what, what were you meeting with them about?"
A smile crept upon Joey's face, which thankfully Lauren wasn't looking at, otherwise she might've smacked it off. "They uh, er... fuck this is embarrassing." He closed his eyes, running both of his hands through his hair, which he'd been growing out of the past couple of weeks. It couldn't be true, and yet there was no other way to describe her behavior; was Lauren jealous? He'd never seen her act like this before.
The girl looked up at his mention of embarrassment, her suspicions growing. "What, you have a crush on one of them? Is one of them like, an actual fuck buddy?" She asked, faking a laugh to make it seem like she wasn't upset and that they were just two friends joking around.
Joey laughed. "What? Of course not! I just told you Tessa is Joe Moses's girlfriend, and I think Mary Kate might also has a boyfriend that's in my grade. And I'm not exactly positive about her sexuality, but I know that Esther's seeing a girl right now. They're just some friends I was talking to about... about..."
Lauren couldn't help but notice the blush spreading across Joey's face, and for the first time realized that she might have been overstepping. "Hey fuck, I, I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"Ah, it's okay." Joey sighed nervously, shifting his weight between his legs. He'd already admitted his feelings for her and been rejected—telling her about his show couldn't be any worse. "Uhh so, you know how Davidson picks one student written Musical every semester?"
Lauren shook her head, thrown completely off by the topic. "Uh, yeah?"
"So, I'm working on a play with Corey and Brian. I um, we don't want anyone really to know incase it doesn't wind up working out—save ourselves the embarrassment, you know?"
Lauren took a step back as she weighed over Joey's words, feeling incredibly stupid. That answer had not been what she was expecting. "Oh you're, you're writing a show? That's cool!" She told him honestly, some of the anxiety and tension finally finding it's way out of her body.
"Eh, we'll see. It's only cool if it works out."
"Dont put yourself down, it's still cool that you guys are going for that." Lauren reassured, smiling up at him. "I straight-up could never. What's your show about?"
Joey breathed out a sigh of relief he didn't realize he'd been holding in. She didn't think that he was totally lame? "It's um, it's about Spies. We actually wrote a part with you in mind, but I wanted to wait to talk to you about it..."
"Really? A part for me?" Lauren asked happily, a blush spreading across her face. "You guys shouldn't have!"
"You're a great actress. It was a no brainer." Joey answered honestly. "But uh, I gotta get the show approved first, so we still have a ways to go before we can hopefully make it happen. So um, what did you want to talk to me about?."
Lauren's smile faltered, as her dread settled back over her. In her relief, she'd nearly completely forgotten the reason that she'd come looking for Joey in the first place. "Oh, um, I wanted to talk to you about, well, things..."
Joey raised an eyebrow at her. "Things?"
"Yeah, you know. Us." She looked away from him, wondering why the hell she was phrasing it like that. "I guess I just got a little distracted when I saw you talking to, to those girls." She admitted, staring down guiltily at her feet.
Joey resisted the urge to start jumping for joy on the stage at her admission. "Lauren Lopez... were you jealous?"
"Shut up." Lauren responded, which in itself was an answer.
Joey bit his bottom lip. This was too good to be true—it couldn't be real. "What, were you worried seeing me talk to other girls?"
"I said shut it Richter."
"Mhm," Joey teased confidently. Noticing the obvious duress the older girl was under, he took a step closer to her and rested a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You know that I'm happy that you are, right? Like... stupidly happy." He reassured, knowing that he was probably giving too much away. "Also you have nothing to worry about; I told you, you're my one and only girl."
"Uhh okay fine, I was jealous." Lauren mumbled, still not looking at him. "Which makes no fucking sense, because I am so not the jealous type, but seeing you hug and talk happily with other girls when I didn't know whether or not one of them was maybe with you it just, it just... goddammit." She buried her face in her hands, humiliated.
"I mean, we, we know that we like each other." Joey said in an attempt to comfort her. "It's normal that you'd feel that way. You think I never feel a little jealous when I see other boys being flirty with you?"
Lauren sighed, finally looking at him. "I just, I don't think I realized until now just how much I want to be with you, but fuck I shouldn't say that! I have to stop leading you on, but here I am getting all worked up just because some girl batted her eyes at y—"
"Okay okay okay, I think we're unraveling a bit here," Joey cut across, grabbing Lauren by her shoulders. "You're all good Lo, you're not leading me on. I don't expect anything from you, and from time to time I get awesome little surprises like this." Lauren sunk down to the floor, Joey sitting down with her. "Is this why you came to talk to me?" Joey asked. "To tell me that you're worried that you're leading me on?"
"I don't, I don't even know." Lauren admitted sheepishly.
"Tell ya what," Joey scooted closer to her, a hopeful smile growing across his crooked jaw. "How about you come with me to the football game this Friday? Just as friends, no pressure." He added, before Lauren could stress even more than she already was. "Brian's forcing me to go with him, and I could really use the company. Maybe after the game, we can go somewhere and talk through all of this?"
Lauren finally looked at him, eyebrow raised. "You asking me out on a date Richter?"
"I said just as friends!"
"Yeah, but you didn't mean it." She teased, to which Joey didn't argue. "Why's Brian forcing you to go?"
"Joe asked him to come watch him," Joey explained. "And Brian's paranoid as hell of what Zoey and her jocks will do to him if he goes to watch Joe."
Lauren shrugged. "I think he'll be fine. He could be there for any reason."
"Did I mention that Joe wants Brian to wear his jersey?"
"Oh, yeah he's asking to get his ass kicked." Lauren said with a laugh. "I can see him wanting you to protect him."
"Protect him? I think I'm more just supposed to accompany him so that he doesn't wind up alone."
"Yeah no, he needs protection. Don't worry," Lauren rose to her feet, cracking her knuckles. "I'm up for the job."
"Whoa!" Joey exclaimed, raising his hands up in self defense. "Everyone better watch out with Lauren Lopez out for blood!"
"Shut up," she teased, offering him a hand up. As they walked out of the theatre together, Joey wrapped an arm around Lauren, and she didn't object. "For real though. The jocks better watch out with this almighty duo coming after them. Nothing stops the two of us when we're together."