Chapter 28

The bell rung—class began. Just in the nick of time however, Jennifer waltzed through the door with her notebook tucked under her arm. She had a cocky saunter in her step as she marched down the aisle toward her seat behind mine. She gazed down at me with a smirk, causing me to sneakily rub her thigh as she passed. She responded by swatting my arm with her notebook—hard.

"Ow," I quietly replied, rubbing my arm. She'd caught me with the painful spiral wire on the spine. Jennifer simply chuckled in amusement and took her seat, just as the teacher got up from his and began his lesson.

Unsurprisingly, we were given another wonderful read-and-copy assignment. I swear my wrist was going to fall off by the time the day was out. However, I was being a good student and carried out my work as instructed. I was still feeling good, especially after seeing the two lovely girls again that I'd bonded with deeper than I could've ever dreamed. They were enough to keep my mind off of the increasingly overbearing hunger in my stomach.

At one point, I consciously fell back on one of my old habits, which was gazing upon the lovely girls in class. I was only doing so to take a brief break from writing instead of completely zoning out from my schoolwork. As I looked upon them, I realized that I'd always wondered what kinds of grades the girls I liked got. They must've had good grades since every time during the year I'd looked over at them, they were always quite diligent and engrossed in their work—more so than I was. I sighed happily and returned to my work.

I don't know where the time went because what seemed like a minute later, the bell for lunch rang out. I looked up at the clock in surprise at what time it was. I shrugged it off as I was more than happy to head to lunch. After all, I was starving.

Before I bolted downstairs however, I suddenly remembered that Eve had invited me to hang out with her. She got up from her desk, unlatching her lunch bag from her backpack and began to leave the room together with Lila. She turned to me and waved for me to follow them. I couldn't do so immediately, as a group of students separated me from the two girls and forced me to wait.

Once I was out in the hallways, I didn't see them there amongst the fluctuating wave of students eager to eat. I folded my arms across my chest and sighed in defeat. This was why I always try to get out as quickly as I can.

I finally made my way downstairs and headed out the doors to the outside pathways. Right there in front of me were the two girls standing and talking in the shade of the metallic overhang. I sighed happily and walked up to them.

Eve greeted me as I approached. "Hey!"

"Hey there," I replied with a casual smile, causing Lila to look over at me. She didn't seem terribly interested to see me.

"Oh, hey, Anthony," Lila nonchalantly said before turning to Eve again. "So I was saying that—uh..." Lila trailed off when she realized that Eve was pretty fixated on me and I wasn't exactly leaving. "What's going on?"

"I invited Anthony to hang out with us for lunch," Eve said with a smile as she glanced to her friend.

Lila was dumbfounded, scoffing in disbelief.

"You didn't tell me," Lila said to Eve.

"I wanted it to be a surprise so... surprise," she playfully replied with a soft chuckle. Eve then looked over at me again. "So, where's your lunch?"

"Oh, I get it from the cafeteria," I said.

"Ha!" Lila remarked with an arrogant smirk on her face.

"Okay, that's cool," Eve replied. "We'll be sitting over here. Just come look for us."

"Got it," I replied back and then began to calmly hurry toward the cafeteria. My stomach couldn't take much more of this torture.

Once I got my tray of food, I immediately headed for my usual sitting place with my friends.

"Hey guys," I quickly greeted them.

"Hey..., what's up?" Frank asked, realizing I wasn't taking my seat.

"You guys don't mind if I eat with someone else today, do you?"

The four of them looked at me, dumbfounded.

"Well, yeah, that's cool," Frank said. "It's not like we have you on a leash or anything."

Josh then teased me, "You're going to sit with your new girlfriend, aren't you?"

"She's not my girlfriend, but yes, I was going to sit with her," I replied with a smile.

"All right, man," Brandon said, holding out a fist to me, allowing me to fist-bump with him.

"See ya," the guys said nearly in unison.

"Yeah, see ya," Nora said, taking an interest in me with a curious smile on her face. I chuckled in amusement, waving to the group as I took my leave.

I headed back out of the cafeteria and soon spotted the two girls sitting at one of the outdoor picnic tables. Eve waved to me as I approached them.

"There you are," she said as the two were enjoying their own respective sandwiches. I quickly had to make a decision of where to sit. I figured it was safer not to sit next to Lila and so I sat next to Eve.

"Wow," Lila remarked as she gazed upon my lunch of spaghetti, mixed vegetables and a roll. "That's the kind of junk they serve?" She punctuated her attempted barb with a quiet laugh to Eve.

"Yeah," I replied, quickly digging in with my plastic fork, "and I missed breakfast so I'm hungry as hell."

Lila just rolled her eyes as I brushed her off while Eve chuckled.

"I think it's pretty cool," Eve remarked. "I wouldn't touch it myself, but... I respect people liking different things."

"Whatever," Lila said as she crunched on a couple potato chips from her neat little zippered plastic baggie.

It felt so good to finally eat. Missing a meal was so unpleasant and I felt damn near lucky that I was able to focus long enough on my schoolwork until lunch.

"So, Lila," Eve said as I continued to eat. "Anthony and I were talking this morning about how he is trying to be more positive and bring out a new side of himself."

"Why?" Lila asked as she looked over at me. "I don't like the old side of you anyway."

Eve quietly laughed. "Come on, Lila—give him a chance. He's actually pretty cool."

"That doesn't seem possible," Lila sarcastically responded.

"Well," I said after swallowing a mouthful of food, "I'm just trying to better myself. I'm not really doing it for anyone else but me."

"That's good," Eve replied. "I can admire that. It's very grown-up of you."

Oh, how I didn't like that phrase. "Please, no," I remarked with a playful weep. "Don't call me that."

She giggled loudly. "Sorry," she replied with a grin.

Just as we were beginning to share a moment together, my mind couldn't help itself from wandering into a spontaneous fantasy. I would've kicked myself for going off daydreaming in the midst of talking to an actual girl, if not for me getting very turned on by the images in my mind.

Eve slowly got to her feet, staring at Lila with a hungry look in her eyes. She walked over to the other girl and took her gently by the hand, helping her to her feet. There, the two slowly put their arms around one another, giggling as they stared deeply into each other’s eyes. They leaned in, moaning softly as their lips melded together in heated passion.

Their hands rubbed each other’s' back, occasionally flipping up the hem of their shirts for just a second as if to tease me. They sighed as their lips pulled away, turning their heads to me with equally big grins and inviting me to join them.

"Anthony?" Eve spoke up, pulling me out of my daydream with a surprised shake of my head. She laughed quietly. "You okay there? You kind of spaced out."

"What a surprise!" Lila remarked with a roll of her eyes.

I sighed, trying to rid the fantasy from my mind. Though, as a red-blooded human male, I couldn't help but be fascinated by the idea of girlfriends experimenting with each other.

I chuckled in an attempt to brush it off. "Sorry about that," I responded.

"It's cool," she said with a reassuring smile.

Lila then looked at her wristwatch. "It's almost time to go back," she said. The two then began to pack their silverware back into their little lunch coolers.

"Well," Eve spoke up, "the two of us are going to head back to class."

"All right," I replied as the three of us started to get up. "See you both back there."

Lila scoffed. "Yeah, great," she sarcastically said as she began to walk away. Eve quietly laughed.

"See you in class, Anthony," she spoke with a kindness in her voice I'd never heard before. It caused me to sigh in content and smile as I admired her walking away. She and Lila then seemed to be quietly arguing about something, though I couldn't possibly imagine what. I chuckled to myself as I grabbed my tray and tossed it in the nearest garbage can.