Chapter Thirty-one – The Role of a Lifetime

Chapter Thirty-one – The Role of a Lifetime
MALIA

The next break, Lia kept nagging me about whether there were any hot relatives. Val and I could only shake our heads at her. Carter was such a sweet guy, and he treated her like the queen she was, but she was looking for something else, something … more. 

I couldn’t blame her, after all, I could only wish for the chance to keep searching for someone that I loved and who loved me back equally. Instead, I was stuck in a loveless engagement and would end up in a loveless marriage. 

Slightly shaking my head to clear up my thoughts, I put a smile back on my face while I told my friends about Blaine. How hot he was and how sweet. I hated lying, but kept reminding myself that it was to keep my friends safe. Val, the only one who knew the truth, quirked an eyebrow in between, questioning every word I was saying. 

Her look made me chuckle eventually, causing Lia to look between us, confused about what she had missed. 

“Sorry”, I managed to say between laughter, “Val was just looking too funny.” I held my stomach with laughter, surprising myself that I was even capable of still laughing like that. “Is it that hard to believe that I can get a boyfriend? That you look at me like that?”

Val grinned at me, then shrugged her shoulders. “Can you blame me? The only guys in your life so far were your dad and this uggo right there,” she said, pointing at Mason with a glare. 

“Takes one to know one,” Mason threw back with the fake smile. He couldn’t fool me, though. I saw the hurt behind his eyes. It had flickered up the moment I had brought up my boyfriend. 

I wasn’t as oblivious as my friend assumed. His feelings for me were blatantly obvious, but I always pretended to be unaware in order not to lose him by rejecting him. And I think he was aware of that and didn’t confess his feelings straight forward for the same reasons. 

“Guys…”, Lia intervened, always jumping in before things could get too hurtful. She swerved the topic back to me, to stop the fight before it broke out, “Soo, when do we get to meet this hottie?”

I rolled my eyes at her smiling, because I had known the question would come. But knowing it made me happy, because it was proof of our friendship. “You can meet him after school. He wanted to pick me up, so I warned him that he would need to meet you so that he would be waiting in the café close to school.”

“Nice! Let’s see if he is as hot as you claim,” Lia wondered, taping her fingertips together, as if she was scheming something.

“Lia,” Val said with a warning undertone, “You sound like you already think about how to steal him away.”

“What?!” she asked, her eyes wide in shock. “I would never do that! I was just thinking what embarrassing things to tell him about Mal.”

“Lia!” I laughed. 

“I sure am curious to,” Mason said, surprising everyone, because he hadn’t said a thing ever since I had brought up Blaine. “But another question. Why does nobody seem to care about those three suddenly hanging around? I mean… What the hell?”

He pointed his thumb at Marco and Sofia. Like in the first break, they had sat close to me, leaning on the wall. 

“Fair point,” Lia agreed, looking at them, like she hadn’t noticed them before. “Who are you guys?”

Sofia was the one to answer, being the most outspoken among the three Mafia members. “I was wondering when someone would acknowledge us,” she chuckled, looking at me. She continued, “Your friends sure are special, Malia. My name is Sofia, this is my best friend Marco, and the girl under the tree, you should know already, but just in case you forgot, her name is Isabella.”

“Kay. That still doesn’t explain why you guys are suddenly lingering around,” Mason answered, whose eyes narrowed at them.

“I met them this weekend. Their parents work in the same company as Blaine. When we got to talk, we learned that we go to the same school, so I figured it would be cool to hang around,” I lied. 

“That explains why they weren’t shocked by the whole boyfriend revelation,” Val said, obviously supporting my reason because she knew better. 

“Well, I guess the more the merrier,” Lia chirped, “Great to meet you guys. I am Lia, this gorgeous one is Val, and the grumpy one over here is called Mason.”

“Nice to meet you”, Sofia said, and Marco nodded in agreement. Isabella gave a small wave, then looked back into her textbook. 

When the group split up and went to different classes, only Val and I remained together, followed by Sofia, who claimed her class was close to ours. 

“Sooo, how are they really?”, Val asked, glancing back at Sofia.

“Good question, I wish I knew,” I groaned.

“You don’t?”

“Nope. They waited for me at the entrance. Apparently, they are my bodyguards or something.”

“You could say that,” Sofia entered the conversation, nodding her head. “No worries, as soon as Marcello is in sight, we will vanish like ghosts.”

With that, she took a turn and left us alone. 

The last classes went by way too fast, bringing the meeting between Marcello and my friends closer by the minute. My heart would not start pounding in my chest, just thinking about it. To convince them, I would need to pretend to be in love with him. 

When the bell chimed, declaring the end of the school day, I packed my stuff in slow motion. 

“Come on, girl. Gotta get it over with,” Val teased, nudging my shoulder.

We met the others by the side entrance, Lia bouncing up and down like a kid waiting to get to an amusement park. Mason was the opposite, standing there stiff and gloomy. 

I couldn’t see any of my Mafia entourage, but I was sure they were watching from somewhere close by. While I wanted to stroll to the café, Lia was more in a hurry and started literally dragging us along. 

When we rounded a corner, I saw him and stopped in my tracks. 
Hot damn. This guy was too attractive for anyone to resist. Especially in casual clothes. He was wearing jeans that fit him perfectly and a simple black shirt with a round, deep neckline, which perfectly exposed his tattoos. 

I gulped, savouring the image for a minute longer than I should. Only then did I remember that my friends were surrounding me and looking at me expectantly. 

It’s showtime, I thought, and started to move. This part we had not planned, so I needed to improvise. I had never been in a relationship, which is why I could only act out of instinct or use what I had seen in movies. 

I let my bag slip off my shoulder and drop to the ground, then I started running right at him.