Adria and Tiffany held their shoes with their hands as they strolled to the locker rooms.
“I’m tired,” Tiffany cursed out as she stretched her hands across her back.
Adria nodded at her, “today’s practice was intense. I need to take a bath,” Adria muttered too.
Their white and pink cheerleading dress was almost covered in sweat.
Tiffany frowned deeply as her eyes darted towards the boys at the back who were already heading out, still in their sports clothes with their bags hung over their backs.
“There’s no water in school,” Tiffany announced with annoyance. “Something about broken pipes. They’d better fix it by tomorrow.”
Adria felt shattered at Tiffany’s words, “oh come on. Again? I could never reach home like this, I would itch to death,” she complained as she looked down at herself.
No wonder the boys were all heading out with their sweaty bodies.
“We’d have to,” Tiffany pointed out with a look of disdain.
Adria let out an exasperated sigh, “every day I see reasons why I shouldn’t have joined the club,” she whined.
Tiffany rolled her eyes and followed it with a laugh, “I’ll never be off the hook for convincing you, would I?”
“Never,” Adria confirmed.
They heard someone coming to their side from the left and Tiffany grinned.
“Your homeboys could never get through the day without talking to you, could they?” she beamed.
Adria snickered.
She loved her boys. She cared about them but didn’t know how to navigate between them.
Seven always got mocked by Jace because Jace felt he had a crush on Adria.
She didn’t see it at first, probably because she didn’t care. But recently she was seeing it.
They were all friends and it really didn’t seem right. It placed her in a hot spot that she didn’t sign up for.
What she had refused to believe though was Tiffany’s logic that Jordan too had a crush on her.
How true could that be?
It was impossible.
“Hey guys,” the boys said as they got closer.
People watched them with fondness as they passed.
They were the most popular group of friends in the school.
They were apparently, too, the most beautiful.
Even though the people that hated them were almost as many as the ones that liked them.
And the reason was funny—because maybe their crush might be loving or in a relationship with someone who is also in the group.
Adria smiled at them, but then scrunched her nose when they came closer. “You guys stink,” she said with a whiff of irritation but with laughter in her tone.
“Not our fault,” Jace reprimanded with his hands in the air.
Adria rolled her eyes, “so do we also stink?” she asked, referring to herself and Tiffany.
They knew the answer without even trying to sniff.
“Come on, you can’t do that. You guys are ladies. There’s probably a handful of layers of nice-smelling products on your skin,” Seven defended with his eyes fixed on Adria.
Adria smiled at him.
He was handsome.
She would say he was more handsome than Jordan. He actually was.
Probably that was what shut her up on him. For some reason, unlike Jordan, whom she had a crush on when they were younger, she had never had a fling of feeling for Seven.
And trust, she had had a lot of crushes.
And now she hated that she felt her smile becoming awkward on him.
“You could do the same. And correction, I only own a cream,” she said with satisfaction, and a fond smile appeared on his lips.
Adria looked away and she could hear Tiffany coughing dramatically.
Seven hadn’t told her yet, but now she was sure he liked her.
And Tiffany never stops pulling her leg on that.
“I care really less about how I smell at the moment. I’m so hungry,” Jordan complained at the side.
“Me too,” Jace agreed.
The girls knew what was coming next, and Adria wasn’t having it.
“Let’s go to Mixie’s,” Jace suggested.
Adria’s face was already saying a big no even before she opened her mouth.
“You know, I’d rather not. I feel like I’d smell so bad and it wouldn’t be nice to customers,” Adria said as she looked down at herself one more time.
“Ughhh. Get over it. You’re unnecessarily kind,” Tiffany groaned. That wasn’t a bad thing, but for Adria it was.
“I don’t think it’s bad to be kind. Besides, I’m not always kind,” she pointed out.
That wasn’t very true. It was the truest thing any of them had said throughout the conversation.
“Sometimes you’re so much of a b***h that I wonder how a person can have double personalities,” Tiffany said with honesty.
It had been on her mind for a while.
But she liked it.
There was nothing she hated about her friend; if anything, she just wished she was less kind and more rude.
She liked her being a bad bitch.
“I don’t have double personalities. It’s called having the perfect personality. A little bit of both stabilizes the scale,” she said with certainty.
“Oh please,” Tiffany said in exasperation, and everyone laughed.
“Let’s go, please,” she went ahead to beg Adria, “I need you there. If I go with the boys, they’d treat me like one of them. And also make fun of me and my single ass,” she said with doe eyes. “Side note, we’re both single, but I don’t know why it’s me they like to agonize.”
“You said I had double personalities,” Adria said with feigned pain.
“Did I? I bet I didn’t,” Tiffany denied.
“Nope, she didn’t,” Jordan agreed, and everyone laughed.
“You guys are backstabbers,” Adria said with a secluded smile.
They hurriedly picked their bags from the locker room and headed out the door.
Mixie’s wasn’t very far from the school, so they arrived in a few minutes.
Adria and Tiffany rode there together while the boys followed behind.
Adria’s dad had driven her to school and she now regretted it.
She missed using her car. They had been treating her like a handicap since the marriage and she hated it.
Everyone offered to take her to school and she couldn’t say no.
She wasn’t allowed to.
He wasn’t at home at the moment, and she would rather die than ask Nathan to call her.
She doesn’t even have his number saved.
They sat down at the table and ordered food.
A lot of food. The boys were giants, and the food that was on the table explained why.
Definitely coupled with the fact that they worked out.
“That’s a lot of food,” Tiffany complained, and Adria nodded in agreement.
“Eat what you can eat, and don’t worry about the rest. We got it,” Jace said to them with a knowing grin.
Adria went for a burger and a soda.
That would do for her.
Everyone else grabbed a piece of pizza first. There was pasta, mozzarella sticks, and French fries on the table with a lot of sodas.
She shook her head. These boys don’t eat healthily.
Adria took a bite from the burger and her eyes closed. It was already evening and she hadn’t had anything to eat throughout the day.
It felt nice to finally have something to eat.
Adria was eating peacefully when she heard a familiar voice laugh out in a fond way.
For a moment, she thought it wasn’t who she thought it was.
It wasn’t possible, right? What were the odds?
She turned her head to the door because she was backing it. And she saw who she least expected to be walking in with a girl on his arm.
“s**t,” she cursed in a low groan.