Love Among the Pizza Boxes

She’s weird. Very weird. Different than Kairi. Kairi doesn’t like pepperoni, for one. And she’s too busy trying to get Sora to make out with her to notice me. So I’m kinda over her. Sora can have her. I don’t like girls who don’t like pepperoni anyways.
The staff room is weird. It’s cold. And empty. And our footsteps echo. It makes me feel… alone. I don’t like that feeling.
“So what’re you doing here so late?” I ask her. I’m curious. It’s ten at night on a Thursday and Shayla’s at the observatory.
Once again – weird.
“I’m researching… And playing with the telescopes while my boss isn’t around.” She smiles sheepishly and slides the pizza box onto a little laminate table. What a lonely table it is.
“Nice…” I go to sit in a lonely little white plastic chair. … I take that back. It has a buddy on the other side of the table. “Astronomy is cool.”
I sound retarded when I’m tired.
Like I can’t form a sentence right. And I have weird thoughts. As though I’m tripping on acid.
Which I’m not, for those of you at home wondering.
“Mmhm,” she hums and throws a paper plate at me like a Frisbee.
I reach for it. It hits me in the forehead.
Damn my eyesight. I think I need glasses.
“Ouch,” I say, three seconds after it hits me, like a retard.
A year or so with a blindfold on did me wonders. Glad I did that.
“A-are you OK?” she looks at me with an unsure look on her face. One that says: Do you know that you might be retarded?
I sigh and set the paper plate on the lonely table. I nod. Close my eyes. Almost fall asleep.
Then I wake back up because my head begins to loll to the side a bit.
I hate it when that happens. It used to happen to me all the time in French class.
“My boss hates me.” I sit up a little, and open the box of pizza.
Just my luck. She ordered olives.
Oh well. I take a piece of pizza, set it on my plate, and began to pick the olives off, one by one, and set them on the side of my plate.
“Sorry…” she mumbles and grabs a slice for herself and we kinda just sit there. Chewing. At the lonely table. Silently.
She eats weird. She folds the pizza in half. Then rolls it up. And shoves the whole thing in her mouth. Blissfully unaware that it’s very unladylike.
I used to do that. When I was like, fifteen.
Sora still does it. Of course he does. Kairi watches him when he eats pizza. Watches him like a hawk. An obsessive hawk. An obsessive hawk who wishes he was eating her face rather than the pizza.
At least, that’s how I see it. Kairi’s changed a lot. It kinda makes me sad.
Where’d that cute little girl that I used to have a crush on go?
Out the window. And into oblivion.
Oh well. Back to the present.
Shayla’s kinda cute. Maybe I can start thinking about her instead of Kairi.
And so I do.
She has pizza sauce on the corner of her mouth. I don’t think she notices though.
I chuckle.
“Funny?” She tilts her head.
I point at her mouth. Not obnoxiously, like a little kid would. No. I just barely lift my arm. I learned at age sixteen that that is the correct way to point at someone. It’s not as rude.
“You’ve got some pizza sauce on your mouth.” I don’t know why, but I find my statement funny. So I laugh again. Then try and make myself stop. Because I’m beginning to sound like a retard again.
Great first impression, Riku. … Real smooth.
“Oh.” She swipes at the corner of her mouth with her knuckle. “Thanks…”
I nod slowly. Sigh. Pick up another piece of pizza. Pick off the olives. Sigh. Eat the pizza.
I hate awkward silences. And another gay baby was born.
“So…”
“Uhm…” I sigh again. I have wonderful skills when it comes to conversations. So I decide to go with a standard question. Even though it sounds kinda weird. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Just turned.” She grins.
You know how I said earlier that Shayla was kinda cute? Well, let me amend that statement: she is very cute. And weird. And she likes pepperoni.
Stick that in your juice box and suck it, Kairi.
God, I’m tired.
God, I hate rejection.