Love Among the Pizza Boxes

My head is in my hands.
I refuse to look at Wakka right now.
What? No, I’m not with that kid. I don’t know that kid, what’re you talking about?
“…It went everywhere,” Wakka says to me triumphantly.
I shake my head and lay it on the table.
“And you should’ve heard the noises she was making – “
“Wakka,” I groan and look up from the table. “Shut. Up.”
He stops short in the middle of his elaborate story about how it was squirting everywhere.
I bang my head on the table.
And I just stay there.
I breathe a sigh.
“Riku?”
I exhale through tight lips. “What?”
“It feels like the inside of a cheek, man.”
I close my eyes.
I’m afraid to ask what he’s referring to.
But I look up again and raise my eyebrows anyways.
Wakka twirls his first finger around in the air once.
I groan and hit my head on the table.
It makes a loud noise.
I really didn’t need to know that.
“…Riku?”
“What?” I ask.
I sound like I’m being tortured.
That’s because I am.
“Uh, never mind.”
I sigh – again.
“What’s taking those girls so long, man?”
I shake my head against the table. “Beats me.”
I’m really not in a good mood now.
It’s all because of Wakka.
He killed my buzz.
Shayla comes back to the table alone.
But she doesn’t sit down, she leans her hands against the table and hangs her head and grumbles, “Can we leave now?”
“Yes. Please.” My head snaps up and I get out of the booth.
“Hey, man – you can’t just leave me here all alone!”
I groan. Again. “Zermine’ll come back sooner or later.”
Wakka looks a little panicked. “But aren’t you gonna pay for your food?”
I look at my plate. Then Shayla’s.
And I’m so pissed right now.
So I don’t really give a crap.
And I take Shayla’s hand and we leave.