The Worst Choice

"That'll be $10.53," the cashier said.

I reached in my pocket to pull out the money Mom gave me. An empty pocket made me quickly realize that I'd left before money could be brought up at all. "Dammit," I cursed quietly, searching through my purse for any money. Luckily, I found just enough money for the groceries and a coffee from the attached Starbucks I was eyeing when I walked in. "Here you go," I said, giving him the money. I waited for him to give me the change and receipt, thanking him as I grabbed the bags and walked away. Doing a mental dance at the short length of the line for Starbucks, I stood behind a lady and her daughter, watching the guy behind the counter fix the drinks at a way too slow pace. I was having issues figuring out what I wanted, when I heard rather familiar voices behind me.

"Ooh, I want a Strawberry Frappuccino! Or do I just want tea?"

"Tea? Who the hell comes to Starbucks and gets tea?"

"Me and like, seven billion other people."

As they continued playfully arguing back and forth I just stood there, trying to figure out whose voices they were. The girl sounded really familiar... My eyes widened and I spun around. "Kat?" I asked in disbelief.

The girl's eyes widened. "Oh my God," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a grocery store and I needed groceries?" I answered as if it was the stupidest question on earth. "What are you doing here? With Colin?"

The brown-haired boy chuckled, scratching his head. "Grocery shopping, duh. I needed groceries," he answered with a sarcastic tone.

I glared at him. I opened my mouth to give him a snide remark when it suddenly dawned on me. "Colin is the mystery guy!" I accused, pointing at Kat.

Her face looked like a mixture of relief and worry. "Do you see now why I didn't want to tell you?" she questioned.

"Telling us you were dating Colin would've been a lot better than us thinking you were dating a teacher or Harry!" I countered.

"I'm still here..." Colin interjected.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Oh, I know. You're guilty in this too," I claimed.

He furrowed his eyebrows. "Me?" he inquired. "I've been trying to get her to say something! While incredibly sexy, it was getting exhausting sneaking around all the time."

I chose to ignore the sexy remark. "Right, because cheating on your girlfriend for the second time is totally okay," I retorted.

He only continued to look at me like I had two heads. "I'm not cheating on Kat," he responded.

"No, you're cheating on Leah," I corrected.

"What the he-"

The man standing behind Kat and Colin interrupted his words. "Um, excuse me, but if none of you are going to order, can you please step aside?" he asked, clearly annoyed with our being in his way.

I rolled my eyes. "Sorry," I apologized, stepping out of the way and crossing my arms. I didn't know if they were gonna follow or continue to make their order but whatever they chose, I was going to wait.

"Look, Ashlyn, I'm not dating Leah anymore," Colin informed me, stepping out of the line with Kat behind him. "Leah and I broke up a couple of days after school started. I felt guilty about cheating on her with you, even though she'd forgiven me and I didn't want to be with her, but I felt bad for wanting to break up with her because she's going through family problems. But when I ran into Kat and we started talking... I ended up breaking things off with her that day."

I blinked a few times. "So this has been going on for a while?" I asked.

Kat shrugged. "When you guys started getting suspicious, we'd already been seeing each other for a few weeks," she replied. "Ash, I'm really sorry. I felt bad for even having any sort of feelings for him because I know how you used to feel about him, but I couldn't help it. At first, I tried convincing myself that it would be okay because you were with Nash now and Colin is old news to you, and that's what he was telling me, but I really didn't want you thinking that this all happened because I didn't care about you or what you thought."

"Keeping it a secret was only making things worse. And not only with me but Jenn was really starting to believe that it was Harry you were seeing," I said. "It makes it seem like you thought it was wrong from the start, yet you continued seeing him behind my back anyway."

"Behind you back?" she repeated. "You and Colin have been over, Ash. If you really do love Nash as much as you claim then you wouldn't have any problem with me and Colin dating."

"As much as I claim?" I echoed with a dry laugh. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It isn't supposed to mean anything, just lis-"

"No," I interrupted. "I should've had these groceries home already so I've gotta go. See you around," I said, walking passed them and heading toward the door.

"Does this mean you're mad?" Kat called to me. I didn't answer because I wasn't sure just yet how I felt about everything.

What a perfect way to end a great day.