Tempted

Arianna and I had a lunchtime routine.

Most of the time, we sat outside, under the flagpole with either our trays or lunchboxes in grip. Most days – the only exception being me managing to forget my lunch at home – I saved our spot with my metal “Hello Kitty” lunch box as Arianna got her food from inside.

Lunch block would then be filled with our mindless chatter, mostly about an upcoming party that Arianna was bound and determined to get me to go to, and me eventually giving in to her pleads.

Idly picking at my squished peanut butter and jelly, I glanced up to see that not only was Arianna coming over with her tray in grip, but a boy was looped through her free arm, dangling off her like a prized accessory. She smiled brightly sitting on the cement ledge beside me before flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Copeland, this is Jack. Jack, this is Copeland,” she introduced, her blue eyes flickering between the two of us in anticipation as we stared at each other.

Jack Barakat was not Arianna’s type – not that she specifically had a “type” per say. His hair was long, and had a streak of blonde through the front that completely distracted me for a moment from his thin face. A large, black hoodie covered up his lanky body.

He was a far cry from being a jock of some sport whether it was soccer, football or powerlifting. He didn’t even look like an equestrian rider – and trust me, Arianna had found interest in one before.

“Hello,” he offered, with about as much enthusiasm that Arianna naturally had.

I blinked at him for a second before reluctantly lifting my arm to wave. “Hey.”

If there was one thing that always remained constant in me and Arianna’s friendship, it was our lunchtime routine. Other friends, unfinished homework and especially guys were never, ever apart of it, so I was a little unsure of what to do or say now that Jack Barakat had stumbled into a routine that hadn’t been broken for four years.

“Didn’t we have gym together last year?” he asked, narrowing his dark eyes at me only slightly.

It was such a cliché thing to say – a line straight out of every high school movie ever created.

Shrugging, mostly because I didn’t want our conversation to sound anymore scripted than it already was, I turned back to my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, squishing the already damaged bread between my fingers.

“You do that too?” a voice asked, one that had me looking up to Jack and Arianna in curiosity before both of them pointed to my right. Glancing up, I noticed another boy standing over me with a grin lighting up his face. I blinked expectantly at him, taking in the skinny jeans that looked nearly identical to Jack’s and the bright hoodie covering his upper body. He pointed his index finger toward my hands. “Everyone always thought I was weird for intentionally squishing my PB&J’s, but I think it tastes ten times better.”

I stared blankly at him before glancing down at my sandwich, unsure of what to say. “Copeland, right?” he asked. “Copeland Mills?”

I nodded, squinting up at him, ignoring the shameless flirting coming from Jack and Arianna beside me. “And you are…?”

“Alex. Alex Gaskarth. We have first period together,” he said, sitting beside me with his slice of pepperoni pizza and water bottle. He shifted his obnoxious baseball cap on his head before continuing his basically one-sided conversation. “The prompts were hard this morning, right?” he asked, completely oblivious to my obvious discomfort.

“Um… I don’t really have an unbiased answer to that question,” I admitted. When Alex’s thick eyebrows knitted together, I forced myself to elaborate. “I didn’t really get a chance to read Othello.”

He smiled, cracking the seal on his water bottle. “You didn’t miss anything. It’s kind of a shitty play – really hard to get into, you know?”

I stared openly at Alex. He was completely bashing Shakespeare – the guy that our English teachers had only ever oohed and awed over since we’d been able to understand just how important his literature was.

As a general lover of any and all literature, it just didn’t seem right to dis the man that had written so many plays that were still loved and cherished despite the amount of time had passed since they’d first been viewed and read.

“Looks like we don’t even have to make introductions,” I heard Arianna say smugly. Glancing over my shoulder, I stared at my best friend as she grinned at me. “Alex is Jack’s best friend,” she stated, nudging her head to the side to gesture to the boy that she’d found something worthwhile in.

The information didn’t have me warming up to the situation any more than the change of routine had originally. In fact, knowing that Alex was Jack’s best friend almost made me want to clam up more and endure lunch in awkward silence simply to show Arianna in my own childish way that I didn’t approve of this – at all.

It wasn’t like I was jealous of Jack or even Alex. It was the fact of the matter that Arianna had disapproved so many times before when I invited someone to sit with the two of us and not once had this ever been allowed before. If anything, she was the jealous one in our friendship.

Scowling to myself, I took another bite of my completely smashed sandwich before staring at the football game that the freshman boys played on the lawn each day instead of mowing down the carb-y food our school system had to offer them.

Considering using a fake excuse to get up and disappear into the crowded tables inside, Alex began speaking once more. “You’re kind of quiet, Copeland.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“There’s always something to say.”

I glanced over to him, my usual habit of reading too deep into other people’s words kicking into overdrive. Something about the way he said it made my stomach knot up only slightly. What did he mean? Did he mean it simply or more deeply?

Did he mean that people always had something to talk about or that there was always a hidden motive to people’s words?

Keeping his words in mind, I spoke carefully. “Not me. I don’t always have something to say.”

The words came out sounding almost indignant, and paired with my scowl I was sure that I wasn’t making the best first impression on the boy.

Alex smiled, picking up his piece of greasy pepperoni pizza. “Sure you do. Everyone has something they want to talk about. You might not really know what it is yet, but it’s there, lying in wait.”

I stared at him for a second, watching him take a bite of his pizza before I turned my attention back to the amateur football game playing out before us, suddenly very suspicious of Alex Gaskarth.

I swallowed the last piece of my sandwich before closing my lunchbox, clicking the latch with a good pop. Rubbing away any stray crumbs from the thigh of my jeans and forcing myself to once again tune out the playful banter between Jack and Arianna, I forced the question that needed to be voiced from my lips.

“What exactly do you have to say, Alex?” I asked, not daring to look at him, hoping that I looked nonchalant and intimidating all in one.

Even in my peripheral vision I could see him smile brightly. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you, Copeland.” I closed my eyes, shaking my head at just how ridiculous he sounded, but the warm rush of a whisper hitting the sensitive skin around my ear had me freezing. “And you’re too cute for that to ever happen,” he added.

Whirling my head to look at him in utter shock and mild horror that he called me cute, I watched as his innocent smile turned to a cocky, confident grin.

Baffled and completely out of words to say, I could only stare at him with my mouth dropped open and eyes wide.

Before I could even attempt to regain composure, though, or even think of a snarky comeback, a boy with thick brown hair called Alex’s name and waved him over.

I watched, still in shocked stupor as the boy stood and walked away, flashing me that crooked grin over his shoulder to me one last time before he and the stranger disappeared inside.

As soon as he blended into the crowds of other students, the anger hit, ten seconds too late for me to do anything other than burn bright red and clench my fists.