The Girl Across the Street

The Girl Acros the Street 23

"What were you and Will talking about?" Simon asks.

"I tried to introduce Emma but he totally blew her off then got on my case how all of my friends and my girlfriend suck except you."

"Ouch. I mean, you have to agree that Kate isn't the best and even Nathan has his faults. Why did he blow Emma off though? I would have thought they'd get along pretty well."

"I had too but once he saw what she looked like, with her new hair and plain gym clothes, all he saw was a girl that looked like everyone else and he automatically assumed that she's just like Kate."

Simon shakes his head. "That sucks man. Maybe he'll come around eventually, he only just met her."

"Yeah I know." I shrug and follow him to chem.

Before lunch, Kate meets me at my locker, sneaking through my arm and coming between my locker and me. "Hey stranger." She greets, smiling.

"Hey you." I reply, kissing her quickly.

"Have you seen Will today?" She asks quietly, looking up at me.

"Yeah, I talked to him briefly. We disagreed and I got frustrated with him. Instead of getting into another fight, I ran off my steam. I'm sure we'll talk again later." I tell her. She nods and bites her lip, her tell-tale nervous habit.

"Did um, did you talk about me?" She mumbles, worry in her eyes.

"Yeah a little. To be honest, he still doesn't like you but he didn't have anything new to say about it. Everything is fine with us, okay?" I press my forehead against hers and kiss her softly. I kiss her again until she finally smiles.

"Okay. Come on, let's go to lunch. The bell rang a while ago." She moves from in front of me to beside me so I can finish at my locker.

When I'm done, I grab her hand and we walk off to lunch.

In the lunch room, Kate stops suddenly before we reach our table. "Let's sit with your friend today." She suggests.

This takes me by surprise but we redirect our path to go to Emma's table where she sits on one half of a lunch table. She is writing in her small notebook and looks up when she hears Kate and I plop our bags down on the bench across from her.

"Hi." She says simply, glancing up at us.

"Hey, mind if we sit with you today?" I request.

Emma's eyes flit from me, to Kate, to our regular lunch table, back to Kate, then finally resting on me again. A wide grin spreads across her face. "Of course you can. Though I think you should probably let Simon know what's going on be he looks a little confused.

Sure enough, when I turn around, Simon is staring at us, looking perplexed. "I'll go get him and buy lunch while I'm up." I announce, leaving Emma and Kate alone. As I go, I hear Kate compliment Emma's sweater and it makes me smile to hear Kate making a friendly effort with Emma.

I walk over in the direction of my other table and when I catch Simon's attention, I wave hi. Over and motion for him to grab his books. He excuses himself from the conversation he was halfway participating in while he was watching Kate, Emma and me.

"So let me get this straight, Kate suggested you sit with Emma? It wasn't her agreeing with you that you should join her?" He repeats for the second time since I explained the last two minutes to him.

"Yes, Kate suggested sitting with Emma, not me. I think it's nice that she's making an effort to be friendly with her."

"Yeah I'll bet Emma appreciates it. I just can't help but feel like nothing has changed at all, you know?" I shake my head. "I mean, yeah Kate's being nice and all to Emma, but it doesn't change how anybody but Emma felt about her and if anything, the only problem Emma had with Kate was that she was intimidated by her."