Rosalinda

Chapter 2 Hot pants

Emily was so busy attaching her pancakes she didn’t even realize I walked in the kitchen.

“Hey, honey”, my mom says looking up from the pan in her hand. “hey, mom”.

My mother was beautiful. She was radiant, the way she walked, the way she talked, even the way she smiled. I don’t know how but my mother could make anyone like her. She had pretty brown eyes and long silky red hair. She was pretty cool actually, except that she was super overprotective sometimes. I mean I get it I’m her only child and all but sometimes she really pisses me off.

But she was all I’ve got, she was my only family.

Emily was telling me something and I wasn’t paying attention, “what?”

“I said we should get going or we’ll miss the movie”

“But I haven’t eaten yet!!”. I was starving and there’s no way I was going out without eating anything.

“Your mom packed us some food, you can eat on the bus”

“okay, let’s go then…” I turn to kiss my mom goodbye, but I catch her staring at me. Oh god, here we go…

 “Lin, I can drive you”

“It’s okay mom, we can handle taking a bus by ourselves”

“Linda, I don’t like this”

“mom, I’m 18 and I can’t take a freaking bus by myself ?!”

“Technically, you’re not 18 until tomorrow”

I totally forgot that my birthday was tomorrow, and apparently Emily did too because she started screaming “OH MY GOD, I FORGOT THAT, HOW CAN I FORGET YOUR BIRTHDAY!! WHAT KIND OF BEST FRIEND DOES THAT.”

“Emily, chill. No big deal”, I look to my mom “mom, please”

“okay, but you keep your phone on loud all the time. Do you understand me?”

“I understand mom, can we go now”

“okay” she kisses my forehead and I give her a big hug.

“I love you”  “I love you too, mom”.

It’s a 5 minute walk from my house to the bus stop, so we got there pretty fast.

I take the seat next to the window like I always do and Emily sits next to me. And when the bus starts moving I immediately take out the food my mom packed me, eggs an bacon..Ah... I love you mom.

The eggs were so good I almost forgot that Emily was sitting next to me until she nudged me with her shoulder “Lin, look”

“what??” I followed her gaze and saw a guy sitting a couple of seats away from us, a really hot guy actually and he was staring straight at us. At me. I realized my mouth was hanging open and looked away immediately. God, did I just stare at a hot guy with an open mouth, a mouth full of eggs!

“he’s so hot” Emily giggles in my ear.

“yeah” I try not to make eye contact with him.

“he was totally checking you out” she said still giggling.

“you think?”. “yeah, I mean..didn’t you see how he was looking at you?”. I didn’t get to answer her because the bus came to a stop and unfortunately this was our stop. I catch one last glance of Hot pants –that’s what I’m calling him now- and see that he’s still staring.

We were so late I was pretty sure Caleb was going to kill us both. But when I saw him in front of the movies he said nothing about it. Nothing, Megan kept scolding us but Caleb, not even a word.

After we finished the movie Megan said she was hungry so we went to a restaurant to eat something.

Megan and Emily were talking, so I took the chance to see what’s wrong with Caleb, during the whole movie he didn’t say anything and I was getting worried that he was mad at me “Hey Cal, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m just tired”

 Now there’s definitely something wrong “Caleb, just tell me”

“Nothing, I swear”.

He was lying. But he wasn’t going to tell me anything so I just dropped it.

Emily’s voice came from behind me “So what are we doing tomorrow, since its Linda’s birthday?”

“There’s this karaoke party at The Moose tomorrow “ Megan said.

Now Emily was more exited than ever “Yes, that’s perfect”

Celebrating my birthday at The Moose wasn’t a bad idea, but then it hit me “I can’t tomorrow”

Suddenly Caleb was back to normal “come on Lin it’s you’re 18th birthday, and you like hanging out at The Moose”. That was true The Moose was pretty cool, it's this big coffee shop in town, there was always good music and delicious food, plus they threw the best parties. The Moose was a great place to hang out there was no question in that.

“The dog pound, remember? I volunteer there Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Tomorrow is Saturday”

“I honestly don’t know how you can stand these beasts” Megan hated dogs, I think that’s because when we were in 4th grade she was bitten by a stray dog on her way back home. It was a big bite, it took 5 stitches and still left a nasty scar on her right thigh.

Caleb gave me a grin “we will figure something out , you can leave early or you can pretend that you’re sick and don’t go”

I was just about to protest but Emily’s voice interrupted me.

“Linda, it’s the hot dude from the bus”

I look behind me a see Hot Pants sitting a couple of tables away from us, but this time he wasn’t alone. he was sitting with two other guys probably a couple of years older than him, they were good looking but not like him.

Caleb’s eyes widened “do you know him?”

“No, we just saw him on the bus but I think he likes Linda” she says laughing.

“EMILY”.I glare at her but she keeps talking anyway “come on Lin, he’s still looking at you”. She’s right, I turn around and see that he’s still staring at me, the moment our eyes met he looked away immediately. Okay now it was getting creepy.

And Caleb was acting even weirder now, what was it with him today “we should go, I have something to do at home and I promised your mom to walk you home”

I didn’t want to go home but I didn’t want to sit here with Hot pants staring at me either so I said goodbye to the girls and headed home with Caleb.