Coder Girl /Dreamwastaken/

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Clay looked puzzled from my lack of reaction. I was happy inside, but the shock from Nick's change of behavior was still strong on me, so I couldn't really show any emotion.

"Aren't you happy?" Clay frowned.

I nodded, giving him a small smile and not daring to talk cause I was scared that my voice would break.

I know this was supposed to be about George, but Nick meant so much to me, he was literally my best friend and I couldn't just stand there and see him change in a way that would make our friendship fall apart.

"Liz?" He noticed the amount of times I looked around and blinked, just to avoid the tears of frustration, "Awh, baby what's wrong?"

Clay came closer and wrapped his arms around me, trying to make eye contact. However, I hid my face in the hug, using the opportunity to calm myself down before I'd break down and make a scene.

"It's just from how happy I am that George's coming." I mumbled, still not showing my face and trying to find an escape in Clay's laugh that filled the room after my words.

"Oh shut up.." He was still laughing from my stupid words, "You might be so tired, been up since early morning."

I hated how we blamed everything on being tired recently. Yes, I was tired, but waking up early had to do absolutely nothing with it.

I broke the hug hearing Nick's footsteps coming from the room. I don't even know why I did that, I just felt uncomfortable from the thought of Nick seeing us hug.

"There you are! Thought you died." Clay turned his attention to Nick.

"That would be nice actually." The exhausted voice already spoke for itself.

"George will make it on time to your funeral then." That was Clay's attempt to deliver the news.

But he forgot that Nick was kind of late in things like that. However, his clueless face made everything clear.

"I missed the joke I think," Nick was really thinking that there was a joke in that sentence, "whatever, I doubt it was funny anyway."

"There's literally no joke. George's coming." Clay shrugged.

"That's too much detail."

I loved how the jokes didn't stop even when he was acting not like himself. And after a few seconds of us standing there in silence, he spoke again.

"Wait, to Florida?" And it finally clicked.

We watched Nick go through a few stages of emotions. First he was surprised, then he got happy and lastly widened his eyes, looking alarmed.

"What?" Clay noticed the weird face expression.

"He told me to look for a house and I totally forgot-"

Both of us looked confused after his words. Nick was annoying enough to not continue the sentence and wait for further questions.

"Huh?" I finally engaged in the conversation.

"Oh, I didn't tell you.." Nick scratched the back of his neck, "Well me and George want to buy a house in here and move in together."

Me and Clay looked at each other then back at Nick. I had many questions, and the main one was how could he forget to tell us such a thing? And how much of it did we miss? How long have they been planning this for?

And all of those questions got asked and answered. Turns out a month is a long time.

"Don't you need help with that?" Clay was referring to the search of houses, but Nick completely missed the point again.

He looked down at his crotch, confused. Yes, he really thought the help was offered for something else.. and I'm not even surprised.

"Ooohh... you mean the house?" He was dumb enough to sell himself out.

"What else did you need help with?" I raised a brow, seeing that Clay was so disgusted he didn't even come up with anything.

And I regretted my words immediately as Nick looked at me weirdly. He could follow up with a joke, but chose to just look.

Anyways.

After a few minutes I went to shower. And funny enough Nick was acting normal to Clay from what I overheard after leaving. He claimed that his problem was with Clay, but I'm starting to get more certain that it's with me.

I took my shower thoughts to the next level. The train of thoughts and conspiracies went all the way to me thinking that Nick hates me. And that was only 5 minutes into showering.

The next 5 minutes I realized that my previous theory didn't make sense and started to think in a different direction.

Nick's been acting like this for a day, which makes me think that it's not a long-term issue. Whatever happened, happened recently.

However, I couldn't think of something that went wrong since he came. We've been acting the same, all of us, except Clay was being much more softer in terms of getting jealous, he almost didn't show any signs other than that one outburst. Yet Nick decided that it was the perfect time to blame him for something that was more blame-worthy in the past.

And that's when I came up with something that actually made sense. Although I hated the thought utterly, it still was the only one that tied all the ends together.

What if the reason behind Nick getting bothered by Clay's jealousy all of a sudden is behind Nick himself being jealous.

What if it just frustrates him knowing that he can't have the same thing me and Clay have? It sounds selfish and self-centered having thoughts like this, but I've been trying to ignore the fact that the issue could have a feeling-based background.

We'd been so close lately, but my mind has always been occupied with Clay. Yet all of Nick's focus and time was dedicated to me. What if he got a little attached?

I love the feeling of being correct all the time, but this time I was desperate to find out that I was wrong. All I could do was wait for an appropriate moment to talk to Nick in private and discuss everything.

The conversation had a large potential of going downhill, but I learned from my previous experience that it's better to communicate and face the consequences earlier than let everything pile up and cause a disaster.