Comfort Zone

You're Practically the Personification of Douchebag

"He kind of is," she replies.

"Violet," I gasp.

"What," she says defensively. "He's hot, hilarious, and he's obviously not as shallow as you think if he's chasing after you."

"What does that mean? I ask, suddenly defensive.

"Come on, Hen. You're like ridiculously hard to get. He's got to know he's gonna have to work for you and he's willing to put in the time and effort," she explains.

"He's not trying to get me. We're just friends."

"See," she says, jabbing her finger towards me. "Hard to get."

I give her yet another death glare and she shuts up. But the smugness never fully disappears from her face.

We then fall into a conversation about the best kind of cereal, a subject that we are both apparently very passionate about, I say Lucky Charms and she says Coco Puffs.

"You only like lucky charms for the marshmallows," she argues.

"Duh," I say.

"Ladies," a voice to our left, interrupts our debate. I immediately know who it is. You can literally hear the smirk in his voice.

"Rhett," I reply dryly, before realizing that may have been too rude. He might annoy the crap out of me half the time, but we are almost, kind of friends now and I should probably be a little nicer. I look up at him and see that he doesn't seem fazed. Good.

"Mind if I take a seat?" He asks.

I look over at the other girls who are all eagerly staring at him. Normally we don't have any open seats, but Jane is gone today, so I don't have a valid excuse to say no. Plus, I think if I did a few of the girls might attack me. And even though it pains me to admit it, part of me actually wants him to sit with us.

"Go for it," I shrug.

Not wasting a second, he immediately slides into the empty seat next to me.

"Thanks, Hot Stuff," he grins.

"No," I shake my head furiously. "Absolutely not. Babe and sweetheart and all of those I can deal with, but call me hot stuff on more time," I cut the sentence short leaving the threat hanging.

"So you are in a feisty mood today, aren't you," he says, holding his hands up in defense.

"You heard about that, huh?" I ask in an almost bitter tone. Apparently you can't do anything around here without it being publicized throughout the entire student body.

"Yep," he nods. "I'm not that surprised. I knew you had it in you. But it threw quite a bit of other people off."

"Well it's all your fault," I huff. Even as I say this I know it's childish, but I don't care.

"My fault?" He asks, clearly caught off guard by this new piece of information.

"Yes. They were saying that I was obsessed with you and that you only invited me to the party because you felt sorry for me," I grumble.

"What," he asks loudly, his face no longer holding its usually playful air. Instead, he looks seriously confused and slightly pissed.

"Ya," I sigh. "They thought I was your groupie or something."

His frown deepens. Is he worried about me?

"But it's fine," I add on, not wanting to upset him further. "Not gonna lie it was annoying, but nothing I couldn't handle," I say nonchalantly.

He smiles at me but it's not as full blown as usual. I can tell he's still bothered by the effect his high school fame is having on me.

"Is there anything you can't handle?" He jokes.