Friends For Tomorrow

Chapter 2

"Where were you last night?" Angelina asked me, swirling her water bottle cap around the table with her index finger.

I tore pieces of my chicken tenders apart, meeting her gaze. "I stayed over at Foster's."

She lifted an eyebrow but didn't look surprised. "I called your house three times and no one answered, so I assumed your cell was dead and you were lying in a ditch somewhere."

I grimaced. "Yeah, Steve took my phone the other day and hasn't given it back. I'm sorry, Angel."

She kept her gaze on me, curious. "You've been staying at Foster's more often lately."

"Not really."

She gave me a pointed look.

"Maybe a little," I relented.

"Why?" she asked, cutting straight to the point.

That was an Angelina thing.

"Things have just been a little chaotic lately." I chose my words carefully.

Angelina flipped her curly brown hair over her shoulder. "I thought so. You've been showing up to school in Josie's clothes more often than your own."

Her eyes flickered to my shirt, which was indeed Josie's sweatshirt from last night. And I'm sure I looked how I felt. Angelina was blunt, sure, but she meant well. She was a better friend to me than I deserved sometimes.

"You know you can always crash at my place."

I nodded, giving her a smile to show her I appreciated it. "I know."

Angelina had a large family, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause her parents more stress by being another mouth to feed. She'd never admit that, and probably slap me if I ever voiced that out loud, but it was the truth.

She casted her gaze over a couple of tables, where a group of guys from the soccer team sat. "Me and Byron broke up," she informed me suddenly.

I was thankful for the subject change, but the news did surprise me. Byron had been her boyfriend for the last four months. That was a long time for her.

I made a show of dropping my jaw. "What? When?"

Angelina took a long sip of her water. "Two days ago."

"God, I'm sorry. How did it happen?"

I could tell this was the question she'd been dying for me to ask, because she sat up straighter as she launched into her side of the story.

I nodded along and gasped at the appropriate parts during her long tail, but I found myself zoning out the longer she went on. I wanted to be there for her, but it as always the same story. My mind and body were just on two different pages today.

My eyes flickered over to the lunch line, where Foster was, as he bickered with one of the lunch ladies about his food. He proclaimed earlier that he found a mole in his applesauce—it looked to me like a raisin—but he was insistent that the lunch ladies wanted to poison him.

A pair of fingers snapped in my face, drawing my attention back. "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

"Oh yeah, Byron's such a jerk for what he did."

She blinked at me. "I broke up with him."

Shit.