The Not so Mindful Mistake

Chapter 35) Dylan

"Funny how you speak to her periodically, considering how she lives in a different continent and all." Alex pondered, almost calculating.

"We've been friends for a long time. Our parents were best friends in the past." It was mostly true, if you counted talking for about eight months nonstop in each other's heads a long term friendship.

"Not anymore?"

"They just reconnected this year." That was true.

"How'd they meet?" Alex interrogated. In school, really?

"Well-"

The bell rung loud and proud and Nat had never been so glad for lunch to be over.

He smiled tentatively, still shaken by the ambush of questions, and quickly clashed his lips with the beautiful girls' to his right. "I'll talk to you later." He spoke loudly over the cacophony of hundreds of kids hustling out of the space.

"See you." She smiled her thousand-watt beam and disappeared with her own friends, leaving Nat to disperse with the rest of the boys at the table and the devil himself: Alex.

"What the Hell?" He brought his mouth down and close to Alex' ear, patting the redhead roughly on the back. To everyone else it would seem a regular conversation between two teenage boys, not a boy trying visibly not to strangle his best friend.

"What the hell yourself!" His arms came up in exasperation. "You're peculiar and I have a theory."

Nat rolled his eyes but hissed out anyway, "lets hear it then." The hallways were jammed with people, and getting up the stairs was a slow current.

"I think there's a reason you won't set Dylan and I up, together." He didn't whisper, which caused the other boy's eyes to scan around the crowded faces, worried of some curious ears.

"You've never even seen the girl-" Nat hissed.

"I reckon you don't want to set me up because you have feelings for her yourself." His best friend's voice was a punch to the gut, and Nat tripped up the last stair, righting himself awkwardly.

"Bloody hell."

"It's either that, or you hate me." The shorter boy shrugged, walking fast down the hall, and turning left towards their lockers, leaving Nat several paces behind. His long legs sped up, a huff of annoyance escaping him as he caught up.

"Well with the way I'm feeling right now." Nat threatened, walking up to his locker, fingers fumbling with his combination lock stupidly.

"What kind of best friend doesn't help his brother out?" Alex grumbled behind his dull locker. "See, because what I think is that we've been friends through a lot and you don't hate me, at least not deeply - permanently." He looked at his friend as if he were translucent. "I think you secretly like this girl, Dylan, you just can't admit it to yourself."

"I do not." Nat reached in his own locker, glad that his face was obscured momentarily, he knew he must have been red as the cherry tomatoes his mum grew in their backyard.

"You keep telling yourself that, your secret's safe with me." Alex slammed his locker shut, and locked it, a smug sneer on his round face.