Right Where She Belongs

Chapter Eight

The cute waitress blushed and quickly averted her eyes. "Yeah, well," she shrugged. "I've seen your kind before. Girl troubles, huh?"

I startled us both by laughing. "It's..." I searched for the word. When I found it, I shook my head ruefully. "Complicated."

She smirked. "I'm sure it is." She scribbled something down on her notepad. I assumed it was my order but she handed me the paper, letting her hand linger in mine for a few moments longer than necessary.

"If you ever want to uncomplicate it," she grinned. "I finish five o'clock Friday afternoon. Maybe we can talk about it over dinner,"

My instant response was to say no. That my heart was already taken by another and could never even picture myself with another girl.

But seeing the sincerity in the brunettes eyes, I wondered if maybe it was possible to spend an afternoon with a nice girl - maybe not the girl I really wanted to spend it with - not worrying about whether she was lying to me, or sleeping properly, or eating a sufficient amount of food to fuel her energetic body. To have a girl smile genuinely at me, not those half-hearted little tilt of her mouth. 

Just an afternoon to relax.

Closing my hand around the hand-written number, I tucked it safely into the pocket of my jacket.

"I'd like that," I admitted honestly.

Her blush deepened. "Me too," she murmured, then cleared her throat. "Well, uh, I better get back to work,"

I smiled and nodded. "See you around,"

"See you Friday," she corrected.

My smiled widened. "Right. Friday,"

Suddenly Friday seemed full of possibilities.

                                                                                 ***

[Adrian's P.O.V]

Friday couldn't have come any sooner, in my opinion.

Ever since the incident on Monday, I tried to avoid Caleb as much as possible, getting Tony to drop and pick him up from school.  I narrowly deflected him in the two classes we shared, but lunch was a whole other matter. 

Thankfully, though, Frankie and Taylor, the twins, had taken it upon themselves to be my personal hair and make up stylists since I hadn't bothered with such trivial things lately, lacking the energy to even care about my appearance, let alone do anything with it.

Who could blame me though? I was an eighteen year old girl running from her feelings for her best friend with a pyscho stalker on her ass. I wasn't exactly worried about if my hair was lacking volume or that the bags under my eyes were "so not attractive". 

The twins were so good for my ego.

I was surprised, however, when Caleb didn't immediately pounce on the fact that I was obviously avoiding him. If anything, I wondered if maybe he was trying to avoid me, which was why it was so easy to evade him. 

I briefly considered how I felt about this new development, best friends intent on avoiding each other, but didn't have time to dwell on it too much, too preoccupied of thoughts of a possible stalker.

It made sense, didn't it? The person sending me those threatening notes...they would have had to do a lot of research to know when and where I liked to have coffee, and what times the house was empty - though to be fair, my parents were ever rarely home because of work and I was ever rarely home because I was always with Caleb and didn't particularly like the emptiness of our house - and even know the positioning of every security camera.