Doodle Heart | ✓

chapter three: eat

a/n: this chapter is short and to introduce Jo! So, sorry if it's a tad boring...

T H R E E : EAT

MAE KNEW THAT as soon as she entered the dorm that she'd be forced to eat. Maybe I should've stayed at Dustin's place, she thought to herself. Her nose was hit with the scent of Asian spices and herbs, her ears heard the sizzling of oil on skillet, while her eyes shut so she could sigh fully.

Icelyn wasn't kidding when she said she was inviting Jo over.

Fake Love from BTS blasted throughout the apartment, meaning Jo was singing and Lyn was dancing in the living room.

"Mae, I thought you were working with Dustin at his place until 5:30," Icelyn shouted over the stove and the music.

Mae shook her head. "His friends came over and I just thought we could work on it tomorrow anyways."

Icelyn frowned. "Wow, what a—"

"Hi Mae!" Joanna cut in energetically from the stove.

Mae waved to her. "Hey, Jo. What's cooking? It smells really good." Despite the fact she never had the appetite to eat, Mae still knew good food when there was good food.

"Eh, it's just some má pó dòu fù. There's also some white rice in the rice cooker, and the salad I made earlier. Don't worry, I made the vinaigrette you like," Joanna said with a wink.

Mae grinned. "Thank you so much, Jo."

"Of course! Besides music, cooking is one of my favorite things to do." Joanna did a little shimmy before returning to the stove.

"DID YOU KNOW," Mae acknowledged, pointing with her chopsticks as the three of them sat around the small table, "that Lewis is friends with Parker and Dustin?"

Icelyn and Joanna both chewed thoughtfully. Icelyn spoke, covering her mouth as she did, "No, I did not. Lewis? As in your-ex-boyfriend Lewis?"

Mae nodded. "Lewis Orion. He was there with Parker when Dustin and I were raiding his fridge. Actually, it was just him—I only had a bit of apple cider."

Joanna scrunched up her eyebrows. "Okay, wait. You were in the presence of the party god, the bad boy, and your ex at the same time?"

"Um, yes?" Mae responded with uncertainty.

"I'm not sure you can call Parker a 'bad boy'," Said Icelyn. "He doesn't even fit all of the criteria of a teen fiction bad boy."

"Well it's not like this is a teen fiction novel, Lyn," Joanna pointed out.

"True," Icelyn agreed. "Okay, but really... he's a playboy. He kisses girls. He doesn't sleep around. He doesn't ride a motorcycle. He doesn't smoke because I know for a fact his mother would slap him if he did."

"Why are we talking about Parker?" Mae queried a bit uncomfortably, but she played it off as being nonchalant. "And by the way, he wears leather jackets, all black; and drinks illegally. He's a playboy-bad-boy at most."

"Look who's talking," Joanna teased. "And at most? I'm just glad he doesn't actually sleep around like books say playboy-bad-boys are supposed to. That's disgusting." Joanna visually shuddered.

Icelyn gulped down her mouthful before adding to the conversation. "Honestly, we don't know that. People at our school are good at keeping secrets if need be. For all we know, Parker really could be sleeping around."

Secrets echoed in Mae's head. Of course it would be easy to hide secrets—she was hiding one right now. Not to mention how she and Lewis had been able to keep their relationship under the wraps. Barely anyone even recalled they dated.

"Eek," Joanna cringed. "That was a bad image." Mae and Icelyn laughed as Joanna picked up her glass of water to "wash" away the image.

Icelyn glanced at Mae's plate which had been just as filled up as everyone else's and was pleasantly surprised to find that she had eaten almost three quarters now. "Yay! Mae, I'm so proud of you!"

Joanna clapped with Icelyn, expressing their pride in how much they were able to get into Mae's stomach tonight. Mae smiled, shaking her head.

JOANNA LEFT HALF an hour ago, leaving Mae and Icelyn alone in their dorm to themselves. Mae was perched atop her stool next to the window before her easel. The canvas was half done—a girl sitting at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sunset and horizon with her feet dangling off the edge. There were still many other details to be added in, too, like an umbrella, a heart pendant, and a pen.

The sky outside of the dorm was almost completely blackened, meaning it was around 8 or 9 o'clock. She still had time to finish her homework before heading out for the night. Icelyn knew this and decided to converse with her best friend now.

"Mae," she murmured softly, adjusting herself on the couch. Mae glanced up from her canvas, sending her a questioning look. "Did Parker... recognize you?"

Mae placed her paintbrush down on the edge of the easel and eased herself away from her art. She sat her hands on her knees and faced her best friend. "Thankfully, no."

"Are you going out again tonight then?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I bet he'll have questions, so I definitely have to go if I want to throw him off. If I skipped, he'd suspect something. I'm sure he may have recognized me a teensy bit, but not enough to say for sure that I was Snow."

"Oh." Icelyn chewed her bottom lip, then rested both her legs up on the coffee table. "So what are you two going to do tonight?"

The two girls giggled before Mae answered. "Nothing like that. Like I said, I need to throw him off my scent, and plus, you know Snow is a total wild card." With a wink, Mae hopped onto the couch beside her best friend.

"And also, by every single way you relay your nights with him involved, he sounds infatuated with Snow," Icelyn told her, having observed all of the signs.

"Infatuated? Who uses that word anymore?"

"I do, dummy. And yes, he seems to loooove you. Didn't you say he draws you?" She asked.

Mae nodded. "That doesn't mean anything. I'm sure he sketches tons of models in his art class. I'm probably just practice."

"Sure," Icelyn rolled her eyes, unconvinced. "Just watch, Mae-Bae, I'm gonna steal his sketch book and show you how his drawings of you compare to everyone else's."

"How would you know, you creep?" Mae laughed loudly.

Icelyn scowled playfully. "I have a sixth sense, Mae."

"Okay, sure." Mae shook her head at her friend's tomfoolery, then went to go finish her homework.

Vote to see some Snow x Parker action next chapter ;)