The Middle - Volume Two ✔️

Chapter 20 (Erin & Sarah)

"Sure, Joel's cool. I'll show him around a little, maybe take him for lunch. Not a problem, roomie." She straightens up with Joel's soda, and turns to walk back over to the boys. But, something about the way she just emphasised the word 'roomie' isn't sitting right with me. Is she not okay with this?

"Are you sure?" I whisper, glancing over at the boys to make sure they're not listening. They're still talking and pointing at whatevers on the screen of Jay's phone. Good.

"Yes, I'm sure." She whispers back, frowning at me. No, I'm not buying it.

"Okay. So why did you pronounce 'roomie' like that just now?" I ask her.

"Like what?" She says, cocking her head at me. "I said the word like I say any other word. You're imagining things, friend."

Okay, no. I am most certainly not imagining things. She put a weird emphasis on the word 'friend' just then, too! But now she's walking back over to the boys, and she's handing Joel his soda. I can't make any further enquiries about this right now, I can only assume she doesn't actually wanna spend the day with Joel.

"So, how'd you guys sleep last night? How was the hotel?" Sarah asks the guys, as I rejoin them by the couch. I sit down on Sarah's bed, so that I'm facing them. She sits down next to me.

"Good, comfy bed. No complaints here." Joel says, smiling up at her broadly. I catch Jay's eye, and quickly look away. He didn't do much sleeping last night, and boy do I know it... He doesn't say anything.

"And you, Jay? You sleep okay? Jamie didn't snore too loud or whatever?" Sarah asks, blinking and smiling at Jay. She's being weird. Why is she being weird...?

"Um, yeah. It was fine. Thanks." Jay says, glancing between me and Sarah awkwardly. I sigh in my head. Try to make it more fucking obvious, Jay. I know that Joel knows about us, because Jay text me and told me. I know Patrick knows too. But, Sarah doesn't. And I wanna keep it that way.

"Awesome. I'm so glad to hear it." Sarah beams at the boys, before turning her head around and beaming at me. She's acting so fucking weird.

"And what about you?" I ask her. "You decided you were spending the night at your mom's last night, but you slept here. What, you just bailed on your mom last minute?"

"Pretty much." Sarah says, still smiling at me sweetly. She turns to face the boys. "I had a great sleep, because I had the dorm to myself. Erin, here, hooked up last night."

I try to stop myself from frowning at her. Why the hell would she say that? In front of Jay!? She knows how I feel about him! And she doesn't know that he's the guy I hooked up with last night. As far as she knows, she's just told the boy I'm madly in love with that I fucked some other dude last night. Not cool, roomie!

Joel and Jay look at each other awkwardly, and neither of them respond to what Sarah just said. I'm grateful, and I'll handle this.

"Yeah, they don't wanna hear about that, Sarah." I say with a fake laugh, waving my hand like I'm brushing the subject under the carpet. Whatever you were trying to do just now, Sarah, it didn't work. So screw you. "So, what's your plans for the day guys? When are you heading down to Philly?"

"Just whenever, really." Joel replies quickly, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Topic of conversation successfully changed. "We're gonna get a rental and drive down, maybe dinner time?"

"Whatever, dude." Jay says, shrugging his shoulders. "You drove New York to Philly before?"

"No, I haven't." Joel answers him. "Should be easy enough, though."