It Comes Naturally

9.

Lunch strangely felt normal. Selby's absence was seen and felt but the group felt no strains of last night's blowout. It was filled with excited and curious questions from the girls, teasing comments from Mischa and Alec, and genuinely happy laughter from Elijah. Trey being the resident grump even gave a smile and gave into his dry humor. The student body glances bounced between their group and the footballers' group which now had one more person - Selby. Everyone knew she always does lunch with her friends, to see her with her boyfriend brought up a lot of questions. Not to mention the obvious bruising on Derek's face brought up even more questions. 

"It feels weird, ent?" Erica asked softly of her new friends. The girls sighed and glanced towards their now ex-best friend. Selby was all over Derek, fussing over him and intentionally ignoring her old friends. 

"Yeah," Raine all but whispered. Out of the three girls, Selby and Raine were friends the longest. The two were the ones who supported Bree's childhood crush on Elijah in middle school. They were the ones who pushed her to ask him out on their group outing. After Elijah and Bree's breakup, they blamed themselves for it all. Ayanna joined the group freshman year, her family was close to Trey's, it seems right to bring her under their wing and the girls were inseparable ever since. They never thought a guy would have broken their friendship.

Erica boldly looked Selby's way and caught her quick glance. She didn't avert her gaze, she wanted to see what the girl who befriended her yesterday will do. Selby simply shrugged her shoulders and turned away. The obvious cold shoulder did hurt Erica. Her first real friend was acting like a completely different person. 
A warm hand covered her own on the table, turning to the person she visibly relaxed when those hypnotizing brown eyes caught her in its gaze. 

'How does he do that?' she asked herself. Elijah comforted her without a word, a simple touch from him and her brain turned to mush. He gave her a soft smile before turning back to his conversation with Alec. Her eyes widen in shock when she overheard both guys speaking in fluent Italian. 'Elijah speaks Italian? The internet actually doesn't know everything. Shaking her head from that shocker, she turned back to the girls. They both had wide cheesy grins on their faces probably spotting the exchange between her and Elijah. "Knock it off. Anywho, she will bounce she head one of these days. Leh she go on," Erica said before finishing her lunch. Lunch Elijah insisted that he buy.

"What do you mean by 'bounce she head'?" Raine asked genuinely confused. 

Erica laughed softly at how funny the old saying sounded on her new friend's tongue. "It means Selby will get her comeuppance. Karma will fuck her hard when the time is right," Trey said in his known cold tone. 

"Oh!" Both girls voiced their answer in unison glancing at Selby's way again. The girls resumed their animated chatter and once again Raine's attention was diverted. This time to a table with one guy. Forgetting her conversation, she settled on watching the guy write furiously in a notebook before continuing his reading in a thick textbook. Ayanna caught her friend doing her daily stare since sophomore year and shook her head in amusement. "It's our last year, Raine," Ayanna said aloud. 

A startled gasp escaped Raine which drew the attention of the guys. They all looked in the object of their friend's attention direction and shook their head just like Ayanna. "What did I miss?" Erica asked.

"Raine has a crush on that dude for the longest while. Travis Donners is his name. She keeps pining after him like in some cheesy high school movie. She never made a move. Woman up!" Mischa answered.

"There's such a thing as rejection. I know you guys never experience it but it's real," Raine retorted.

"She's more worried about the hierarchy high school creates," Trey interjected.