Plié and Clout

Chapter 8: Steph-ahn

"Vegetable?" Belle stares in awe at Jilly.

"Yeah, fried in this stuff, it's nasty." Jilly starts to laugh. "And then he went on to help me make cookies and I'm honestly worried that there's going to be any left."

"My brother ate all my chips this one time." Belle and Jilly drift away from me to stretch a bit before we start. "Just tipped back the bag and started munching, it was my favorite type of chips too."

***

Steph is a bit late again, just like Monday. "Jilly, sorry I'm late, Nico held us today, again." He's a bit damp, probably from the pouring rain outside. His shirt is sticking to him and his hair is all messed up.

"You should tell her that you need to pick me up and then run, she's scary." Who's Nico? And isn't that a guy's name?

"So, how was ballet today," He takes her by the hand and spins her around like a waltz.

"Awesome." She giggles. They're still standing in the door and I can see him hesitating just a bit.

"Alright, I gotta talk to your teacher here, do you mind waiting in the car?" He hands her the keys. "Don't turn up the music too loud, it's right outside." She lets out an evil laugh and skips down the stairs. Steph takes a deep breath and I pull my eyes away, making it look like I'm messing with paper not staring at him in all his messy glory.

"Hey," I look up, and both of us turn beet red. I can feel it creeping down my neck. He slams his hands into his pockets and locks his elbows, puffing out his cheeks.

"Okay this is going to sound weird, but," He tips his head up to the ceiling then looks back at me. The eye contact gives me the same spark it did yesterday and I can't do anything, my mouth is completely dry. "So we're rather new here, and Jills doesn't seem to be getting along with her school mates, and I don't know if you can do anything about this but can you see if you can throw her into a group here because I really don't want her to be too lonely, it's a new place and she's never lived in a city before it's all just very new and I feel like she needs to meet people, but," He's rambling like crazy, and all I could really make a connection with was friends and Jilly, the rest of the time my head was focused on the timber of his voice. God holy.

"Right, the friends," I clear my throat and shake my head. "She asked me about that."

"She did?" He lets out a long sigh then I see a small spark of older brother pride in him.

"Yeah, uh, yeah," I'm stumbling over my words. His ears are so red that I bet I could cook an egg with them. "Uh, er, she told me she, she said something about, about school?"

"Yeah, Mom put her, put her, in Crawford, that's why she's here, here with me, not them." He bites his lip, and I get an unholy rush of adrenaline. A single piece of sandy hair falls into his eyes and he pulls one arm up rather abruptly to push it out of the way before slamming his hand back into his pocket.

"Crawford?" I pause. "That's the smart one, right?" the smart one????? What am I DOING?

"Yeah, yeah, that, that school." He shakes his head and stares down at his toes.

"She, seemed, uh," My hands are so sweaty that when I move one off the desk it has left a silhouette. I slap it back on the desk to cover the sweat and both of us jump. "Fly." my voice cracks. He shifts his weight back and forth a couple of times, then takes a long deep breath. I continue, trying to out-talk my blunder. "She seemed to, to make friends with the other, the uh, the other Crawford girl, uh, she, they, they talked about food." I blurt.