Life Is What You Bake It // A Harry Styles AU

Chapter 1 - Term 1, Week 1

Monday

"Don't forget to check your rota for practical sessions on your way out, please." Steve calls through the room as the class stands, all beginning to pile their things up. "There's one on my desk, on the pinboard outside, on the larder wall and the wall in the kitchen downstairs. I don't want anyone turning up tomorrow in the wrong bloody PPE."

"What if I'm still waiting for new whites to be delivered?" Ben asks, hooking his rucksack over his shoulder.

Steve smirks, folding his arms over his chest from behind his desk in the corner of the room. "Then you get to borrow from lost property in the interim."

The room collectively laughs, a few of the girls groaning at the notion. The class has only fifteen students, which is more than the thirteen they were last year. Only two of those were boys. The class is now up to four boys thanks to the two new additions who entered at Level 2 after doing their Level 1 qualification in their last two years of school.

"Seriously?" Ben groans.

"One hundred percent." Steve shrugs. "Not my fault that you last minute decided to beef up and grow two sizes bigger over the summer holidays."

Adele can't help her laugh at that one, looking pointedly to Eden who just so happens to be her best friend and Ben's girlfriend. "Told you."

Eden rolls her eyes, probably because she knows Adele is right - she'd said Steve would have something snide to say this morning when she saw the state of Ben's suddenly overly-broad arms.

Adele and Eden are best friends. After a rocky start to Adele's first year at college, she and Eden had grown close after a session in the kitchen on a Monday afternoon where they'd been paired up together. There used to be a third member of their small group, Courtney, who decided to leave in place of a full-time job at a chain hotel just outside Coventry. The three met up over the summer on a couple of occasions, but Courtney seems to be distancing herself. Neither Adele or Eden are sure why, but Courtney always was quiet. Neither have ever particularly taken it to heart.

Last year, Adele and Eden's boyfriend Ben were also particularly good friends, being in the same groups for all of their practical sessions, so now it tends to be Ben, Eden and Adele hanging around like an all too frequent third wheel. Somehow, it's never been awkward.

The three of them are last to file out of the classroom, and they're all waiting to see the rota on the pinboard like Steve had instructed. Obviously every single other student is looking at it as well, so they lean against the wall while they wait for people to disperse. Two girls from the class squeak with excitement when they find out they're in the same group as each other. Adele just prays she's not with them.

"If I have to spend another year with Hattie and Bella, I will kick the fuck off with Bridgett." Eden mutters under her breath, only low enough for Adele to really hear. The comment comes after she'd spent the entire year previous on rotation with them in practical sessions and theory, and argued with them about pretty much everything.

They're the typical 'up-their-own-arses' kind of girls - hung out together in a group of six and no more, but the sixth person was never usually allowed to hang around with them for longer than a term. Adele was never sure if they ejected the poor sods on purpose, or if the ejectee was just smart enough to figure out they were actually bitches all too quickly. Adele was lucky enough to be the sixth member in term one, and she stayed for a month, and then just distanced herself because they were always just selfish. She thought that kind of thing would be left behind when she started college, but unfortunately her parents' 'little fish, big pond' theory was drowned on day one.