Hacking The Relationship Code

Chapter 10: F.R.I.E.N.D.S

The next day in class, Andy caught the corner seat in the back row. I went and sat beside him. Adrian took the seat beside me followed by Leslie, Mia and Cole. I shivered as he sat beside me. The smell of his deodorant hit my nostrils as Andy gave me a knowing smile while Adrian was facing the other side. He used his fingers to air-quote 'friends'. I rolled my eyes at him.

My first week at MSU ended pretty well. I liked most of the classes and professors except for the Derivative instruments class. I couldn't understand much about the complex strategies of options and swaps. That lecture always went above my head no matter how hard I tried to understand.

***

After that day at Adrian's place, the shift in the energy between me and Adrian hadn't gone unnoticed by anyone. Mia and Andy had even subtly started teasing us. We had bonded well. I was finally starting to feel comfortable and normal around him. I discovered a lot of things about him I didn't know previously. He was a foodie. He could devour an entire 9-inch cheese burst pizza alone. He liked to show off his knowledge on sports and finance too. He was always updated about the status of the economy and what not. His financial knowledge went deeper than ours. While we were still studying US indices, he could even quote other foreign indices. He tracked a bunch of stocks daily. I learnt quite a lot from him. It reminded me of the days we would ace every class activity together. While I was behind in the derivatives class, he was behind at financial reporting and we helped each other out.

We even shared interests in the same online series and fought over our favorite characters. I liked debating with him over the series we had both watched. We would find ourselves in the middle of heated debates on some plots, characters and even the cast.

He was also not very good at giving out or accepting compliments. While Cole threw out compliments like tossing cash at a strip club, Adrian couldn't even form a single compliment, let alone give it. He even was a shy receiver when it came to compliments. Leslie would purposely fish out compliments at him to just make him blush. Being a player of the football team, he was well known in the university. A lot of girls tried to grab his attention with their sugary articulation and flirty body language. He seemed to feel very shy around them. I found it cute.

However, he still retained few traits from his Adrian Carter days. Like whenever the topic of his escape would come up, he would try to avoid it or shift the conversation somewhere else and entirely chase the topic away.

He had a tight schedule which juggled between classes, practice and homework. The guy was really working hard to accommodate everything in his limited daytime.

Some serious classes had begun in the second week. It was getting challenging to keep up with them. Andy and I did our homework together. I was thankful that we were together in this. I was so used to working with him right from our school days. Leslie would join us at the library for homework. We took much less time when we did it together. I could tell that Andy was smitten by Leslie. It wasn't a shocker since Adrian and me started hanging out, Andy was left with Leslie when I wasn't around. I couldn't say the same about Leslie. I didn't know her well as I knew Andy.

I decided to invite Leslie over to our apartment this weekend. We could get to know her better outside school and she was fun too. Leslie could even embarrass Cole with her jokes on him. She and Cole got along well. They both had that fun vibe which could cheer anyone up. I would often wonder, why would Cole flirt with Mia and not Leslie?

"I invited Leslie over for the weekend. Is that okay with you?" I asked Mia.

"Ya why not. We could chat all night. I will need a stress buster by the weekend anyway."

"So what's going on between you and Cole?"

"Nothing much, we just flirt."

"So are you interested in things beyond flirting?"

"Honestly its too soon to tell. I do flirt with him but I don't mean anything I say. I just do it for fun. Besides that, he isn't my type."

"Are you sure he knows that? Are you on the same page?"

"We haven't had any talk explicitly but come on, he flirts with so many girls, there's nothing special about me."

"Yeah he can even flirt with Trump I feel, but let's just say the lady at the admin counter is immune to his charms." We giggled.

The other day he was trying to flirt with a lady at the admin counter and she handed his ass to him. Cole had tried to charm his way to get a walk-in entry inside the admin office and it backfired at him. The lady sent him back in the queue.

***

My phone rang. I grabbed it from my pocket to attend the call. It was Adrian. Why was he calling? I picked it up.

"Hello."

"Hello Ginna, its Adrian."

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Hey guys! I hope everyone has been good. So, I have decided to dedicate a chapter every week to the reader who leaves good amount of votes or comments.

Thank You for 500 reads! Aiming for much more.

This chapter is dedicated to fashioncrazyness

Happy Reading!