It's Saturday afternoon, I'm in my garden, reading and relaxing. Diego is playing basketball next to me, and Noah and Jason are having a brother time at the store, shopping for new sports clothes. Of course, Diego and I were too lazy to accompany them.
They FaceTime and show us their things, and we approve or not. It's easier like that, and we can stay at home just chilling. I'm observing their finds when suddenly James tries to call me. I tell them they look good on them because, they could wear something ugly anyway they would make it awesome, and then I hang up and call him back.
"Jammy! How are you?"
"Hey, sunshine, better now that you call back." I bet he is smirking right now.
"You seem a little off, are you alright?"
"You know me right. Hum... it's about Mia." His voice sounds kinda nervous, I know it's not an easy subject for him and he doesn't like to open up, but I feel happy that he calls me to talk about it.
"Do you want me to come over?"
"I can come to pick you up, I'm at the store. I could come right after?"
"Yes, I'm basically ready and not doing anything anyway. Do you need something?"
"I'm all good, I'm coming in around twenty minutes."
"Perfect. Bye, buddy."
"See ya in twenty sunshine."
I hang up and go into my room putting on some clothes, I head back downstairs and tell Diego about my plans. James comes soon after and we go to his house, during the ride we sing and laugh like always but we don't mention Mia. When we arrive, I help him pack up his groceries, when I get my hands on something rather embarrassing.
"Huh, James?" I smirk and show him the box, when he sees it he turns red and starts to laugh nervously.
"Trust me, I didn't buy this. A guy gave it to me, telling me something like: 'you need to live while you are young but protect yourselves kiddos'. I was so embarrassed but I took it anyway, I was planning on using them as water balloons." I laugh at his childishness and go put the box on the table in the living room, thinking about really doing these water bomb balloons later.
Look who is the child now.
After I go sit on the couch and he goes to get some food, obviously he knows me well, then joins me with a bunch of sweets and settles down as well.
"So pretty boy, what's the problem?" I ask as he positions his head on my lap and eats his lollipop.
"It's complicated. I mean not really, but I'm lost." His green eyes always shining are like lost in the air, not as bright as usual, he's probably reminiscing something or trying to think about the situation. It's not often that I see him that concentrated or calm.
"I'm all yours, tell me everything." He smiles at that as a playful look crossed his gaze.
"You are not mine and you know it, plus I don't want to be in any competition with anyone if you know what I mean." I slap him and roll my eyes, while he chuckles and I continue to eat some chocolates.
"Shut up, I don't know what you are implying, but it's obviously not true." He shakes his head, laughs, and mutters 'sure', but doesn't push the subject any further.
"So about Mia... Well, we've been talking for a while now. Not just talking like before, but I feel like it's different since she's not with Mackenzie anymore. Except I still don't know if I'm giving myself false hopes or not." I know how important Mia is to him, he really likes her very much. I can understand how upset he can be since she shows everyone that she loves Eliot, but at the same time I saw a change in her behavior towards him recently.
"I think she's starting to open her eyes more, and she likes your personality. You are great friends and I don't think it's good to rush things, but I mean she's maybe not interested in more with you, but that can still change. But yeah you should not imagine too much, I don't want you to be sad in the end. If you like her that much, maybe start enjoying your friendship at least."
"Yeah at least she likes talking to me, but I can't deny I want more Ava." His expression is sad and I feel like I can't do much for him. I don't want to intrude on their relationship but I want her to realize how much James cares for her and will be good for her.
"I understand, maybe if you know that it will be difficult for you to just be friends, you should talk to her, or just take your distance a little. I can see her change in behavior towards you, I don't mean that she is starting to like you differently, but she certainly starts to like you more and enjoy your company more and more. It's a good start, but we can't control her feelings." He sighs and closes his eyes.
"Alright, enough of my sad one-sided love story, it's time for some fun." He gets up and looks at me with a mischievous look, a smirk on his face.
Oh, I don't like this at all.
I feel something weird, like this feeling that something is going to happen. He leaves to go somewhere in the house, and the moment I hear him behind me again, I don't have enough time to react that a gooey substance is all over my face.
"You're on!" I scream and jump at him, literally wiping my face on his T-shirt, but this asshole has a backup plan, and I end up getting drenched from head to toe, thanks to the water balloons he was so excited to test.
We fight and laugh for a long time, then after being completely exhausted, we sprawl out in his living room and talk for a while.
"Maybe we should clean up a bit." I declare looking at what we have done at his home, he nods and we start to clean a bit.
"You can take a shower upstairs, you know the way to my room," he tells me when we have finished cleaning most of the mess. I go to his room and take a shower, which is really essential since my whole body is a mess and I stink. I go out in only a towel and go downstairs to ask James for some clothes because mine are, after long consideration, completely unusable.
"Oh shit," Peter exclaims, as I come face to face with pretty much the entire football team, still just in a towel, and to add some spice to the already embarrassing and suspicious enough situation, James is just in his underwear.
"Can you explain yourself?" Noah says harshly looking at both of our faces as red as a tomato, while everyone looks shocked and in need of explanations as well.
"This is not what it looks like. I swear," James tries to defend himself, however, his explanation is confusing, especially when we see the state of the house and the fact that we are not really dressed.
We both go to find clothes, he lends me shorts and a sweatshirt. We then go downstairs, the guys are in the kitchen, and Marco and Peter are in the living room. I go join Marco and Peter to avoid my brothers, as James goes into the kitchen. When I arrive, they both look at me suspiciously, yet I don't say anything and go sit on the couch. The guys join us all right after. He looks at us badly, I can see it, and he seems rather pissed off, just like my twin.
"You could have warned you guys were coming," James says and scratches the back of his neck nervously.
"I texted you at least thirty minutes ago," Elias says irritably, and coldly.
"Oh yeah sorry, I didn't see it," James says looking at his phone and feeling kind of sad, I don't know if it's sadness but he looks at him in a way that says that he's really sorry.
I'm very embarrassed as I play with the hem of the sweatshirt, way too big for me. I don't really feel comfortable, I mean, James and I obviously are just friends, nothing could ever happen. I don't want them to think something happened, it's not that it would be a shame or something like that, but something tells me I don't want people to think of me being involved romantically with him.
"You sure made a mess of the house, I don't want to know what we would witness if we came earlier," Marco says playfully, taking in his surroundings, and keeping on embarrassing us.
The house is still a bit messy, there are clothes and books all over the floor since we just cleaned up the food. To add even more embarrassment, when Jared sits on the couch, he sits right on the box of condoms we forgot to put away earlier to make our water bombs.
"Oh my god, I would have never imagined that. I almost believed your little food fight lie, but now you guys fucked up. Think about tidying up your things better next time," he tells us, smirking and holding out the box to show it to everyone, which is not appreciated by some of the boys.
Cough Domínguez brothers, cough.
Their faces tell us they really don't like it at all, while the others laugh and can't believe their eyes. He frowns and sits harshly in the chair, turning his gaze away, not paying attention to the scene we are causing.
"You are not going to make it out alive, Walsh," Noah says firmly, looking angrily at James, as Jason walks up to me and grabs me by the arm, strongly but gently at the same time, leading me a little away from everyone.
"Tell-me-the-truth-right-now," he tells me firmly, saying every word meticulously, to have more impact on me, which works pretty well. He knows how to be intimidating when he wants.
"Nothing happened, we used them as water bombs, I swear on Madi," I say the last part in a whisper so only he can hear, as he releases me and sighs.
"You really are weird people, and next time you do that, try putting on some clothes, I don't want you to be half-naked next to James, he's a pervert." He gently hits James who pouts and whines as I laugh and everyone starts to move on to another topic as this one has been pretty much clarified.
We talk and laugh during the entire rest of the day, it's still pretty early but he decides to leave. He has been pretty silent the entire afternoon, he was kind of pissed or irritated, I don't know why.
"You are leaving this early?" Jared asks him, a curious look on his gaze.
"Yeah, I have things to do with my sister." He doesn't seem really convincing and happy about it, but nobody questions him. I bet everyone sensed he was off the entire afternoon.
"Bye, say hi to Carmen, I miss her," Marco playfully says but he doesn't even smile.
"Leave my mother alone, perv. See you guys on Monday, see you tomorrow Val." Everyone turns to look at me as he exits the house, leaving me alone to have to explain why we're going to see each other tomorrow when we're supposed to dislike each other. Besides, we never talk about it, why did he mention it there, in front of all the guys?
"Why did he say you were going to see each other tomorrow? I thought you weren't getting along," Eliot asks me, to which everyone nods and awaits my response.
"It's okay, we just do a morning jog at the same lake, on the same day, and at about the same time. That's it, nothing big." I try to avoid telling them that we're pretty much doing it together now, not just doing it at the same time and seeing each other in the process, but more like running and taking our breaks together.
They seem to believe my version and don't push the subject further, the late afternoon is the same as before, with laughter and good humor. We all ate together at James 'place and then we came home around ten o'clock when his mom came home from work.
It was a good day, I really like the guys because with them it's not fussing, we talk, do bullshit, and mess around, it's exhausting but pleasant exhaustion. Some of Diego's friends were with us tonight, so he's going to sleep with me, in case he has a sleepwalking crisis. I go to bed a little early, I'm exhausted and tomorrow I have to be ready to run.
I'm a little intrigued as to how he's going to act tomorrow because he was really pissed off today, but I know he will be there since he said to me "see you tomorrow".
I fell asleep thinking about tomorrow morning and so about him.
Why do I care if he comes or not?