Page 13 of Chase
Chase:I call bullshit
Ally:I second that
I’m interrupted by Yasmin clearing her throat. I look up from my phone and can’t help but smile at her. She gives me a small smile of her own.
“One sec.” I say holding up my finger.
Chase:We’re on our way to the table. See you soon.
Arden:Roger that. Mushu’s are delivering.
I shake my head and pocket my phone.
“Do you like Chinese food?” I ask Yasmin while we walk back through the halls. Just as we exit the building, the halls fill with kids and she looks around uncomfortably. It’s warmed up now. Once we’re safely outside, I take off my blazer and catch her watching me. I give her a wink and continue to walk towards our table, which is as far away from the main building as we could get, right near the car park.
“Yeah. Why?” She replies hesitantly.
“Arden’s got our favourite restaurant delivering lunch.” Mushu’s never delivers lunch. Usually we just get sandwiches or burgers and the occasional pizza if Martha doesn’t bring us lunch. Not sure how Arden managed that.
“Restaurant food for lunch? I’m a little out of my league here. I planned to just get something from the cafeteria.” She’s still a little on edge.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just something Arden does. We stopped eating at the cafeteria years ago. Arden got food poisoning and as funny as it was for us, he then demanded that we never eat there again and has been providing lunch ever since.” I offer a little explanation, secretly hoping it’ll relax her a little.
“Oh wow. That’s a little over the top.”
“Yeah, but that’s Arden. Usually his housekeeper brings us lunch.”
“A housekeeper? Jesus I can’t even begin to wonder what this restaurant is going to be like, it’s not going to be something weird and fancy like goat’s head soup or chicken feet? Because there is no way in hell I’m eating that,” she says and I can’t help but chuckle. It’s the most she’s said to me since she left my house this morning.
She glances at me curiously. “You find this funny?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. Trust me?” I don’t expect a reply from her, but I’m pretty sure I hear her whisper “okay”.
As we near the table, she begins to tense again.
“It’ll be okay. You can leave anytime,” I reassure her again.
Ally sees us approaching and rushes to us. She throws her arm around Yasmin’s shoulders and walks her away from me while throwing a scary ass glare in my direction.
I head to the table while Ally and Yasmin sit on the grass a little bit away from us and talk.
I turn my stare to Arden. “What happened?” Arden makes the motion of zipping his lips and throwing away the key.
“It’s pointless. I already tried to get him to spill.” Rhys says looking up from his phone.
“You were awfully quiet, during that exchange.” I say to Rhys.
“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t following the convo. It was hard not to, when you were blowing up the chat,” Rhys says abruptly.
“Who pissed in your cereal this morning?” Arden snarks. This isn’t unusual for Rhys, but he hasn’t been like this in a while.
“Fuck off Arden.” He snaps. I catch him looking over at the girls and then back at us. It was quick and I probably wasn’t meant to see it.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I sit opposite him, choosing to ignore his attitude.
“Nothing.”
“We know you better than that.” I don’t buy into his nothing crap.
