12. Saturday Week Four
To say I was exhausted, would be an understatement; I was shattered.
Noah dropped me home at around 12:30 but even after I was tucked up in my duvet, my thoughts kept drifting to a certain beat up Boxer Boy. Worry and anxiety were pounding away in my mind.
Was he ok? Did I clean him up well enough? What injuries did he sustain that I didn't see? Did he need to go to the hospital? Had he fallen off of the sofa? Is he awake? Is he alive? Did his mum find him like that, all beat up? What if one of the twins find him like that?
The questions all floated around my head relentlessly and frustration clawed at me due to my lack of answers. I didn't want to message him on the chance that he was asleep and I woke him up. The turbulent emotions meant that I didn't find sleep until 3 am and now I was doing the stupid morning shift at the diner. And everyone was pissing me the fuck off.
To make matters worse, a group of football players from school came stumbling into the diner at around 1 pm; the peak of my moodiness because this is the time I should be waking up.
My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when Sarah clasped my shoulder, "Want me to take them?" She asked, looking in the direction of the boys and sensing my rising anxiety.
My eyes briefly scanned over them and I shook my head, my heart calming when I didn't see him there, "no, I'm good, I got this."
I took a deep breath in and out and then made my way over to the boy's table, stopping just beside it causing them to look up at me, I opened my mouth to talk but someone beat me to it.
"Rei-bear! Holy shit! It's been a while."
My blood boiled in my veins and my skin crawled at the nickname he had given me, it had been a while since I heard it. Coming from the mouth of Caleb Hall, our school's tight-end, I knew it was harmless, but it still cut through me like a knife.
"Don't call me that!" I snapped.
He held his hands up in mock surrender and gave me his cheeky smile, "my bad. I forgot only M-"
"So! What can I get you, boys?" I interrupted in an overly chipper voice before he could say his name. I did not need to hear his name.
Before any of them could give me their order though, Caleb decided to continue talking to me; he always was an annoying prick.
"Where've you been? We never see you at parties anymore?" There is a reason for that Caleb.
I shrugged at him and pulled my pad and pen out, hoping he got the hint, "guess they're just not my scene anymore."
"Hmm, I guess not. How's Noah doing?"
"I don't know Caleb, I'm not his keeper. You're on the team with him, ask him yourself." Annoyance rose through me, we weren't friends and in all honesty, we had never been friends even when I was forced to be around him, so what was with this being nice shit.
"Oh, my bad. I just thought that he couldn't take a piss without your permission."
He and the boys all laughed at this but I didn't find it funny. My hands fell to my sides to hide my clenching fists as I took a step closer to their table, my anger mounted to a whole other level.
"You got something you wanna say?" I provoked him through gritted teeth.
Caleb sat up straighter in his chair and his easy-going smile dropped off his face as he met my glare head-on, "I think you know exactly what I want to say Reillyn."
"So say it then."
There was no denying he blamed me for the rift between the team, but his friend made that after the shit he put me through.
"Nah, I'm good."
"Thought so, you're all talk, Caleb. Too much of a pussy to say it to my fucking face."
He shot up out of his chair causing it to fall backwards onto the floor, I stubbornly stood my ground and only backed off when Kasey, the owner, came stomping over, "is there a problem here?" She demanded to know, looking between me and Caleb. She knew what a little shit he was.
He gave her that easy-going smile of his and sat back down, tiling backwards on his chair slightly, "Nah, we're all good here." Bipolar fucker.
"Well okay then, someone will be over to take your order in a moment."
I still hadn't moved and I was sure my glare was still blatantly apparent on my face. Kase grabbed my elbow and tugged me to her office in the back, "what was that Reillyn?" Okay, so she was annoyed, I could work with that.
"He was being an ass!" I exclaimed, pointing towards the door which led back out into the restaurant. Or maybe I couldn't work with it.
"I don't care! You never take the bait Rei, you know better than that. He's a paying customer." My mind drifted to when Eli said that to me; I was still a bitch to him though. Maybe I do need to work on customer service.
I slumped down into one of the chairs in her office and blew a breath of air to try to move the hair off of my face, "sorry," I mumbled so quietly I wouldn't be surprised if she hadn't heard me.
Her face softened as she came around her desk to crouch in front me and pull me into a hug, "it's okay Rei."
All the pent up tension from the last few weeks just evaporated from my body as I relaxed into her hold. Kase had been close with my parents and when they died she helped my Nan out a lot with me and Ty. Often picking me up from school and bringing me to the diner when my Nan couldn't deal with us both. She gave me a job here as soon as I was old enough to work.
Like my Nan and everyone except my four best friends, Kase had no idea what happened the last couple years, only that I changed, that I had struggled; I wanted to keep it that way, the fewer people that knew, the better.
She pulled away and checked the time on her watch, "your shift is due to end soon, why don't you call it a day and go wait for your friends?"
Gratefully, I smiled at her before handing her my apron and heading to one of the booths in the back, as far away from Caleb the Asshole as I could get. I texted Kins to let her know I was at the back and then closed my eyes and leant my head forward onto my folded arms; I was shattered.
It felt like I'd been shattered since the moment I bumped into Eli at the club, I felt like my life had changed so much since then. That was four weeks ago now and since then: I'd started learning how to fight with the school's rude bad-boy; I'd argued with said bad-boy multiple times; I had introduced him to my crazy Nan; I told his younger brother to get a prostitute; and I'd patched him up when he was too tired to do it himself.
But the weird thing was, despite how tired I was at this moment, I wouldn't change any of it.
"Hey, putta," Lana's loud, but still annoyingly sexy, voice made me lift my head up from its rest but I remained bent over the table, with my arms crossed. She smoothly slid into the booth on my left and Kins and Kie slid into the booth on my right.
"Hey," I replied
"Hard day?" Kie wanted to know.
I nodded, "something like that."
Kins gave me a knowing look, "we saw the boys," her eyes flickered to Lana briefly, but it was enough for me to know what she was going to ask next, "was he the-"
"Nope," I shook my head and answered her before she could ask, "just Caleb and a few others."
Kie looked confused but made no comment, instead asking me, "do you wanna do this another day? We can drop you home if you're too tired."
My head shook as I sat upright and forced myself to wake up, "no, no, I'm fine. We have to do this today, her birthday is next weekend and I'm starting to stress about how we haven't done anything yet."
"Her birthday is next week!?" We all nodded in response to Kie's outburst. It was justified though, we were only now meeting to plan a surprise 18th birthday party for Tori and her birthday was next weekend. What can I say, we were all procrastinators? Ironically, Tori is the organised one.
"What do the guys do for each other's birthdays?" Kins asked Kie, looking for some inspiration.
Sarah came over at that moment to take our orders, we all ordered milkshakes proving I was the sane one when I was the only one who ordered chocolate.
"They just have a huge party at someone's house and get a stripper," she shrugged as she responded to Kinsey's question.
That pulled a laugh out of me, "imagine Tor's face if we ordered her a stripper"
We all started laughing as we pictured it in our heads, "her face would be so red," Lana accurately pointed out. Tori would die of embarrassment.
"Ohhhh," we all looked over at Kins as her face formed an expression of understanding, "that makes sense now. I was speaking to Noah about how we were meeting today about Tor's party, and he just turns to me and goes, 'I can't wait for my birthday this year' and I was so confused because I was like his birthday isn't for another like, 4 months, we haven't planned anything," she pointed at Kie, "makes complete sense now."
I rolled my eyes with a chuckle, "of course he is."
"Speaking of Noah," I glanced over at Kie before turning to face Sarah who had returned with our drinks, we all thanked her before Kie continued, "he told me that you were at Ryker's house at like 12 am?"
The girls all turned to look at me with matching looks of question on their face. Great.
"Debbie asked me to look after the kids cause she was working, Eli got back home at 12 so I left," I shrugged casually and brought my milkshake to my lips to hide my anxiety.
"Mmm-hmm, we saw what happened on Wednesday. The tension was real, Rei." Kie nodded in agreement with Kins' statement. Lana wasn't there but the girls had filled her in.
"Yeah, of course it was tense, he was mad that I told his brother to get a prostitute."
"He lets you call him Eli, Rei, no-one calls him that," Kie admonished. I refused to let myself overthink any aspect of our friendship â and that was what it was, a friendship.
"That's only because I was annoying and basically forced him to accept it." The forced acceptance was true, I was not annoying though.
"Sure," Kie.
"Okay," Kins.
"Bulllshit," Lana.
"Oh my god," I cried out, "there is nothing going on between me and Eli!" The image of his head on my stomach as he held me last night flickered behind my eyes but I ignored it and held strong, "I promise, geez, could we get back to Tori now, please. Actually, if we are going to be questioning anyone, it should be you," I point to Kie and she looks taken aback, turning her finger to point at herself in question.
"Mm, yeah, you. When did you get buddy-buddy with Noah, huh?" I questioned, desperate to get the attention off of me, "we got home late last night so you must have been messaging him already or early this morning."
At my questioning, the other two girls leant forward on the table peering at Kie who looked annoyingly unfazed, "well, yeah. He was over at mine when you called him at 12, he was hanging out with Kyle." Well fuck me, that was boring.
"oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'," she mocked me with a roll of her eyes, "okay, so what are we thinking," Kie asked as she pulled a notebook out of her bag.
For the next hour or so we all hung out, messing about, talking, planning Tori's party. All my tiredness melted away as I spent the afternoon with my girls, relaxing. And for the first time since he smashed a door into my face, I found myself not thinking of Eli every ten minutes.
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