Thirteen #3
I swallowed the food in my mouth and shot a glare his way. "You're not smarter than me."
Javier put a hand on his chin and raised an eyebrow skeptically. He then hummed. "Sorry, who's the class president?"
"Go to hell. That doesn't make you smarter than me," I grumbled.
"Sure, and how many times have I been the class president?" Javier taunted.
My tongue was tied. I had no response, no retort. I just stared as the smirk splayed across his beautifully smug face. He wiggled his eyebrows at me before turning toward his computer once again.
I should have felt embarrassed at the fact that he had just silenced me like that. And I was, I was embarrassed and insulted by his harsh words. However, I couldn’t help but feel satisfaction because he had finally truly looked at me.
After that, Javier started contributing to his share of preparing for the competition.
Even with his unkind words, he still took what I had said into consideration.
That was the kind of shit that made everyone love him so much.
Even in his insults he couldn’t help but hear and understand what people were saying to him.
The time passed quicker than I thought it would.
I wasn’t hating being around him as much as I was when I first got here.
He was more relaxed than he was before, so that made it easier.
Not that it changed my hate for him—he was still a prick.
He was simply being a tolerable prick for our short time together.
"I need a break from this or I’ll die of boredom," Javier groaned as he ran his hands over his head. "I'd ask if you're hungry, but you just ate an entire pack of Oreos."
"Actually, there's a whole sleeve left," I said with a guilty smile. When his unamused expression didn’t change, I frowned slightly. "I'm sorry, I'll buy you more."
I didn’t do it on purpose. We had been preparing for over two hours and snacking gave me something to do with my hands. Javier watched me do so and he never made a move to stop me, and I hadn’t realized how much I had eaten until it was too late.
He waved me off. "Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal. You'll have to be the one to explain to my sister where all the cookies went, though."
Javier let out a light laugh as he eyed me. I felt my lips pull into a small smile unwillingly. His smile was cute.
Damn, what was happening to me?
Javier spun around in the chair a few times before his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and groaned when he read the name of the caller. He then muted the ringing and slid his phone back into his pocket.
"I'd hate to be the person who was just calling you," I blurted without thinking.
The nosy part of me wanted to ask who that was, but the rational part of me knew that I shouldn’t.
He looked at me, puzzled. "Why?"
"Clearly you don't want to talk to whoever it was." Since I had already brought it up, I figured I might as well get the answer since I wanted to know. I didn't have a good reason as to why I wanted to know so badly, I just did.
Javier shrugged. "Because I'm busy with you right now."
"You could've told them that instead of ignoring their call."
"Do you tell your girlfriend that you don't want to talk to her?" he asked rhetorically. His eyes widened at the realization of how bad that sounded, so he backtracked. "Not that I don't want to talk to her. It's like I said, I'm just busy with you right now."
Most people I knew would have answered their girlfriend's call and simply told her that they're busy. Javier wasn't like most people I knew.
I pursed my lips as he continued to try to fix what he had said. "All she wants is to ask me about ice skating again, anyway."
"You ice skate?" I asked. When he nodded, I continued. "I've gone ice skating once before. It was a few years ago with Ricky and his parents. I fell on my ass, like, twenty times. I got the hang of it eventually, though.”
After I finished my rambling, I was met with silence. I felt immediate regret for blabbing like that. He never asked if I had gone skating or not, and he certainly didn't ask for extra details. I didn't know what possessed me to talk to Javier as if we were friends.
After I wallowed in my own embarrassment for a few seconds, Javier smiled softly. "It's definitely hard."
I choked on my salvia and coughed. "What is?"
"Ice skating." He said simply.
Oh. "Oh. Yeah... I probably couldn't do it anymore since it's been so long."
Fuck me and my dirty mind.
I did not claim my random, intrusive thoughts.
Javier chewed on his bottom lip as he swiveled the chair around to completely face me. "You and Ricky do fun things like that often together?"
"We used to, but not so much anymore,” I muttered. “Ever since he got with Kailey things have changed a bit.”
When Ricky and Kailey got together she became his everything.
Don't get me wrong, he was still a great friend to me.
He never let his relationship overtake our friendship, but it wasn't the same.
His family used to take me on all of their outings and I would spend my time at his house 24/7.
Those things still happened, but they happened less often now.
I loved Kailey and I could never be upset with her for that. That was how things were supposed to happen. I was so glad that their relationship was so strong. It just sucked sometimes.
Bella and I started hanging out more because of this. We had always been friends before, but we weren't super close because she was more friends with Kailey. She still was, it's just that our friendship had grown because of Ricky and Kailey's relationship.
Then I realized how much I was sharing with my rival. "But we still do things, just not ice skating because we both are pretty bad at it. Are you good at it?"
Javier shrugged. "My family and I go together sometimes. I'd say I'm pretty good at it."
I nodded once, silently acknowledging what he was saying. He then added, "Diane's never gone before and she really wants me to take her. I told her I would take her tonight."
Oh. That was why Diane looked so pissed earlier that day when Javier agreed to prepare for Thinkfast with me. He signed up to be with me over her.
But why?
"We didn't have to do this tonight. I just wanted to make sure that we would do it at some point. You seemed like you didn't want to do it with me at all," I explained.
He shrugged. "Honestly, I would rather do this with you than ice skating with Diane."
Oh?
I was about to speak before he added, "I only say that because Diane and I are gonna spend a lot of time together on the student council trip. Not because I don't want to hang out with her."
The student council trip wasn't until February of next year.
It was currently late September. Therefore, it made no sense that he wouldn't want to hang out with her now because of the trip when it was five whole months away. His reasoning for not wanting to spend time with his girlfriend was a bit stupid, but I didn’t press the matter.
The mention of the student council trip made me frown slightly.
In the midst of everything else, I had completely forgotten about that.
It didn't matter anyway, I had already missed the deadline to start paying for it.
I wasn't going to get to go on the one chance to have a good time with my friends and away from the toxicity of my family.
My silence piqued Javier's curiosity. "You're going, right?"
"On the student council trip?" I asked to which he nodded. I then shook my head and tried to hide my disappointment. "No."
"But you said you were," he said, the disbelief evident in his voice. I raised an eyebrow at him, I had never told him that. He explained, "You and your friends are pretty loud. I've heard you guys talking about it in class and at lunch."
He wasn't wrong, my friends and I usually spoke pretty loudly. When I still had hope that I was going on the trip we talked about it often. It was ridiculous of me to have even had hopes in the first place. I was basically hoping that money would start growing on the damn trees.
I broke the news to my friends that I wouldn't be able to go on the trip about a week ago. Everyone besides Justin was upset.
I never realized that people listened to our conversations.
Sure, we never whispered, but I thought that other people would be too into their own conversations to listen to us.
If we were Javier and his group of friends then I could believe it.
But us? No one cared about us the way they cared about Javier.
"I wanted to go," I said with a sigh. "But I already missed the deadline to pay, so it doesn't matter."
Javier was about to say something, but his mother's voice stopped him. She was calling us down for dinner. Yes, us . I wasn't really planning on staying for dinner. His parents were welcoming and I was sure the food would be amazing, but I didn’t believe that Javier would want me to stay.
"She's going to insist you stay," Javier said as he stood up and pushed the chair under his desk. "Save us all of the trouble and have dinner with us."
I checked my phone. It was 6:00 PM. My aunt didn't have work, so I had to be home before 8:00 otherwise she'd throw a fit just for the hell of it.
Javier’s eyes darted to the floor and then back to me. “Please?”
How could I say no to a ‘please?’
I had his mother's sopa de fideo and it was the best thing I had ever tasted. It was a rich noodle soup with creamy tomato broth that was comfortingly warm. I had never heard of this dish before, but now that I had it once I knew I couldn’t go without it again.
My aunt never cooked those types of savory meals for us, so it was a great change of meal for me.
Javier’s mom’s face lit up when she saw the happiness on my face after trying her food.
She insisted that I take some home even after I declined, and then she told me that I was welcome to come back anytime for more.
Mrs. Cortez didn’t do much, but she did manage to make me feel wanted.
Even if it was only for that short amount of time.
I couldn’t believe it. I had just spent multiple hours in Javier’s house and enjoyed it. If I would have been asked a month ago if I thought that was possible, I would have answered when pigs fly.
When I stepped outside, there were no flying pigs in the sky.