Bet Me

Chapter 7

"Hey." James say to me, a smile appearing on his face. Get yourself together! I said to myself. "H-hey" I stutter out, a blush creeping to my face. "I brought food." I say, raising the McDonalds bag. James frowned. "I already ate, but thanks anyways." he says to me. He takes the bag and takes the board from me. "Come on in. Go upstairs and go settle down in the living room. I'll be right up." he says to me, pointing at the stairs. "Okay." I say, heading up the stairs.

I go upstairs and head straight to the living room. I put down my purse on the couch and took a seat. The TV wasn't on so I began to look around the room. Near the TV, I noticed a table that had some photoalbums sitting out. I got up from my seat and wandered over there. I pick up the photoalbum and read the front cover.

"The best thing about memories is making them." I read out loud. I shrugged and opened the album. The first picture was of a little boy, about 4 years old, kissing a small baby. I smiled. I turned the page and it was the same little boy, carrying the baby and smiling into the camera. I skipped ahead a few pages and came across a picture of the little boy, now about age 7, standing next to another little boy, probably the baby grown up, getting their heights measured.

"That's my brother Josh." James says, starling me so bad that I yelped in surprise. "Sorry. Did I scare you?" James asks. I turn to face him and notice a mischeavous grin on his face. "No. You just surprised me a bit." I said, blushing a little bit. James smiled and flopped onto the couch, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. 

James had put on a shirt and brought our board upstairs, along with his bookbag. I put the album down and walk back over to the couch. I sit down a few spaces from James and I pull my purse into my lap. James turns the TV onto MTV and mutes it. He turns and looks at me. "So, all we have to do is finish decorating the board?" he asks. "Yup. Actually the board is practically done. We just have to glue the information and go over the title." I explain to him.

He nods, and reaches for his laptop that sitting on the other end of the couch. He gets his laptop and in no time, he opens the project documents and prints it out. He gets up and walks over to the printer and grabs the fresh printed paper. So I didn't look like an idiot just sitting there on the couch, I got up and put the board onto the table on the other side of the room. James grabbed a box of supplies and came to the table.

"Do you want to glue?" he asks me. "Sure." I say, grabbing the papers from him. He opened the box and handed me a glue stick. "There's more in here if you run out." he says, grabbing a marker from the box. I nodded. "Blue is fine?" he asks. "Yeah." I say, opening the glue stick.

For the next 10 minutes, we work in silence. Just as I glued the last piece of paper, James closed his marker and looked up. He sighed a deep sigh and I gave him a questioning look. "We're done!" he says, raising a fist into the air. I smiled and closed the glue stick. He threw his marker into the box and picked up the box. I attempted to throw the glue stick into the box, but I missed and the glue stick hit James right on the chest. 

"Wow. I think you should leave the basketball to me Lena." he says, using a new nickname. "I've never heard that before." I say to him. "Heard what?" he says, glancing at me. "Lena." James grinned sheepishly. "You don't like it?" he asks me, tilting his head a little bit. "It's," I pause, searching for the right word, "unique." I finish. "It's easier. Its only 2 syllables, and it just rolled off my tongue. I won't use it if you don't like it." he says, looking at me with a serious expression. "No, it's okay. It just surprised me a bit." I tell him truthfully.

I don't know how to feel about this new nickname because there was a girl at school. and her name was Lena, and I was not a big fan of her. But hearing James say it was like music to my ears. James smiled and put the box down. He walked over to his laptop and tapped it to turn it on. I began to clear the area while he did what he needed to do. He went to Pandora and plugged his laptop into the speakers underneath his TV.