Bad Intentions

Sixty-Five

Leah

"Where is that book?" I muttered to myself. I dragged my finger across the spines of books displayed in front of me. Laser focused on the title of each book, until my finger landed on just the one I need. "Ah, finally." I breathe a sigh of relief.

I slipped the book into my hand and did a small internal cheer. This was the last book I needed for my paper.

I was currently standing in the middle of the school's library during my free period trying to finish this History paper I've been procrastinating on. Who needs ten references for a paper?? It's just a high school paper.

Looking around, I found an empty table. I tossed my backpack onto the table and pulled out a pen and my notebook that held the pages and pages of this dreaded paper. Now, before you say anything about using a computer to type my paper up, I would love to just to put that out there. My History teacher made it a mandatory requirement to have all assignments handwritten.

Every. Single. Assignment.

Something about preserving our handwriting because in this day and age everything is on the computer. This was a 20 minute lecture in the first class when one of the students questioned this requirement. I knew better to question it.

So here I am on the ninth page of my paper handwriting it praying my hand does not catch a cramp.

I was so laser focused on jotting down my thoughts on the paper, I didn't noticed the shadow that loomed over me. Until I looked up to meet ocean blue eyes peering down at me. That sent a shock down my body causing me to jump scaring the living daylight out of me.

"Oh, I'm sorry." The person whispered. "I didn't mean to scare you." They apologized.

After recovering from the slight heart attack I just endured, my eyes finally registered the person standing in front of me. "Nicole?"

She smiled softly and gave an awkward wave. What was she doing here?

We have never really interacted before. Sure, we had a few of the same classes over the the past years but we never directly spoke. We ran in completely different groups.

My group was only Kayla.

Nicole noticed my wide eyed expression and spoke again. "I didn't want to interrupt you, it looked like you were busy. But I wanted to say thank you."

"Thank me?" I questioned. What could she be thanking me for? I didn't do anything.

"Yeah. For helping my idiot cousin pick a great gift." She pointed to her ears that were adorned with the earrings that Jax bought for her birthday.

"Oh." I said. "No problem." I gave her a polite smile. There was a bit of awkwardness in the air and I was sure it was coming from me.

She pulled out the chair that was directly in front of and slid into it.

Why is she's sitting down?

I'm sure my face was giving a weird look because she spoke once more. "Is this weird?" She pointed in the empty space between us. "I don't want to make this weird. I just thought we could be friends. Like I see that you and Jax are close and I know people might think I have tons of friends, but I don't. And I just thought we could, you know, possibly be friends?" She rambled on.