Bleeding Hearts

6

"What schools are you applying to?" I ask Piper the next morning as we sit on top of the stone tables, just like we've done every morning of high school.

My friend shrugs her shoulders and puts down her phone. "All the UCs obviously. And probably Arizona as a safety school." She answers.

I laugh and nudge her shoulder. "You in Arizona? No way."

She chuckles and waves me off. "It's an 80% acceptance rate. Can't you see me in the desert?"

"Piper in the desert? No way." Pierce interrupts, approaching us with Colin before sliding to sit next to me on the table. "I see you in Utah more than Arizona."

"I am not a mormon." Piper fires back. "You'd probably go to Arizona though, wouldn't you? It's the only school you can get into."

Colin laughs and nods his head in agreement. "ASU or U of A for sure."

"And I'd be perfectly happy at either one." Pierce replies. He knocks on Colin's shoulder, who's standing nearby. "At least I'm not stuck in Louisiana."

"What's in Louisiana?" Piper asks, voicing my exact thoughts.

"LSU." Colin mumbles back in response.

"Are you going to play for LSU?" My friend fires out another question. Colin shrugs his shoulders but Pierce answers for him.

"Scouts are coming to his games this season." He says. "LSU. Texas. Tennessee. UCLA. Stanford. "

"Stanford?" I ask, sounding a bit more surprised than I intended. Colin lets out a small laugh as I attempt to backtrack. "I mean that's a really good school."

"You don't think I can get into Stanford?" He asks me, an eyebrow raised.

"I didn't say that."

"It sure sounded like it."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"But you're definitely thinking it."

I shake my head, feeling a blush creep onto my cheeks as Colin continues staring at me, waiting for my response with an amused look on his face. "I just meant that Stanford is hard to get into."

Colin laughs and waves a hand at me. "I'm just messing with you. I know I can't get into Stanford. I've never taken a single AP class."

"You've never taken an AP class?" I can't help myself from responding to him once again. I point to the guy sitting next to me. "Even Pierce has taken one."

"I'm not sure if AP Spanish qualifies if you already speak Spanish." Aaron calls out as he makes his way towards our table.

"It definitely doesn't." Sky pipes up from beside him, her signature morning coffee in hand. "This is coming from someone who is currently taking it right now."

"A 4 is a 4." Pierce always gets defensive whenever we bring it up. "I passed fair and square."

"You've also been speaking Spanish since you came out of the womb." I tell him. He nudges me with his shoulder and I laugh.

"Someone's just jealous I can speak my mother tongue." He teases.

I smile and nudge him back in the shoulder. "Oh yeah? What about your other mother tongue?"

Pierce is half Peruvian and half Japanese. However, his mother and father were both raised in Peru, therefore resulting in Pierce only being able to speak Spanish, not Japanese.

"That's why I'm friends with you. So you can teach me."

"That'd just be a waste of my time." I retort, laughing.

Pierce just shakes his head at me and chuckles before joining a conversation with Colin and Aaron. I turn my attention towards the girls and find Sky and Piper giving me identical looks. Though I attempt to brush off their gazes as nothing, the second the three of us are separated from the guys, my two friends bombard me with questions.

"Are you and Pierce talking again?" Sky whispers to me as we walk through the hallway. Groups of kids are making their way to class and crowding the narrow walkways.

"I thought he and Hailey were talking over the summer?" Piper adds. Hailey Thu, captain of the cheerleaders, with her beautiful black hair and big eyes, was all Pierce had talked about the last few months. "I swear I saw them by her car yesterday after school."

I wave my hands, trying to knock all the comments away. "There is nothing going on between me and Pierce. We left all of that in junior year."

My relationship with Pierce had been a little strained towards the end of junior year. The two of us knew we were into one another, and yet nothing had ever happened. Our situation slowly began to fade away, like the last verse of a song that has no concrete ending. It simply starts to grow fainter and fainter, dying until there's nothing left to hear.

We were then left in that complete silence. An awkward tension in which both of us knew there had been something between us, but never quite acknowledged it. There had been late night kisses, midnight texts and soft cuddles in between bed sheets. All of it was thrown away, leaving us standing side by side, with nothing to say to one another, even though we had spent nights talking endlessly.

It wasn't until Pierce began talking about Hailey, that it felt like we could function again normally. I had Owen to keep me entertained over the summer and we were back to the way we used to be. I'd much rather keep it at that.

"Trust me, there is nothing going on." I tell my friends. I watch as the two of them nod their heads but exchange glances before Sky walks into her English class. I don't know why I bothered to plead my case. It's not like they'll believe me.