Social Experiment

16 | White Christmas

Stephanie showed up on my doorstep on Sunday afternoon with a bag full of sandwiches, ice cream, and chips. She even bought me a milkshake to top off her formal I-hope-you-feel-better-after-Thomas-punched-you-in-the-gut gift. Despite the fact that my cut was minor and nothing else hurt, I accepted the gifts with open arms because, well, it was free food.

We settled on my living room couch and draped blankets over ourselves before we began searching for movies. When I finally decided on some Disney movie, I tossed the remote to the end of the couch and began unwrapping my sandwich. My mouth was practically watering as I smelt the famous BLT from the sandwich shop downtown.

"So," Stephanie says in between bites. "What happened when I left on Friday?"

The mouth is halfway raised to my mouth as I narrow my eyes at her and remember her suspicious attitude when she bailed. "Why did you leave so easily?"

She looks hardly bothered that I didn't answer her question as a smug smirk appears on her lips. "Because," Stephanie starts in a mocking voice, "I knew you would rather Nathan take care of you than me."

And then she winked at me for good measure.

My jaw dropped and I lowered the sandwich from my mouth to glare at her. "What are you talking about?"

Stephanie just rolls her eyes at my coy behavior. "Don't act like you don't know. You and the bad boy clearly have something going on. He was livid when I told him that you were in trouble."

"He was pissed because he told me not to come," I point out and successfully ignore everything else.

She shakes her head at me. "It wasn't that kind of angry. He was worried about you. You should've seen his face when he saw Thomas kiss you. I thought for sure that he was going to rip his head off."

This time, I shake my head, but couldn't yet form a coherent response. I felt a weird feeling in my chest, like it as fluttering, and I didn't understand why. Why did I care so much to know that Nathan cared about me? As I'm trying to figure out my own feelings, Stephanie's smirk returns, as did her classic I-told-you-so attitude.

"There's nothing going on between us," I tell her slowly. "We're just friends."

She raises her eyebrows suspiciously at me. "You mean, you guys aren't hooking up yet?"

Yet? "No. We're just friends," I repeat.

"Huh," Stephanie ponders this with a thoughtful look on her face for a moment before she gives me an odd look. "Nathan Rhodes doesn't have-"

"-girls as friends, just girls he hooks up with." I quote her words from a previous phone call we had and give her a pointed look. "I'm aware. But we're-"

"Just friends," Stephanie quotes me this time with a little smirk.

I give her a wry smile. "Exactly."

She reaches for the ice cream carton on the coffee table in front of us as she smiles secretively at me. "We'll see how long this 'friends' thing lasts."

My cheeks flush at her insinuation and I just avert my gaze from her to the TV in an attempt to ignore her words. I finally begin eating my sandwich, half because I was hungry and half because I wanted to busy myself so Stephanie couldn't continue the conversation. But of course, this was Stephanie: she wouldn't stop when she still had more to say.