Internet Friends // mgc

C H A P T E R T H R E E

The drive to the restaurant was considerably long. It was one town over. And I was antsy the whole way. This man better be a good person, or I will not approve. But considering the adoration in my mothers eyes while she talked about him on her way here, I thought he must be a great guy.

We pulled up to a restaurant called dinner diner, the letters were in all lowercase. The building was black with a lot of glass. There were fairy lights on the trees outside, which were almost bare due to the fall weather.

"You ready sweetheart?" My mom asked me. I looked up to see her looking at me. She was looking nervous. So I just nodded my head and gave her a smile.

"Welcome to Dinner Diner. Do you have a reservation?" The lady at the front asked with a horribly fake smile. And a too tight dress that looked like it was suffocating her obviously fake boobs, which the dress was doing a bad job at hiding.

"Yeah, uhm I had a reservation with James Johansson. I'm not sure if he's here yet." My mom said slightly stuttering, and showing how nervous she was. And right after she said that a man with dirty blonde hair and a big smile appeared beside the lady, he was wearing a black button up and black jeans.

"Hey Annie, and you must be Meredith. We're over here. Thanks Lisa, I'll take it from here." He said, looking at my mother the whole time. He waved his hand in a motion to follow him, and we did to a booth near the back of the restaurant. "I'm happy you could make it Meredith. And I hope you can excuse my son, he's a bit blunt sometimes." The man said. And instantly I knew this was James.

"Oh it's fine. My best friend Ally is the exact same way. So I should be used to it. And you must be James." I said chuckling at how he never introduced himself.

"Oh shoot. I'm so sorry Meredith, I'm James. I hope you like the restaurant, in my opinion it's great. But my opinion might be biased." He said chuckling.

As we approached the booth I saw a boy sitting at the table. He had dirty blonde hair like James, but it was a couple shades darker. I noticed he had bright hazel eyes that seemed dull and a frown on his face showed that he wasn't too happy about something.

"Annie and Meredith this is Mason, and Mason this is my girlfriend Annie and her daughter Meredith." He said introducing us. I waved at him in the awkwardest way possible, because that's just me.

"Hey," he said nodding at us before turning back to his phone with the frown reappearing on his face.

We all sat down, me beside my mother and across from Mason. And my mother across from James. I picked up the menu and looked at the options. They all looked very good. But me being a vegetarian I knew I couldn't have most of the options. My mom was looking at the menu and frowned as well looking over at me.

"James, is there any vegetarian options?" My mother asked.

"Well, anything on there can be made vegetarian, unless the main part of the meal is meat. Like a steak. So if you wanted any of the pasta you could just get it without the meat. And there's even tofu that you can ask for as a substitute if you're concerned about protein. There's also a really good vegetable soup. It has chickpeas for protein and it's made with vegetable broth. So there are quite a lot of options, it's just that you have to ask for the substitutes or ask if something is made with meat by-product if you're not sure." He said. He sounded quite informed about this, which I proceeded to ask him about.

"Well, as I said before about me being biased with the restaurant. It's because this is my place. I own it." He said with a proud smile on his face. I was amazed this looked like a pretty successful restaurant and it was beautiful.

"Wow." Was all I could say. And in the corner of my eye I saw Mason roll his eyes. I noticed his outfit and how he was wearing a plain black shirt under a black and grey button up. I couldn't see his pants because well, there was a table.
•••••••
"So how was you're day at school?" James asked me. And I internally groaned. I hated talking about school. What is it about school that makes it such a great topic? Literally all you do is go, do your work, have a test here and there. And unless you were a popular kid you didn't have some crazy dramatic thing happen every day.

"Well I had a couple quizzes." I said before taking a sip of my lemon water that was here when I got here.

"That's good, what were they in?" He asked. And I internally rolled my eyes, how is that good? But I could tell he was trying which I give him points for.

"Math and Science. I hate math, and I probably flunked the test. But the science test I most likely aced, due to it being my favorite subject." I said.

"That's great, about the science. And I doubt you flunked the math test." He said. After that the food came.

I had ordered the soup James was talking about. And I can say it was really good. I ordered a side of fries with it and those were amazing!

"Wow, this is really good!" I exclaimed, taking another sip of my soup. And internally melting at its greatness.

"I came up with the recipe myself. I made it when I was in high school, and continued making it. I had it on a holiday menu, and it was such a hit that I just had to make it part of the daily dinner menu." He said with a smile taking another bite of his pasta.

As I was working on finishing the soup my phone vibrated and lit up. I looked down and saw I had a message from MCRMikey. I had earlier turned on a message setting in the app so that I could see some of the message I was given.

MCRMikey:
I'm so sorry again. I shouldn't of let my friend take my phone. He said he wanted to take a selfie since he...
Sent 2 minutes ago

That's all I could see due to the app being stupid.

"Hey mom, can I be excused to use the bathroom?" I asked as politely as I could. I knew she didn't see me look at my phone, because she was too involved in a conversation with James about how he came up with some of the recipes.

"Sure sweetheart." She said, moving out of the booth to let me out. I mumbled a thank you and made my way the short distance towards the bathroom.

I walked into the stall and sat on the toilet lid.
From: MCRMikey

I'm so sorry again. I shouldn't of let my friend take my phone. He said he wanted to take a selfie since he forgot his phone inside. He saw a notification from the app, and he ran away with my phone. I just wanted you to have an explanation bc I knew what happened must of looked douchie and I'm hoping we could get to know each other. I'm nothing like what my friend was saying. I'm a sweet guy according to a couple of my friends that are girls. So if you are willing. Could we try to talk?

Sent at 8:49pm

I smiled at his cute message and decided for once to message a guy back.

To: MCRMikey

Hey, it's okay. I understand, I get that a lot from my friend. Minus the looking through my messages. She'll literally steal my phone and run to take photos. But I would like to talk to you more. As long as what happened earlier doesn't happen again. But I'll try to talk to you tomorrow BC I'm out to dinner and Im going to bed when I get home. Anyways I'll ttyl... Xx Meredith.

*wow over 1400 words, that's a new record for me! Hope you guys are enjoying this! Anyways VOTE, COMMENT, AND SHARE!! It always gives me motivation to update if I see a comment or a vote!*

--Em