Love Bites

LOVE BITES Chapter 40 : The Happening

Chapter 40 : The Happening

I stared down at my phone impatiently. I was waiting; waiting for the familiar ding signalling a new text, but...

Nothing.

He was ignoring me. It was plainly obvious now.

Zachary Stanley wasn't talking to me and I had no idea why.

Was it me? Did I do something to make him hate me? I couldn't remember doing anything that would give him a reason to be upset with me unless...

Alastair?

I scoffed. Of course not. He wouldn't have said anything.

Maybe, as much as I detested the idea, the only reason we were friends in the first place was because of our mutual connection to Brianna. It made sense, didn't it? Ever since she had left Zac had made less and less of an effort to talk to me.

Perhaps I was jumping the gun, looking at it from the wrong angle, over-thinking it, but if that did turn out to be the case, the reason he was distancing himself from me, then I supposed I didn't have the right to act so surprised. From the beginning it had always been Zac and Bri. Only those two. Wherever one went, the other followed. Okay, maybe that rule only applied to Zac. Brianna never seemed to care what he did. If he got annoying, she simply ignored him and continued with her everyday life.

They were neighbours and childhood friends. The complete compatible duo. And I, well... I sort of just wedged myself between the two. Their busy, dramatic lives were a distraction to my own. I didn't have the time to think about there being no mom or dad waiting for me back home whenever I was with them, and for that I was grateful. So considering all that I guess there was no real reason for Zac to stick by me if there was no added bonus of Brianna.

It'd been months since she left. I started to think she might never be coming back. It sounded like it too; that day she disappeared with a lost look in her brown eyes.

The thought hurt. A lot, actually, when I thought of Zac distancing himself because Brianna was no longer in the equation, and might not ever be again. Because it wasn't just one friend that I lost, but both. I really trusted him. But as the lack of replied texts would suggest, as well as those awkward encounters at school whenever we'd bump into each other, Zac didn't want anything to do with me. Not now anyway.

What if he had found out about us? I panicked, suddenly sitting up straight. The fountain behind me sprayed a mist of cool water across the back of my head. What if he was just staying away because he was scared he'd get sucked dry?

I scoffed again. Doubtful, Nikki. Very doubtful.

"Anyway," I huffed, flicking the texts over to another contact and shivering at the goosebumps popping up along my arms. I snuggled into my furry jacket. "Hasn't her shift finished already...?"

According to the forecast the weather was supposed to be heating up. But if anything, I was only feeling the cold more. Alastair was right when he called me thin the other night; I could feel the wind blow right through me. That's why I was doused with layers of clothing as I waited outside the shopping centre, which, although was undercover was still not out of the wind's path.

I tapped my phones screen absently as my mind began to wander. Ever since Alastair had commented on my weight I began to notice all sorts of changes about myself. And not only physically. I realised how unsatisfying human food was becoming to me. It was blander and didn't seem to give me all the nutrition I needed like before. I was growing thinner, weaker, and if I was right, the substance my body was truely craving was the one I kept refusing.