Twice The Trouble

Chapter 26: Lunchtime Drama

Sophia

Friday noon.

I had invited Stacy and her gang to eat with my friends but she had to run an errand.

She had been awfully vague about it, telling me it was an important school project.

I worry about my sister a lot, but I'm confident she wouldn't skip lunch. She always kept fit.

The univ cafeteria was fairly crowded, but my companions and I were lucky enough to snag a long white table which was located near a row of big windows overlooking the parking lot.

This is how our seating arrangement looked like:

MILES EMILY SELENA SPENCER ME

COLE MATT LUCAS NOAH LIAM

Noah Torres was Lucas' friend and classmate also taking up Business Administration.

It was truly awkward siting across Liam after everything that happened between us.

But when he had entered the cafeteria and halted in his tracks at the sight of me, I stared back at him with a flurry of emotions in my brown eyes: Hurt, regret, sadness, but most of all, hope.

His mind seemed to have been undergoing an internal turmoil, but after a beat of hesitation, he marched towards our table, all the while maintaining eye-contact with me. He was still pained.

The table of ten college freshmen was deadly silent as everyone ate their food.

"I thought Stacy was going to join us?"

The question came from Emily, who was heartily eating her second slice of mac n' cheese pizza.

I leaned forward and faced my right side, where I could see my pizza-loving friend. I told her: "She couldn't make it. She needed to be someplace else for a project in one of her majors."

Another blanket of disconcerting silence fell over us. I felt my cellphone vibrate in the pocket of my gray school-vest. Shifting my gaze on my lap, I clicked open my inbox folder to see one text.

From: Lucas The Doughnut

Why is everybody so quiet?

I pressed my lips together to stifle my laughter. It wasn't the message that tickled me, it was the contact name I gave him. And the contact photo, which was a picture of an original glazed doughnut, my favorite sugary snack. I called him that because Lucas shared a few traits with the pastry: Soft and sweet. Plus, I was too embarrassed to take his picture, much less ask for one.

Maybe I should Photoshop his face onto a doughnut. Oh nuts, the image of it made me snicker.

Everyone at the table suddenly turned to look at me. I covered my mouth with my hand but it was irrelevant. They had caught me suppressing my laughter while I trembled in my seat.

Dylan watched me in curiosity and asked: "What's so funny?"

"N-nothing. Just something in my phone. Inside joke," I fibbed, still shaking with mirth.

I felt another pair of eyes staring at my face so I scanned the table. Lucas was studying me.

Fudge. The text! I hurriedly looked down at my phone on my lap and composed a reply:

From: Lucas The Doughnut

You haven't answered my question.

Now I have a second one. Why did you laugh?

Oh my goodness. I can't stop envisaging his face on a round pastry. Now I added limbs in my imagination. I bit down on my lower lip to suppress my chuckles but I was shaking so hard and tears of joy were forming in the corner of my eyes.

I rose from my plastic chair like a scalded cat and excused myself, telling the group that I needed to use the restroom for a moment before I turned away from the table of bewildered teenagers.

Once inside the ladies' room--white tiled floor, assorted blue tiled wallpaper--I exploded out all the pent-up laughter I'd been trying so hard to hide. Good thing I was the only girl here.

But I was proven wrong when one of the pale blue cubicles swung open and out came a petite girl with short black hair and hazel eyes shooting me contemptuous glares as she drew near.

Aria Flores.

"What the hell is your problem?" she hissed at me while washing her hands in the sink.

"Uh, nothing," I sniffed as I wiped away the tears from my brown eyes.

She seemed to contemplate for a minute before darting me a side-glance, then she asked: "Do you like Lucas?"

I stared at Aria. She fixed her gaze on the sheeny white sink, her palms on the counter.

"He's my friend," I answered her while leaning my back against a blue-tiled wall.

"Why won't you answer my question?"

Her jaw tightened and her fingers curled into her palms, but she still avoided my eye.

"Of course I like Lucas," I told her.

Aria snapped her head towards me and said: "Not as a friend, you dolt! In a romantic way."

I cocked my head to the right. Then I folded my arms in front of me. "I don't."

"Really now?" She looked at me through narrowed eyes. "Then how come I see you spending so much time with him, just the two of you?"

"I don't know," I said, feeling more nettled under her interrogation.

She paused, seemingly lost in her thoughts. Then she looked at me with a smug smile.

"It's your sister, isn't it? He's being all chummy with you to get close to your twin."

I bristled upon hearing her redundant conclusion. I frowned at Aria, wrestling my temper as I pushed my back off the cold bathroom wall.

"Lucas isn't that kind of person," I told her icily. But as I defended Lucas, something gnawed at the back of my mind. Though I've known him for only two weeks and given him a good first impression, Aria's words were like darts puncturing my balloon of confidence.

"Is that so? You talk as though you really know Lucas. Well, guess what, Sophia. No matter how innocent Lucas may look, he's still a guy with raging hormones. And I'm more than happy to give him what he wants. Unlike you." She flashed me a mocking smile and continued: "But your dear sister? She's been labeled as wild and hard-to-get by half the male population here in Orion. Everybody's caught wind of the rumor mill, but guys don't care about how damaged her reputation is. She's just another pretty face with a killer body any man would tap. Haven't you heard girls talking about how she hooked up with a bunch of random guys in high school?"

I was already barging out of the restroom before she could even finish her vicious speech.

Why was everyone just assuming that Stacy lost her V-card a long time ago? Were they just starving for any piece of juicy gossip they could get their claws on? What WAS it with people believing in stories that come from small minds and big mouths?

They knew nothing of what happened two years ago.

They didn't deserve the truth.