Sugar

48

chapter forty eight
florence thompson
song: here with me - marshmello ft. chvrches

"You're what?" Aria exclaimed, out of breath as she continued on the elliptical, sweat dripping down her red face.

We'd been at the gym for an hour in total now, and in that hour I had jogged on the treadmill for maybe fifteen minutes before quitting and deciding I'd had enough, hence why I was now sprawled out on the floor of the empty gym as Aria actually did her workout.

To be fair, I'm not a gym-goer. Aria and I just simply wanted to catchup and since the only time we were both available happened to be at eleven pm on a Thursday night, the night before my date, we decided the twenty-four hour gym would have to do.

Well, she decided. I protested on deaf ears.

"Going on a...date? Is it a date? I don't know, I'm going out with Sebastian Vanderbilt," I huffed, still somehow out of breath from the jogging I'd done ten minutes ago.

"Let me get this right," she puffed, lowering her head as she tried to push through the last few minutes, "Sebastian Vanderbilt is the guy who Vincent tried to get you a job with, that even ended up wanting to hire you but you turned down for some reason unknown to anyone with a voice of reason?"

"Yeah, exactly," I said, confirming everything she'd just said. "That's the right one."

"Florence!" She groaned loudly, catching my attention quickly. I jerked my head up to her to find that she was already staring incredulously at me. "You cannot go out with the man who Vincent suggested you work for! That's weird, and inappropriate, and, and-,"

"Listen here, Suzy Lu, I didn't want to, I don't want to! I wholeheartedly planned on declining his offer but Rico opened his goddamn mouth-,"

"Fucking Rico."

"And I couldn't be rude and say no, so now I'm stuck in this date, obligation, whatever you want to call it, that I don't want any part of!" I exclaimed loudly, waving my arms around animatedly from the floor where I still laid.

"I'm going to kick that kid so hard he rethinks every goddamn decision he makes for the rest of his life," she grumbled, still out of breath as she shook her head at our friend.

I released a long sigh, staring at the ceiling fan as it spun above me. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll fall on me, rendering me incapable of going to this date tomorrow.

Just kidding.

Or am I?

"Just, for the love of God, do not go out with him after this, alright?" She asked, glancing down to me where I was still laying, arm thrown over my forehead.

"No plans to," I sighed.

A long moment of silence lingered between the two of us and after a few seconds, a thought popped into my mind. I had totally spaced about asking her why Brandon was at that event I went to with Vincent when she'd said she was going out with him, honestly I never seemed to have time to ask her.

"Hey," I drawled out, debating on my next words and how I wanted to word them. "Do you remember that night you helped me get ready for that event I went to with Vincent?" I looked over to Aria after letting my gaze linger on ceiling for a beat too long.

"Yeah, what about it?" She asked breathily, looking down at me over her arm.

"Well, I forgot to mention it, but Brandon was there. I thought you guys were supposed to go out that night?" I asked, sending her a confused expression.