The Middle | ✔️

Chapter 74

Jamie

I walk into Social Studies class and see that Will is sitting at his usual seat, smiling and typing away at his phone. I already know things went well between him and his mystery girl last night, so I guess he's texting her. What I don't know, is whether or not Noah has talked to him much today. Specifically, I don't know if Noah will have told Will everything he got up to last night... I really fucking hope not. I take a deep breath before walking over and taking my usual seat at the desk next to Will.

"Howdy, Hawkins." Will greets me without looking up from his phone. This is good. He would be all excited if he knew anything.

"Hey, Will." I dump my bag down under my desk and pull out my own phone. This class is fucking pointless. It should be called 'Social Media Studies' instead of Social Studies. Everyone just sits on their phones the entire time.

"So, how'd the final study session go with our boy last night?" Will asks me, putting his phone down and giving me his undivided attention. Our boy? What the hell does he mean by that?

"Um, fine." I reply carefully. "We finished our assignment. Didn't Noah tell you that?"

"He may have mentioned it, yeah. But we had more exciting things to talk about this morning." Will smiles at me and waits for me to respond. Exciting things? Shit.

"Um, like what?" I ask.

"My new status as a taken man!" He beams at me. Okay, this is fine. He asked his girl out, that's all he's thinking about. Phew.

"Awesome. So, you officially have a girlfriend now?" I ask, relieved that this is just about him.

"I do indeed. It went really well last night, I'm excited about it." He smiles to himself and checks his phone. No new messages, I note.

"So, are you gonna give me a name now?" I ask. I still don't know who this mystery girl is. I don't really care, but anything to keep the conversation off of me and Noah.

"Not today, no." He replies coolly. "She wants to talk to her friends and her parents first before we go around telling people. And I'm taking her to the Halloween Dance tomorrow night. We'll make our debut as an official couple then."

He looks a little sheepish now, which is actually really cute. He's nervous about parading his new girlfriend around at a college dance? He really must have it bad for this girl.

"That's cool." I tell him. "Have you told you parents?" I raise an eyebrow at him. His parents are assholes, and they're utter snobs. He's gotta be nervous about bringing this girl around to meet them.

"No, I haven't." His face falls. Yeah, he is dreading telling his parents about his new girlfriend, as I suspected. "That's another thing I wanna deal with before I go around telling people."

He takes a deep breath before shaking it off and smiling at me again. "But, I don't care what my mom and dad think about her. I'll deal with that later today. If they're not happy, they can fuck off."

He laughs, and I find myself smiling. I'm glad he isn't letting his parents dictate his actions anymore. Good for him.

"So what about you?" He asks me. "Do you have an actual date to the dance? Or are you going with one of the guys?"

"I'm not going with one of the guys, I'm going with all three of them." I inform him, and he laughs.

"So the four of you are going stag then?"

"Hmm, not really. I'll call Jay my date, and Patrick and Joel always have each other." We both laugh. "We don't need dates, Will. This isn't High School anymore. We are allowed to attend events such as dances on our own."