How to Steal a Happy Ending

•thirteen• Can a word define you?

The sound of petty, teenage clamor filled the air but our table was a fortress of solitude. The only noise we were making was the clanking of our utensils on our plates. Each of us tried to out do the other in shows of anger. If he stabbed his fork into the belly of a cherry tomato, I vehemently tore the lasagna into large, irregular pieces.

Finally, suffocated by the stiff set of our jaws and barely hidden contempt, Nate broke apart the frigid silence we'd barricaded ourselves in. "Okay, what is it this time? Cock blocks? Bra sizes?"

I upturned my nose and sniffed. James simply squared his shoulders and went at the tomatoes with renewed vigor, turning the battle field on his plate into a downright massacre. Not a single bite made it to his mouth.

Nate groaned, "Please don't tell me you two are fighting about Titanic again." Neither of us replied. James and I fought often but the only time it lasted more than an hour was when we'd watched Titanic in 3D. I hated it, James loved it.

Nate turned to me, already exasperated with our behaviour. "Claire?"

I shrugged and jutted my chin in Jimmy's direction, "Ask him, he's the one that started it."

James' head shot up at this and, for the first time since our hallway spat, his gaze was trained directly on me.

My chest seized in the mortifying way that it always does in these situations, because those eyes- those eyes weren't something you could dismiss lightly. Deep and catastrophic, their vivid baby blue thrown into waves of turmoil, it was almost as if he were trying to figure me out.

Almost.

Of course, that couldn't be what it actually was. It wasn't hard to see through someone's act if you were the one that created it in the first place. For James, I was as easy to figure out as one of those four-piece puzzles they made for toddlers with poor hand-eye coordination.

I pulled myself away from the thought. It was probably just the reflection of my own emotions that I saw in his eyes.

I waited for him to say something. To scowl and shout without actually raising his voice, the way he so often did when me or Nate screw up. To throw my loyalty into scrutiny, to question everything we were. Because I was ready for that. What I wasn't prepared for was the cold, unaffected slant of his lips, the scrape of the plastic chair, and the sight of his shoulder blades jutting out from under the fabric of his inappropriately colorful t-shirt.

All the arguments and counter-attacks that I'd thought up lodged themselves at the base of my throat. I swallowed. Once, twice. But I couldn't get that metallic taste out of my mouth. What did I even do to deserve this?

"What a drama queen." Nate commented, perhaps oblivious to the way I was crumbling. "What'd you do to get him so pissed?" He chuckled and catapulted one of James's tortured tomatoes in my direction. It skittered off the edge of the table and fell desolately to the ground.

I kicked the thing away from me, frown creating a crevice on my forehead. "I don't even know. He's-" I tried to find a word to define James...as if that were even possible. I huffed, "Inexplicable."

It barely scratched the surface, but for now it was enough.

Without logic. Without reason or cause or provocation, James decided to flatten me to an indistinguishable, inedible pulp. And it wasn't fair. And I didn't deserve it.

Inexplicable. That was the word that described him...or at least this part of him.

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A/N: A new chapter! Yay! .....Am i the only one excited about this? I really wanted to show the dynamics of their little group before and how its evolved. nailed it or nah? what do you guys think?

If you enjoyed reading this please don't hesitate to vote/comment. A second of your time can give someone (me) an entire week of joy.

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