“Uh, Tristan… Is she your friend?” Lance stared at me with a dumbfounded expression. And I couldn’t blame him. I had no idea how things turned out this way. Jaz sat next to me with a joyful expression, humming as she picked at the lasagna she took out of her food container.

“Uh, yeah. Something like that.”

“Hey Tristan, who’re your friends? Aren’t you gonna introduce me?” The way she phrased it felt like it had some kind of hidden implications, but I decided to ignore it.

“Uh, Jaz, this is Lance, and that’s Naomi.”

“Hey Lance and Naomi. Are you two dating?”

“It’s complicated. So how long have you known Tristan for?” Lance quickly changed the topic, not wanting Naomi to get started.

“About an hour, I’d say. He’s actually a pretty funny guy. I like him.” She took a bite of her lasagna after saying as much.

“Hey, stop saying that. How am I funny? All you’ve done is laugh at me over pointless things.”

“Well.” She paused to swallow, then continued. “I think you just are, okay? Ah, here. Would you like some help with your food, monsieur?”

She picked one of my nuggets up with her fork, dipped it in the sauce container I had opened on my plate, then lifted it near my face. “Go on. Say aaaah.”

“W-what? There is absolutely no way I’m doing that.”

“Quit playing hard to get. Come on, open up Tristy.”

“Wait, stop it. You’re being weird. People are gonna start looking.”

“You better hurry up then, the sauce is gonna start dripping soon. Come on, aaaah.”

As embarrassing as the situation was, I decided that it would be better to just get it over with. After a brief pause, I stared at the crispy nugget that was being held near my face and steeled myself.

“Aaah…”

The nugget was gently pushed against the inner edges of my lips, before landing gently on my tongue. I slowly closed my mouth and allowed the fork to recede from my lips, leaving the nugget alone in place.

Looking up as I chewed, both Naomi and Lance were wearing shocked expressions on their faces that made me want to bury myself six feet deep.

“Your ears are red.” Jaz pointed it out, seeming to not want to let anything go by.

“No, they’re not. This is how they always look.”

“Oh, they totally are. They’re super red. It’s like, really cute actually.”

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“Don’t call me cute, and my ears did not turn red.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Tristy. If they got any redder, they’d look like the Chick-fil-A logo.”

“Oh my god.”

Of course, I wasn’t fooling anyone. My entire face was burning up. She refused to let the brakes up on teasing me with stuff like this. I don’t understand what her goal here is other than to completely embarrass me.

“Are…” Lance began. “Are the two of you dating?”

“Oh, that’s a good question. Are we, Tristan?”

“Hell no.”

“Whaaat? Why’d you deny it like that? I thought you liked black girls.”

In the corner of my eyes, I saw Naomi furl her eyebrows with such genuine discomfort and confusion that I thought I was going to get killed.

“Ahahaha what are you talking about Jaz? Don’t make such weird jokes at the lunch table. You’re going to give people strange ideas.”

“I’m not making a joke. You literally-”

I covered her mouth. The sudden move caused the bells on her head to jingle, almost to signal that she was being silenced.

“Anyway, she’s just a weirdo Lance. Don’t worry about her.” As I said that, she lifted my hand off her mouth.

“Hey, I’m not a weirdo, okay? I’m normal. Spectacularly normal, actually. Some might even call me abnormal.”

“Oh, you’re abnormal alright.”

She puffed her chest up and took another bite of her lasagna. The situation was so dire that the only times I felt safe were when she had stopped to eat. It felt like there was no chance of me getting out of this unscathed.

“Dude, what is going on with you lately? What happened to the Tristan who only cared about Dota? You’ve been weird as hell this week.”

“I don’t care about Dota that much, you’re the one who always brings it up!”

“It’s a good game, okay? You’d better be online tonight or I’ll find someone else to party up with.”

Before I could respond, Naomi, who had been uncharacteristically quiet until that point, slammed her cutlery onto her tray. The sudden noise snapped all three of us out of what we were doing and we focused our attention onto her. I thought she had done it out of anger, but she was smiling as sweetly as always. Was it a façade? I honestly couldn’t tell.

“So Jaz, you’re in the photography club with Zoey, right?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a fun time. I think interacting with everyone at school in the way that we do is an experience you can’t really get anywhere else. The gratitude everyone shows after a job well done is also great too.”

“Hmm. So like, as someone who’s close to Zoey, what do you make of all the drama and rumors surrounding her and Ben lately? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Nope? Absolutely nothing?”

“Nope. Zoey and I don’t talk about our personal lives all that much. She’s a very private person. I don’t know anything about her past relationships, or if she’s even had any before Benjamin. I don’t know why she started dating him, or why they broke up. We’re like, all business. We’re so professional that I don’t even know who her favorite musical artists are. By the way, right now mine is Pusha T. It’s Almost Dry was such a good album! I just scraped it off the top…”

She started bobbing her head rhythmically.

“I see. Do you want to know more about her?”

“Ohhh? Do you know anything? Come on, tell me, tell me.” She leaned forward in her seat excitedly, which seemed to make Naomi flinch.

“No, not at all. I was just asking.”

“Awww. Well, yeah. I like Zoey. She treats me well, and she made the photography club the monolith that it is today. And yeah, I would like to be closer to her. I want to be someone that she can share that stuff with. But that’s just not the kind of relationship we have.”

The conversation seemed to be heading in a certain direction, so I stopped listening. I was supposed to be getting over Zoey, and yet all anyone seemed to want to do was talk about her. It made me wonder what she was up to, or what her thoughts were on everything that was going on. There was no telling what Ben was going to do next if he really was still obsessed with her.

Before I realized it, I was scanning the cafeteria for any sign of Zoey while stuffing my face with nuggets. It didn’t take long for me to find her sitting with Krista and a few other cheerleaders discussing the events tomorrow. She fit in so naturally with that crowd that it was hard to imagine I had slept in the same bed as her just a few hours ago. Though Gwen and Penny were noticeably absent from the table, it was still an all-star lineup of popular girls to be sure.

“Fuck!”

A venomous sense of frustration erupted from my lungs when I caught myself staring at her. I shook my head furiously and slapped my cheeks a few times in an attempt to snap myself out of it. And after a few deep breaths, I calmed down and looked up, only to find that Lance, Naomi, and Jaz were all staring at me. The latter of the three’s expression contrasted with the others, as her wide-eyed stare was accompanied by a smile of genuine amusement.

“See? You really are a funny guy.”