Page 37 of Before We're More Than Friends
My chest slammed against another’s. All the food on my plates and my root beer crashed either onto the floor on said chest. Blinking, I moved back to see who had just slammed into me.
At first, I thought the victim was Arielle, with her brown waves and light-tan complexion, but she had shorter hair and a different outfit. She looked down at her purple tank top and small jacket that were now covered in my squashed food and melted cheese.
Her blue eyes traveled to mine. They were icy,intimidating. The girl could’ve killed me with them any second now.
A lump grew in my throat.Say something, man, saysomething.“S-Sorry about that. I-I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
Her grunt was almost as loud as the music that was blasting. “My best friend made this shirt for me, you know.” She grabbed a napkin from the table nearby and wiped the sushi and cheese off her shirt. “Was it so hard to look in front of you?”
“I was trying to make sure I didn’t drop my food,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I died inside.
She scoffed. “Yeah, you didn’t do a good job.”
My temper flared to match hers. “It was an accident. Simple as that.”
“You call this simple?” She gestured to her outfit. “I look like a breathing buffet.”
I huffed. “Well, if you had been looking—and I don’t see why you weren’t because you weren’t holding anything—you would’ve moved out of the way instead.”
“You know what?” She grabbed a cup of water and dabbed the napkin into it to clean the rest of her shirt. “Forget it. It’s just my luck, after all.”
Seriously? Yeah, her clothes were a mess, but she didn’t have to be this much of a jerk about it. I searched for my friends, but it was nearly impossible to find them with the crowd around us. A crowd that was watching this ordeal instead of stepping in to help.
“It was just a freaking accident,” I snapped at Sushi Sis. I carefully picked my battles, but this girl didn’t deserve my gentleness. Not after humiliating me at my new school before I even started. “I was going to help you, but you’re being a complete?—”
My heart stopped in its tracks as my eyes traveled to her bracelets. The purple-and-green bracelet with a black star on her left wrist. I’d seen it before. The same exact thing.
Because I was the one who had made it.
Six years ago.
For Chloe.
I knew it was mine because I’d messed up the pattern a few times. There were two greens and two purples next to each other when they weren’t supposed to be there. The bracelet looked more worn out compared to the others, which weren’t anywhere near as amateur as mine.
I met her eyes again, my breath stalling in my lungs. She looked almost exactly like Arielle. Chloe had an identical twin named Arielle. And her friends—I couldn’t remember their names right now—volunteered at the local shelter with her. In only a few seconds, I connected every puzzle piece.
I was glad my food was gone because it would’ve ended up on her shirt either way.
Chloe used to be a thousand miles, four states, and two time zones away from me. But now she was here, only ten inches away from me, wearing what was supposed to be my fondue dinner, looking like she wanted to shoot lasers through my skull.
If everything hadn’t shattered in front of me before, it had now.
CHAPTER 10
Raina
The boy who had body-slammed his plate of food into me changed his entire demeanor. He’d been in the middle of fighting with me when he just stopped and stared at me like a deer in headlights.
“Are you going to finish?” I asked, the annoyance in my voice still present. “I’m a completewhat?”
He cursed, but it wasn’t any of the names I’d been expecting.
“Um, thanks?” I blinked. “That’s a new one.”
“No, it’s—You—” He ran a hand through his dark curls. “Forget it.”
“Dallas!” a girl with a black ponytail shouted at him as she ran over, Arielle running after her. “Dallas, are you okay?”
