Page 51 of Before We're More Than Friends
“And the smell of trash.”
“Don’t think about it,” Oliver said. “Just feel.”
I closed my eyes and took in a breath. “I feel . . . someone searching through my food.”
“Caleb!” Hayden exclaimed, and I opened my eyes to see Caleb reaching over him to dig through my lunch box.
“What?” Caleb held up his hand. “I wanted to see if he had anything good.”
“You can have some.” I laughed. “But not the pudding. If you even touch the pudding, I’ll beat you up.”
“Are you sure? Because I forgot to pack mine?—”
“Caleb, don’t mess with his pudding,” Hayden warned. “That’s like the equivalent of stealing his girl or crashing his car in bro lunch code.”
“There’s a bro lunch code?” Caleb blinked. “Why are we just now following it?”
I rolled my eyes. “You guys are freaks.”
Oliver frowned. “What did I do?”
“Rot here with the trash.” I hope my jokes weren’t coming off as too forced.
“You see, the four of us stumbled across this place on the first day of freshman year,” Caleb said. “A group of seniorsdared us to eat our lunch here when we accidentally stole their table, and we did it because we’re masochists.”
“And because we were scared,” Hayden added.
Caleb scoffed. “Iwasn’t. I’m never scared.”
Hayden gave him a funny look. “Sure . . .”
“When one of the seniors came back to taunt us, Caleb threw his lunch in the dumpster,” Oliver said. “For some reason, that was enough to make them leave us alone. I bet they’re probably college dropouts by now.”
“That’s, um, interesting.” I blinked. “Wait, who’s the fourth person?”
“Huh?” Caleb said with a face full of my chips.
“You said the four of you guys.”
All three of them exchanged looks.
“The racoons took him away,” Caleb said, though his joke fell flat. “They took his lunch, and they decided to chase after him.”
“That one was lame,” Oliver muttered.
Caleb shrugged. “I tried.”
“Sorry I asked,” I said, staring at my lap.
“Naw, we’re dead to him,” Hayden told me. “He hates our guts so much that he hasn’t said a word to us since he transferred to Apple of the Arts in New York. He’s having the time of his life without us.” He dramatically rolled his eyes. “Can you believe it? Imagine being happy without us in your life.”
“He has reasons, I guess,” Caleb muttered under his breath, no longer shoving chips in his face.
Hayden furrowed his brows. “What reasons? He was the one who willingly dated your girlfriend of two years?—”
“Can we not talk about him?” Oliver snapped. “We have Dallas now.”
Yeah, maybe this had been a bad idea. “I’m sorry,” I said, opening my pudding cup. “I shouldn’t have asked.” I tried toremember if Raina had mentioned the fourth guy before, but nothing came to mind.
