Page 14 of Friend
Chapter Three
Encounters
Class was nearly over by the time I finished talking to Dad, and the uncomfortable knot that I’d been trying to ignore grew tighter.
Cory had been angryat me, but I had no doubts that without me there, he’d take out his frustrations on Bianca.
And it didn’t help that his attention was already on her for an entirely different reason.
I barely spared the secretary a glance and ignored her lingering warning to behave, as I slammed the office door closed behind me and raced through the hallways, trying to make it to the locker rooms before the dismissal bell rang. But I was too slow, and the bell rang loud in my ears. Smokey-glass doors were thrown open around me as students poured into the space.
I pressed pass them, pushing myself to move even faster.
Cory’s expression—his foreboding statements about Bianca—had stuck with me, and I couldn’t get past this feeling of unease. Of course, this would be a day Dad would get sentimental.
Why couldn’t he wait until I wasn’t busy with something?
Then again, maybe I was worried for nothing. After what happened earlier, would Cory really be so stupid to go after her now?
I practically jumped down the stairs leading to the basement locker rooms, and my classmates trickled past me, heading back to the main part of the building and the parking lots. But I ignored them, or any mention of my name, because Bianca wasn’t with them.
And, more importantly, neither was Cory.
My stomach churned uneasily, and every horrible scenario possible passed through my thoughts. Maybe he’d already gotten to her. Was she scared, or trapped? She always did have the worst time saying ‘no’ and had zero ability to create boundaries.
Or maybe, though I highly doubted it, she said ‘yes,’ and now the two of them were already planning their first date.
I would definitely kill him.
As I rounded the last bend in the hallway, where the end of the basement separated into two separate rooms, I choked on my breath. I was right, again.
Cory did, in fact, have Bianca trapped against the wall—although he wasn’t touching her, which meant that I didn’t have to murder him… yet. And since he was too cowardly to ever do anything alone, even hit on a woman, Adrian and Drew stood ready, lurking behind him as he lowered his head toward Bianca’s and asked, loudly and confidently, “Hey babe, want to go on a date with me on Saturday?”
Rage swelled in me. I was ready to tear him limb from limb. I’dwarnedhim to stay away. But it was Bianca’s face that made me pause.
As he pulled back, a self-satisfied smirk on his face, she gazed at him in a most peculiar manner. Of course, not everyone was able to read her expressions, but I somehow was, and my panic and anger melted away, replaced with something else.
Satisfaction.
I’d not factored in how much she hated him, and just how terrible her grudges could be. Bianca was generally shy, quiet, and non-confrontational—but once she hated someone…
She tended to pull out of her shell.
“Are you dying?” she asked him with the straightest of expressions.
“What?” Cory’s confident smile wavered. “No.”
“Then you’re joking,” she said.
His jaw tensed. “I’m being serious—”
“Then is something wrong in your personal life?” Bianca was still frowning at him, nonplussed. “You don’t want to go on a date with me.”
“I do!” he protested. And if I hadn’t heard what he’d been saying earlier, I might have believed him.
But I did, so I didn’t.
And neither did Bianca.
