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Grant and his mystery girl opted to stay in the back of Wednesday with a box of chicken nuggets and ranch.Gross.Mikey ran up the slide and sat down at the top, Sal joining him on the bottom end, and Sydney and I walked over to the water fountain at the corner of the park to devour our chicken nuggets.
Sweet and sour, spicy mustard, and BBQ sauce was the only way to eat them—dunked in all three. Try to tell me I was wrong.
“Oh my god, I have to pee so bad,” Sydney whined a handful of minutes later.
“Well, yeah. You hogged the whole freaking soda,” I said, shaking the ice around in our now empty cup. I sucked the straw in vain anyway, but all I was getting was hints of flat, Coke-flavored water.
“Seriously, I’m going to pee my pants!” she squealed.
“Then go pee!” I laughed.
“Where?!”
Okay, she had a point. The bathrooms were on the opposite side of the park, and they were probably closed. So it was that, or I’d have to walk a drunk Sydney back across the street. I groaned. “Just go over there.” I pointed at the side of the fountain.
She jumped up and pulled her pants down without a further remark, sitting down over the edge of the fountain instead, almost dunking her ass in the water as she did it.
She burst out in laughter, and I followed suit.
“Hurry up!” I said. “Someone’s going to see you if they drive by.”
“I can’t!” She laughed harder. “I’m feeling pee-shy.”
“I thought you had to pee‘so bad!’” I mocked her while cracking up. “Shut up and go!”
“You’re gonna have to go with me. I can’t do this alone.” She shook her head.
“Oh, you are so annoying,”I whined. Sydney was about as stubborn as I was, so I knew she’d hold out no matter how drunk she was, and I clearly didn’t have the luxury of time to hold my own ground here.
I groaned my relent and yanked down my pants, plopping down over the side of the fountain with her, and let go.
It was even less glamourous than it sounded, but neither of us really cared. We cracked the hell up the entire time.
Memories, people. These were memories we were making.
Neil and I started hanging out a lot—a lot, a lot. Or dating. I didn’t know what to call it, really.
Friends… with benefits, I guess?
Ha! Never would I have pegged Neil for a “Friends with Benefits” kind of guy—no, it wasn’t even in my realm of possibility—yet here we were.
F.W.B. is exactly what we were, technically, even though those benefits didn’t stray very far from kissing—kissing mouths, and cheeks, and chins, and necks. We graduated to that last one yesterday, after school in his truck, and it was pretty fun.More than fun. His lips sliding across my throat—sucking, licking, biting—the scratch of his Adam’s apple against my mouth:Yum.
Though today, I was hanging out at Inkcafé while he was working, so we weren’t making out at all.Lame.
I suspected that those moments were stuck in a space-time continuum, existing in an alternate reality and not the one I was currently occupying, because the contrast between Halloween and our few make-out sessions, andthis, felt impossible. Like two different worlds altogether.
Two different Neils, and two different Olivias.
Huh. That sparked an interesting story idea, and I jotted it down in my notebook.
Neil carried over a flatbread pizza and two iced caramel macchiatos, setting one of the drinks down in front of me.
“I’m on break,” he said, and slid the pizza closer to me. “Want some?”
“Sure. Thanks.” I took a bite of pizza and a sip of my drink and settled back into my chair. “What house are you, Neil?”
He looked up, his brows furrowed in question for a brief second before clarity dawned, answering, “Slytherin.”