When Our Worlds Collide (Our Worlds #1)(17)
“Hey Babe,” Amanda says with a smile. She slinks her arm through mine squeezing close to my side. Sometimes I think she does this just to show that she belongs to me in some sort of fucked up way. I don’t belong to anyone and I never will.
“Hi,” I force a smile before removing her arm from mine and making my way to my usual spot at the table.
A few of the guys are already sitting around talking. I sit across from Craig and Mark. We have been best friends since we were in kindergarten. Both of them are on the baseball team with me and spend most of their weekends bouncing from bed to bed with random girls. Craig is the biggest deviant out of the three of us and isn’t afraid to admit it. Mark on the other hand feels some sort of remorse for bagging and leaving girls in his wake. He is usually the one you can be found in a booth at a restaurant entertaining a girl after the fact. He is a better man than me for that simple fact.
They are too busy in their conversation to notice I had sat down. I came in at the end, but it wasn’t hard to catch onto their topic as she walked into the cafeteria. All the talk fell to a dead halt as they watched her. Great.
Violet is on her side as she hobbles in on her crutches. Violet whispers something to her and she laughs uncomfortably. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes just like all the times she smiled at me. Kennedy scans the room for somewhere to sit and lands her eyes on me. Her gaze quickly falls doing everything in her power to look away. Violet ushers her over to a table closest to the door and she looks relieved when she is finally able to sit down.
I never did understand those two. Violet is a party girl to the core who spent most Fridays and Saturdays hooking up with one of my teammates. It’s been Dan as of recently. Violet and Kennedy aren’t anything alike. I can tell that Violet is protective of her by the way she guides her into the cafeteria as everyone watches with curious eyes. On numerous accounts, Violet has defended Kennedy when Amanda made some snide remark as she walked by. I feel a sense of gratefulness that Kennedy has someone like Violet. I don’t know why I feel that way though.
“I can’t believe she was hit by a car and the dude just drove off,” Mark speaks not dropping his gaze from her as if he’s seeing her for the first time. I don’t like it.
“How do you know it was a guy?” I sound defensive. Amanda looks over at me with a confused expression. She guides her hand up and down my thigh as I sit stiffly putting all of my will power into not looking back towards Kennedy’s table.
“I mean, what kind of girl would hit another girl then drive off? It would never happen. It had to have been a guy,” Craig butts in with his opinion. He takes a large bite out of his sandwich. “She sure did look hot at the talent show though. Who knew that all of that could come from a girl like her? She gave me some serious wood.” Craig’s mouth is full of food as he speaks pointing over to the shy Kennedy that everyone is used to seeing.
“You’re disgusting,” Amanda rolls her eyes throwing a fry at Craig. Craig dodges the fry and smirks.
“No, I’m just telling the truth. Graham, you’re trying to tell me that she didn’t look seriously hot shaking her ass all over that stage?” he raises a challenging eyebrow at her knowing damn well that it will irritate her.
Let’s just say that Amanda doesn’t like it when other girls grab the attention of “her boys”. Amanda has made her rounds in our group of friends to say the least. Unfortunately for me, she is hell bent on lingering longer with me rather than the others.
Amanda looks between Craig and me waiting for my answer, but I can’t pull my eyes away from Kennedy because apparently I have no will power what so ever. She shyly looks up at me periodically through her hair that keeps falling across her face as protection. When we catch eyes something inside of me stirs. That protectiveness came back. Shit.
“Yeah Graham, did she look hot?” Amanda is clearly annoyed with the direction that the conversation is headed. “She looked average at best like she usually does. The girl doesn’t have a sexual bone in her body. None of you would know what to do with a girl like her. It would mean you’d actually have to treat someone like a human being and not like a blow up doll.” The jealousy is blatantly clear in her voice causing the other guys to laugh right in her face.
I tear my eyes from Kennedy as hard as that is to glance down at Amanda who is waiting for an answer. Throwing an arm over her shoulder I answer, “She looked alright.”
Okay, I lied. No one wants to really know what I think about Kennedy. I’m not even sure how I feel about Kennedy. I know that she surprised the hell out of me at the talent show. Even now when I look at her I’m surprised that I overlooked her for all these years. The girl has some killer legs and pouty lips that are practically begging to be kissed.
This is going to be a big problem. Shit. Get your shit together. You just ran the girl over, now you are thinking about kissing her. That’s not going to work.
After lunch I make it my mission to not look at Kennedy. It is nearly impossible since we are in the same class third period. She must have been running late luckily for me. Her usual seat is taken in the front row. She walks into the classroom and scans the room for an open seat. Her eyes linger on the seat that is directly next to me. Kennedy’s face falls when she looks to Mr. Stevenson then back to me knowing damn well that I’m her only option as of now.
Mr. Stevenson offers to have someone move to the back, so that she doesn’t have to struggle back to the open spot next to me. She brushes off his offer and makes her way back to the seat looking annoyed just as she did not even two weeks ago.