Page 42 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

Arden laughed. “I told you you're a hot item.”

“I don't see it,” I grumbled.

“The good ones never do, Aria. The good ones never do.”

“Well what do I do now? I don’t have feelings for Lucky, but if I tell him that and it breaks his heart, I could lose him.” I dropped my head into my hands. “I’m certain you wanna say ‘I told you so.’”

“I’d rather just tell you to be careful. What you say and do with these boys has to be done very mindfully so they can’t take advantage of you. That’s a good rule of thumb for people in general. Everyone always has an ulterior motive.” She slapped on a mischievous grin. “For example, you’re only sticking with me so that you can have a slice of my billions when I invent the next big thing, and I still haven’ttotallygiven up on making you my trophy wife.”

I laughed and Arden laughed with me. “Hey, there you go.”

She always knew the right thing to say to make me feel better. “Well, who knows about Tristan or Lucky, but I know one thing for sure. Idefinitelylove you.”

Arden's smile grew. “It’s like music to my ears, gorgeous.”

“Be more careful, huh? Any chance they’ll just both leave me alone?”

“With how amazing you are, I wouldn’t count on it, but just know whatever you decide, I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks Arden.”

“No problem.”

At least in the midst of all the chaos, I’d gained a really amazing friend. Now if I could just figure out how to find romance in a reasonable place, I’d be back on the road to sanity.

16

Tristan

Hannah took in the sight of me with disgust as I dragged myself towards her. “Let me guess,” she said. “Drill Day is also the day that you’re choosing to try out your simpleton look?”

I looked down at my gray sweatpants, black t-shirt, and black shoes with pursed lips. “What? Less is more.”

“Less also means you’re still doing the bare minimum after the whole Devario fiasco, which was weeks ago by the way. I mean, when are you going to get over Aria? You’re wearing it like a break up and you guys never even went out. Ceradi and the others are starting to ask questions.”

“So?” I grunted. “I told Josh yesterday to mind his own fucking business and I’ll tell the same to Ceradi.”

“Okay, sassy,” she replied. “I heard that they went out and it didn’t even go that well.”

That wasn’t what mattered to me. It wasn’t the fact that Aria was willing to go out with Devario that bothered me, it was the fact that she said nothing would ever happen between us.

“Is today really Drill Day?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

Hannah hooked her arm through mine and started forcing me in the direction of homeroom. “Yes, it’s Drill Day. They announced it like four times yesterday. Where was your head?”

“Halfway up my own ass,” I admitted.

Drill Day was something that happened at our school twice a year—once in the fall and again in the spring—where the school practiced all the possible emergency drills that could happen, from tornado, to fire, to a shooter lockdown. In the past, they tried to do them interspersed with classes, but students got so distracted and excitable waiting for the drills that it made all their classes a crapshoot. My freshman year was the beginning of the new system, Drill Day, when classes were cancelled for the day and students spent the entire day in their homeroom classes. The teachers typically had a place they could send students if they wanted to study or work on homework, but they would also occasionally ask for help doing things around the room or play movies and games.

It was bad news for me because it meant I had to spend the next several hours in the same classroom with Aria, as opposed to a typical day where I’d be able to break it up with the few classes we didn’t have together. If Ceradi and my other friends weren’t around, I would maybe try and use it as an excuse to try and spend a little more time with her, but with all the watchful eyes on me, I’d have to just grin and bear it.

“Good morning,” Coach H greeted as we walked in. “Sit wherever you’d like. We won’t be in our assigned seats for long anyway.”

Ceradi held up a hand and waved us down to the corner of desks they’d seized control of near the window. Hannah and I walked over and sat down and I could see that Aria was sitting with some of her friends near the front of the room. Her eyes looked as sleepless as I felt, and somewhere in the back of mind I wondered if her restlessness was for the same reasons as mine. She had feelings for me, that was obvious. Was she really going to continue ignoring them?

If only I’d done a better job of proving to her that I was worth the risk.

Once the bell had rung to signify the beginning of the day, Coach H got up and stood at the front of the classroom. She clapped her hands to bring attention to her and the murmur in the classroom died down. “Alright everyone, we all know that Drill Days are just us sitting around waiting for the next drill to come around, so I’ve set up a few different options to keep us busy today. The first is, any of you who want to use this time to study can go to the lunchroom where a few different teachers are going to be taking attendance. You’ll check out here and check in there, and if any drills happen while you’re there, those teachers will make sure you’re accounted for and get that information to me.”

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