Page 9 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

“Well, poor you, Tris,” Ceradi continued. “That thing following around after you like a little puppy dog. Hopefully she’ll just lose interest eventually.”

“Maybe she’ll shag one of the nerds. There are plenty of lingering virgins for her to choose from,” Josh said.

“Aw, how sweet. A fat kid love story,” one of the other girls in our friend group, Neerah, said. “They need love too.”

Milton let out a snort. “Do you think they do anything other than eat on dates?”

“Rude,” Hannah said. “They’re people too.” All eyes shifted to her, and I was just beginning to think she was going to stand up for Aria when she tacked on. “They have to get in their exercise too. Huffing and puffing their way from the restaurant to the car.”

Ceradi and the others broke out into laughter again, and Hannah turned an amused look to me.

She didnotget one in return.

“What?” Hannah said. “You act as if you care about them at all. When did you get all high and mighty?”

“You like her?” Neerah said with disgust in her voice.

Ceradi gasped and slapped her hands to her mouth. “Is that why you were talking to her?”

The intense gazes of everyone at the table settled on me, along with Hannah’s ‘I told you so’ expression. I never liked being backed into a corner. Though regular people had been born with fight or flight, it was like I only had panic. My gut instinct was to survive, as was most people’s, but whether fighting or fleeing was best going to get me to that goal, I never knew.

Everyone was watching me, and there was a sly smirk on Ceradi’s face, almost like she was waiting for me to confirm so that she could dial in.

And I panicked.

“N-no,” I said. “I was just being nice.”

“Ugh, you are painfully sweet,” Ceradi replied. “I guess that’s acceptable.”

“He’s the best one of us if he can sit and talk to a dorky behemoth like that,” Capito said.

I forced a laugh and the attention left me in the interest of continuing their ribbing, so I ignored everything from then on. I just blamed their attitude on the fact that they didn’t know Aria at all. If they did, they wouldn’t be so harsh.

Maybe my birthday party would be a good chance for me to introduce her and let them see how wonderful she really was.

When lunch was finally over and I was able to get on with the rest of my day, things were much better. On top of the first class that we had together in the morning, Aria and I had an additional two classes together in the afternoon. Fortunately, one of them had very few of my friends in it because it was an advanced course. Only Hannah was in it, and we chose to keep it a secret that we’d placed higher up the ladder.

Anyone with above average intelligence was considered a nerd and harshly criticized.

It was the last class of the day, so as slyly as I could, I said my goodbyes to Hannah after the last bell rang and caught up with Aria on her way back to her locker. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she replied, knocking me out again with that killer smile. “AP Math huh? Nerd.” When she said it, it was much less painful to hear. It felt almost more like a compliment.

“I guess you could say that,” I replied. We got to her locker and she used her phone to let herself in, letting out a little squeak of excitement when it popped open. She looked at me, with pure amusement. “I don’t think I’m ever gonna get over how cool that is.”

It had only been a day, but she already gave me butterflies. How could anyone be so mean to her? She was perfect.

“So, debate club, huh?” I said.

She nodded as she pulled all of her stuff out of her locker. “Yup. I was on the team at my old school too, but we didn’t have a ton of money. In fact, we didn’t have any. We had to fundraise anything we needed on the front end, and let me tell you, people with no money aren’t keen to give some of that no money to a debate club. We had to skip out on most tournaments and mostly just competed against ourselves and other South schools.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry. Well, you won’t run into that issue here. The academic clubs get more funding than the athletic and creative ones. It’s because our principal believes in education above anything else, so he pours everything into stuff like that.”

She flung her backpack over her shoulder and shut her locker. “I got that sense. He was very excited when I mentioned the debate team. He was excited for me to join.” She looked in a few different directions, then back at me. “Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?”

“I’ll do you one better.” I held out my arm in a loop and Aria giggled a little and then looped hers through mine with a smile. “I’ll accompany you.”

A blush came to her cheeks. “You’re such a gentleman.”

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