Freckles ... part six
by Thalia
Rating: PG-13
It was really exceedingly easy to fall into friendship with Nick
Steller. Now that he had grown out of his immature hair-pulling phase
and behaved himself around her, it was just natural that she met him
after classes and bitched about English class and went to his apartment
every Thursday night for pizza and beer and episodes of Family Guy on
DVD. If she actually thought about it, she would probably have been
horrified, but she didn't.
They slid into quick familiarity, and she simply enjoyed it without
analysis. It was nice to have a friend who was a guy, and even better
that Nick didn't add any of the unnecessary complications.
It didn't matter to him that she always visited wearing track pants and
sweatshirts and no makeup. He looked her in the eye and ordered the
pizza: half Hawaiian (for her), half Supreme (for him). He didn't give
her any strange looks when she wiped her greasy fingers on her pants and
rested her bare feet in his lap, stretched out across the ratty old
couch like a contented cat. And then sometimes they'd meet at the gym
and work out together, her spotting him at the weight bench and him
rubbing out the kinks in her neck after a long workout with large,
warm hands.
It was just the best sort of friendship to have, she thought. He had
seen her sweaty, or drunk and in tears. She had seen him bruised up
after a game, and wearing cartoon character boxers. She listened to him
rant about rival football teams and he listened to her wax vitriolic
about research papers and MLA-format bibliographies.
She didn't talk about her parents with him, but that didn't matter...
because when they were together, she didn't think about them.
It was almost better this way.
Lita never quite realized how close they were getting until she found
herself gossiping with Raye about his roommate Zach's ongoing flirtation
with renouned brainiac Amy Anderson. Just as she visited Nick every
Thursday, it seemed that his roommate, one flirtatious smart-ass by the
name of Zach Wittington, spent his Thursday nights at organic chemistry
study group, and not because he had any passing interest in benzene
rings and aromatic compounds.
"And Nick says that they might very well come to the football game
against Brentwood U," she chattered as she finished her chicken dinner
in Beverley Hall's dining room. "I think it would be hilarious to watch
that pretty boy whore try to play smooth talker with the exact sort of
girl that would never..." She suddenly trailed off as she noticed Raye's
expression. "Raye, why are you looking at me like I just told you that I
intended to dance wearing nothing but Christmas lights on top of the
psychology building?"
"Thanks for THAT mental image," Raye rolled her eyes, before resuming
the raised-eyebrow look of incredulity at her roommate. "As for my
expression... don't you listen to yourself a bit?"
"What do you mean?" Lita looked at her strangely.
Raye took one final sip of her lemonade, slowly set the cup down, and
crossed her arms. "Obviously not... You're either being aggravating on
purpose-- by the way, how is it my fault that we're out of toothpaste?--
or you're really that dense. I guess I'll just have to ask you straight-out,
either way."
"Then why don't you?" Lita frowned. Raye never spoke in riddles. This
was more than slightly irritating.
Raye scoffed, before fixing her sharp, piercing dark-eyed stare upon her
face. "Are you dating Nick Steller or not?"
-end part six
(
geocities.com/wyse_k)