Wednesday, January 22, 2020

"She's literally the weirdest person." Lindsey rolled her eyes as we walked towards the party, "Like she just dropped out of the sky and decided to have a massive crush on your boyfriend?"

"I don't think she has half a brain." Leslie piped up, "I mean, she does realize that you two dated before she had even met Brenden, correct?"

I shrugged.

"Faith just needs to stop acting like a petty girl for once and realize that us females should stick together instead of tearing each other apart." I replied. It felt good to be flanked by my two best friends again; apart from dance classes, we had hardly seen each other during our short time at Berkeley.

"Is Brenden coming to this part?" Leslie asked after we had walked in silence for a few minutes, "It would be nice to finally meet this guy."

"Yeah, he's coming." I nodded. "He might be mad at me though, I cancelled our lunch plans to go out with you guys."

"You didn't have to do that!" Lindsey nudged me, "We would have totally understood if you wanted to spend time with Brenden instead of us."

"I didn't, though. I kind of just wanted a break from us hanging out. I mean, I love him, but at the same time, it gets exhausting trying to focus on all the girls he always has hanging around and trying to make me jealous. I mean, he texted me saying he was with Emily. Every girl knows that you don't text during, you text before."

"He texted you while he was hanging out with her?" Lindsey repeated, "That's super weird. I thought that people were supposed to text before to check on the other person's feelings. Texting during makes it seem like they're trying to make you jealous."

"That's what I said!" I cried, "I mean, it was just so weird. And totally not something Brenden would do on his own."

"Did Emily tell him to? Maybe she was trying to make you jealous?" Leslie suggested.

I shook my head.

"Emily's chill, she wouldn't be trying to make me jealous. We've known each other for a while, and she's never tried anything before." I said, positive that I was right.

"Yeah, anything that you know about." Lindsey replied.

***

"So where's Brenden?"

I was trying to ignore the obvious glee in Faith's voice at the fact that he wasn't dancing with me as she asked the question. It turned out that we weren't the only ones who didn't like her, and she decided that hanging out with her roommate would be the best option in a room full of people who hated her.

"I don't know." I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant as anger churned inside of me. I knew that he was here, since he had tweeted about being at the party an hour ago. We had been here for forty-five minutes with no sign of him, and no sign that he was going to show up anytime soon. I had texted him three times, and each time he had read the message but not responded.

"Is that him over there?" Lindsey asked, pointing to a group of guys hanging around the bar. I squinted through the flashing strobe lights and controlled myself enough to not roll my eyes.

"Yep, that's him." I said as he began to walk out to the dance floor.

"Do you want to go and hang with him?" Leslie asked hesitantly as I made no move towards my boyfriend.

"Not particularly." I replied.

The four of us stood in silence for a moment before Faith broke it.

"Well, if you're not gonna dance with him, then I will." She grinned, shoving her drink into my hand. "See you girls!"

We watched as she weaved her way through the crowd and into Brenden's arms, dancing as seductively as she possibly could.

I rolled my eyes and turned around, placing her drink on the table behind me.

"It's not like that wasn't to be expected." I said, still with my back to Leslie and Lindsey. "I mean, she's actually insane, so I'm sure this will turn out well."

"I'm not so sure." Lindsey replied, her voice worried. "Ar, look."

I turned around to see that Faith was no longer dancing on Brenden, which gave me a small bit of hope at my boyfriend's loyalty. Brenden was nowhere in sight, so I was unsure of what Lindsey meant.

"He's not dancing with her, isn't that a good thing?"

"But look at where he's going. And who he's with." Lindsey replied worriedly.

I followed where she was pointing to see Brenden, hand-in-hand with Emily Morner, walking into a side room right off of the dance floor. Emily walked in first and Brenden followed, turning around to shut the door.

As he did, he looked up and our eyes met from across the room. I expected him to stop, to leave the room and come be with his girlfriend. To explain why he had been ignoring my texts and why I was watching him dance with someone else.

But he didn't.

Instead, I watched as my boyfriend turned away from my gaze, smirked at the girl in the room with him, and closed the door.

GUYS!! If you haven't seen yet, Dear Sydney (the surprise I was talking about) is going to have a SEQUEL! Love, Aria is a spin-off of the original because it's not about Syd and Connor, but my new book, To Whom It May Concern, is going to be about them! The introduction is already up and the trailer is attached to this chapter! Updates will begin April 24th (the one-year anniversary of Dear Sydney beginning!) and I hope that you guys will read it and enjoy it! It's gonna be a bumpy ride for Connor and Syd, but of course everything will have some sort of happiness in the end!

The same probably can't be said for Brenden and Aria. But who knows?

I do. I know.

-Katherine