Laia & The Transferee - Chapter 40

“I was dating a girl back in sophomore year,” The asshat didn’t bother hiding his distaste at bringing up the past. “To say that she was clingy would be the understatement of the century..”

Vivi whistles and even wiggled her eyebrows after. “Was she badly obsessed with you?”

The asshat nods. “Yeah. I didn’t think it would lead to something bad at first, though.”

Shane gazed at him with concern. “What happened?”

Laia has two guesses. The girl either became obsessed with the asshat’s every move and ended up following him everywhere AKA acting like a total psycho or she became too possessive and hindered the asshat to meet another girl or interact with any member of the female population.

The two guesses were more alike than the girl thought but as much as Laia didn’t like the asshat, nobody deserved either of her two guesses.

“After I ended things with her she ended up following me everywhere,” The asshat mimicks someone following another with his hands. “She would even stay outside my condominium and wait for me to go out every morning or anytime I had to leave,”

Jake couldn’t hide a frown. “Did you report her to the authorities?”

“You should have reported her to the police,” Brie adds. “Or at least to your school?”

“Yeah, I did,” The asshat nods. “She got expelled.”

“Damn,” Vivi whistles again. “That was really a bad experience.”

The rest of the group nodded in agreement. Laia steals a glance at the asshat to see the expression on his face but she was shocked to see that instead of a frown like earlier, he just had an impassive expression.

He quickly replaces it with a teasing grin. “I know I’m a catch, but I don’t want a stalker,”

Laia rolls her eyes. “No one thinks you’re a catch.”

“Just you, Lopez,” The asshat flashes her a grin. “You’re the only one who thinks I’m not and you’re definitely missing a lot,”

“I’m missing nothing,” Laia even makes a shooing motion.

Brie tries to console the boy on her side with a rub on his back. “Don’t worry, most girls still think you’re a catch. Laia’s just a special case.”

They all laughed except Laia who raised an eyebrow at her friend who seemed to be implying that her taste in boys sucks.

Her taste is immaculate, for her friend’s information!

“Do we really have to go to our next class? Ugh,” Vivi complains after pushing her empty bowl of ramen aside. “I really don’t want to spend my next two hours listening to our teacher’s monotonous voice,”

Laia had to agree. Even if she liked the subject Mathematics, she had to admit that their teacher wasn’t the best at teaching. Laia likes to think that the only reason she’s learning something about the subject is all thanks to her brain (and also the educational videos on YouTube that she watches every time their teacher fails to explain the topics well which is more often than not).

“Should we skip and go to the arcade?” Shane says with a suggestive grin accompanied by the wiggling of her eyebrows.

Jake laughs at the girl’s actions. “I didn’t know you had a secret talent involving your eyebrows, Shane,”

Shane immediately looks away with her cheeks flushing. “Yeah, it’s supposed to be a secret in the first place,”

Brie immediately cuts in the conversation with a giggle. “It looks like you’ve been hanging out with Laia too much, you’re starting to be sarcastic too!”

It didn’t go unnoticed by Vivi who subtly cocks her head to the side. Laia was quick to understand what the girl in front of her implied and she elbows Brie on the side.

Shane laughs awkwardly. “Yeah, maybe I should limit my time with Laia?”

Laia tries to save the awkward conversation with her usual sense of humor. “Please don’t, you’re the only person here who seems to understand the importance of my sarcasm.”

She ends up being successful as everyone at their table laughed.

Vivi wipes a tear from her eye. “As entertaining as Laia’s sarcasm is, we still have to make a decision whether we should suffer in our next class or not,” She looks at each of her companions with a grin. “So should we skip or should we suffer?”

Laia exchanged glances with Brie.

Brie suddenly raised both her and Laia’s hands. “We’re skipping!”

Laia turns to her friend with undisguised anxiety. Was she serious?

Jake agrees with a nod. The asshat seemed to have said something inaudible to Laia’s ears as the girl was too caught up with her anxiety to comprehend what was currently happening.

Was she seriously going to skip?

And just when she just became the top one, again?

Well, the asshat’s coming with them so it’s not a problem, the traitorous part of her brain tells her with an almost evident malicious grin.

“… Laia? Hey!”

Laia turns to Shane who was currently looking at her. “Yeah?”

Sure, let’s just act like our head wasn’t stuck on cloud nine just a few seconds ago.

Fortunately, Shane didn’t mind how Laia wasn’t paying attention and repeated what she was saying. “I said do you have a suggestion about where should we hang out for the rest of the day?”

They were skipping class for the rest of the day?!

Skipping two classes?!

Definitely not what a model student like Laia should be doing!

“Erm,” Laia steals a glance at Brie who was no help as usual for she was staring at Jake who in return was trying hard not to spare her a glance. “Maybe I shouldn’t skip?”

Vivi pouts. “Eh, you’re not coming?”

Brie turns to her with a pout of her own and even holds her friend’s hand. “You’re leaving me?”

Which translates to “please don’t leave me with them and help me with Jake please” basically.

She even catches how the asshat was looking at her with an inscrutable expression which he seems to be having a lot these days.

Is he practicing for another upcoming play or something?

“Laia, come with us! It will be fun, we swear!” Shane insists with a pout as well.

What’s with all the pouting, honestly?

Jake tried to make them stop. “Hey, let’s not force Laia.”

“Don’t be a scaredy-cat, Lopez. A little bit of skipping classes won’t drag your grades down to the bottom quickly,” The asshat says. “Or are you too scared to take risks for once in your life?”

Fucking asshole. He just knew how to hit her buttons every time!

Brie looked at her with a renewed passion. “Would you really let him speak to you that way, Laia?”

Laia mentally scoffed. Sometimes Brie can be very obvious when it came to pursuing her own agendas and in the process showed her attitude on where sometimes she really cared for no one but herself.

But that’s a topic for another time.

“I don’t pay attention to things that I deem irrelevant,” Laia replies. She stands up from her seat. “I’ll be going now.”

Brie pouts openly but says nothing else. The rest bid their goodbyes to Laia, albeit obviously disappointed at how the girl turned them down.

Only the asshat seemed to be happy at her decision.

Maybe he didn’t want her to come but Laia doesn’t care. It’s not like she wanted to come with them, either.

She’d rather listen to her teacher!

Not.

Laia regretted every second she spent in her Mathematics class.

Continuous thoughts of her friends (except the asshat) having fun and enjoying in the arcade ran through her mind which only made her suffer more.

“Ms. Lopez, can you answer number three on the board, please,”

Laia ran her fingers through her already unkempt hair and made her way to the board without even stopping to evaluate the problem her teacher wrote on the board.

Not that she’s bragging or anything but there really was no need to evaluate it as she had already studied about their current topic a few weeks back and even created her own problems to solve later.

The girl reached for the marker from her teacher and quickly answered the problem on the board. She double-checked her answer and returned to her seat.

As her teacher turned her back towards the class for she checked her answer, Laia took the opportunity to peek at her phone to see if Brie sent her a message.

Just as she expected, her friend did indeed send her a message.

More like messages, as Brie sent her a total of ten messages in just fifteen minutes of Laia not checking her phone.

[Brie: Laia he’s flirting with Shane]

[Brie: Laia he’s holding Vivi’s hand]

[Brie: his hand’s now on her waist]

[Brie: why’d i even come, what did i even expect]

[Brie: he’s smiling the way he smiled to me before :(((]

[Brie: at least sammy’s accompanying me. i guess he’s the only one who’s currently keeping me sane]

[Brie: i wish u came with me :((]

[Brie: we’re still here, i just want to go home]

[Brie: i shouldn’t have skipped. maybe we could’ve had more fun dissing our awful math teacher who doesn’t even know how to spell trigonometry]

[Brie: i want to go home..]

Laia tried her best to look as subtle as possible as she quickly sent her friend a reply.

[Laia: I told you. This is why you should listen to me.]

It might seem harsh, but Laia knew that Brie already knew by now that Laia was never the person to shy away from being blunt, especially when someone particularly needs a wake-up call.

A very much needed one, mind you.

Brie doesn’t reply.

Laia sighs and tried her best to stay awake until the end of her class.

She can only hope she won’t fall asleep.

She didn’t drink coffee today after all because she thought that the asshat wouldn’t take her grilled cheese craving seriously and would have her pay for the grilled cheese which probably cost more than what Laia is thinking.

Laia rolls her eyes.

Everything bad really does happen because of the asshat for some reason.