Page 3 of Sending Love Letters to Animals

“Nah,” Daniel laughed at the joke, “I got my girl right here.”

He reached across the table, only to have Aubrey slap his hand away. Apparently, being Daniel’s girlfriend and wanting to admit it were two separate issues.

I respected that.

“Ryan can have you,” Aubrey snapped, though she was only teasing. “’Bout tired of your foolishness anyway.”

“Awww, baby,” Daniel cooed. “You know I love you like no other.”

Everyone, including Aubrey, rolled their eyes. Not that Daniel couldn’t be an okay guy, but he was laying it on thick. We all laughed at the fact we all had the same reaction. Even Daniel laughed along with us.

Those were my friends. Never taking anything too seriously.

Luckily, before Aubrey and Daniel could exchange more barbs or start throwing tots at each other—which, obviously, wouldn’t have been out of character for them—the warning bell rang. The noisiest of the bunch, meaning Liam, Elijah, Aubrey, and Daniel, gathered up our trays and headed to the bins by the lunch line to return them to be cleaned. Jules and I let our friends take care of our trays, glad to have some peace and quiet. Well, as much peace and quiet as two people can have in a high school cafeteria in the middle of the day.

Jules laced an arm through the crook of my elbow as we walked out of the cafeteria and one of her boobs decided to use my arm as a rest. I looked down at her boob and then looked at Jules, one of my eyebrows raising on its own. Jules merely shrugged, making no effort to lift her tit off of my arm. It didn’t particularly bother me, but I felt it was a form of intimate contact that was lost on me. A complete waste. Daniel would have loved it.

Having left lunch while everyone was scrambling to return their trays, the hallway leading away from the cafeteria was fairly empty. Only a few students dashed by us, rushing to get to their next class. For as well laid out as A.M. Whitemane is, the cafeteria situation is ridiculous. One hallway led into and out of the cafeteria that hundreds of students dined in each day. When you have that many students trying to get fed, then trying to get to their next class after eating, it can turn into a mess quickly.

Whenever we could, Jules and I left the cafeteria as soon as the warning bell rang. Most of the student body had a tendency to linger, chatting and cracking jokes until Mrs. Hopkins shooed them all out. Jules and I always tried to be out of the cafeteria hallway and well on our way to English before Mrs. Hopkins lost her cool with the rest of the student body.

“Sorry,” I said once we exited the cafeteria hall into the main hall. “They’re kind of thoughtless sometimes.”

“All the time,” Jules said. “Skinny bitches.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“I’m sorry about your bergina situation.”

“Watch it.”

Jules waved me off with her free hand.

“Stop apologizing for them,” she said. “Us big girls and gay guys gotta stick together.”

“I guess.”

“So,” Jules began brightly, “did you do the essay for Ms. Tabatabai?”

I scowled at Jules as we turned by the library to enter the English hall.

“Oh, come on,” she said with a nudge to my side.

“Of course, I did the essay,” I said. “I’m assuming, like usual, you chose to put it off until you park your bumper in class?”

Jules gave me a goofy smile, all of her teeth showing and clenched, as she looked up at me comically. I rolled my eyes at her, but a chuckle escaped my mouth. Ms. Tabatabai always gave us a one-page essay assignment every Friday in English. They always had a theme, like, what our favorite vacation was and why, your favorite book or movie or song, why we would or wouldn’t want to be President one day—those kinds of things. During Monday’s class we were all expected to turn our essay into her as we left class.

Jules always wrote her essay in class on Mondays while Ms. Tabatabai gave her lecture on whatever we were learning that day. It wasn’t a great method for getting her essay done, but Jules never failed to pound hers out during the forty minutes Ms. Tabatabai lectured each Monday afternoon. Though it always gave me anxiety to watch Jules scribbling away furiously at the desk next to me, it didn’t really affect me in any way. So, I never gave her too much crap about her belief that weekends should never be used for writing essays. However, Jules had been doing the same thing in Ms. Tabatabai’s classes for our entire high school lives. How she continued to get away with it was beyond me.

Homework on the weekends was not something to which Jules gave much credence. Weekends were for laziness and having fun, and no homework, regardless of how it counted toward her grade, would keep her from her fun. It had become a common theme during our senior year. Ms. Tabatabai assigned an essay on Friday and I dutifully wrote mine during the weekend. Jules put hers off until Monday. As the two of us walked to English after lunch each Monday, Jules always asked me if I’d written mine. The answer was always the same. But she never stopped asking the question.

Jules slipped her arm out of the crook of my elbow and dislodged her tit from my arm as we stopped outside of Ms. Tabatabai’s class. Her timing was impeccable since we both had to leap out of the way as Connor Payne zipped between us to get into English.

“Sorry!” He managed to say as he narrowly avoided colliding with us.

“Fool!” Jules spat through the door as he slid into his desk recklessly, nearly tipping it and himself over into the floor. “We’ve still got six minutes!”

“Jules!” Ms. Tabatabai warned her.