Training Wheels: Boyfriend Edition

  episode 3: newsfsh

  “I don’t really like meatloaf,” Michelle said, prodding at hers with a fork.

  It was addressed to no one in particur, mostly because nobody at the lunch table was paying any attention to her.

  Everyone else was too busy making gooey eyes or mumbling sweet nothings at their significant other. Sylvie was giggling at a joke that Jordan had just made, and now she swatted at his arm.

  Really cute, you guys, Michelle wanted to say. Now can someone please remember that I exist?

  Instead, she reluctantly ate another mouthful of dry meatloaf and checked her phone.

  To her surprise, she had a text message from Caledon. According to the time stamp, he’d sent it just a couple of minutes ago.

  I’m surrounded by couples, the text read. Help.

  Michelle felt a wry grin tug at her lips. She reted way too well to that.

  Me too. Help, she sent.

  His response arrived within seconds. Want to eat together?

  Her eyebrows shot up as she stared at the screen.

  The idea hadn’t even occurred to her. Now that she was really giving it some thought, it made sense. Her friends’ boyfriends were almost always sitting with them. There was nothing stopping Caledon from joining her or vice versa.

  There were plenty of couples who ate lunch together. She and Caledon could be one of them.

  Why not? she typed. Let’s do it. Do you want to come here, or should I go there?

  Either way works for me. Do you want me to come over?

  Her friends still didn’t know about Caledon yet, but that was because Michelle wasn’t sure how to break the news to them. Was she supposed to just say it out of the blue regardless of the current conversation topic?

  If he came over now, that would be a perfect opportunity to tell them.

  Sure. Have you told your friends about us yet?

  No, but I will in a few seconds when they ask where I’m going.

  Unable to keep herself from snorting, Michelle replied, Sounds great. We’re sitting near the entrance.

  See you soon.

  Excitement surged through her veins at the thought of her friends meeting her new boyfriend. It gave her enough energy to sit up straight and eat a few more bites of her meatloaf.

  Most people in the cafeteria were currently seated, so it was easy to spot Caledon making his way past the tables. He was looking around, his head turning left and right every few seconds, probably trying to find her.

  Raising her arm above her head, Michelle waved enthusiastically at him. The action caught his attention, and his head snapped in her direction. He fshed her a grin before changing directions and heading towards them.

  When he got within three feet of their table, Caledon stood behind her chair, holding his lunch tray.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi,” she said, dragging an empty chair from a neighboring table to theirs. “Sit down!”

  Everyone else looked up at him, visibly startled by his abrupt presence. Carter and Xavier both nodded at him, but Haley, Autumn, and Sylvie all turned to Michelle for answers.

  “Oh, yeah, everyone,” she said, as Caledon settled into the chair beside her. “Meet Caledon, my boyfriend. Have any of you met him before?”

  “Hi,” he said to the table at rge.

  “Your boyfriend?!” Autumn blurted out, her dark brown eyes widening. “Since when did you get a boyfriend?”

  “Since yesterday,” Michelle said. “By the way, Caledon, this is Autumn.”

  “Hi,” she said distractedly, her gaze still fixed on Michelle.

  “And this is Haley,” she said, waving a hand at her bck-haired friend.

  “Hi,” Haley said as well, barely sparing him a gnce.

  Sylvie gave Caledon a friendly smile, which he returned. “Yeah, we’ve met. We have Calculus together.”

  “Yeah. You’re Sylvie, right?” he asked.

  “Yup,” she said, casting her focus back on Michelle. “Hey, how come you never said anything to me?”

  Still gaping, Haley added, “Yeah! How could you not tell us? And why didn’t you tell me when we had homeroom earlier?”

  Michelle winced. Mr. Barrett had been in an absolutely foul mood in the morning, and the distraction had caused her to forget all about her new boyfriend.

  “It slipped my mind,” she said. “But hey, I’m telling you now. It’s not like I was keeping it a secret from you guys or anything.”

  Tucking her golden curls behind her ear, Autumn shook her head. “It’s not that. I didn’t even know you had someone you liked!”

  “Yeah. I didn’t even know you were hanging out with him,” Sylvie said.

  Baffled, Michelle tilted her head and squinted at them. “Uh, I wasn’t.”

  “Oh.” For a second, Autumn seemed appeased before her disbelieving expression returned in full force. “Hold on. What do you mean you weren’t?”

  Why was she getting all these questions?

  Michelle had expected her friends to resume whatever they were doing after congratuting her, but they weren’t reacting the way she’d thought they would.

  She cast a quick gnce at Caledon, who was peacefully enjoying his lunch since he wasn’t the target of their interrogation. In fact, he’d just about finished his meatloaf.

  She wondered if his friends had reacted the same way when he left his table.

  “We weren’t hanging out,” Michelle said, taking care to enunciate each word clearly.

  Looking more puzzled than ever, Haley asked, “You weren’t? How did you two get together?”

  “We agreed to get together,” she said, shrugging. “That’s all.”

  “Huh?” Sylvie blinked.

  “Okay,” Autumn said. “But who confessed to who?”

  “Nobody,” Michelle said, only to receive more staring on the part of her friends. “What? Why are you guys looking at me like that?”

  “So you weren’t spending time with each other, and neither of you confessed first,” Sylvie said. “I’m confused.”

  “I’m confused that you’re confused.”

  A thick silence bnketed the table, where even the guys, excluding Caledon who was gncing around at everyone else, were watching them.

  “Let’s start over.” Autumn braced her forearms on the table and leaned towards her. “How did you start dating?”

  “We just agreed to be together.” Michelle paused. “I already said that.”

  The confusion left Haley’s face, swiftly repced by intrigue. “But who asked who?”

  “We asked each other,” she said. “Right, Caledon?”

  “Yeah,” he said, poking a straw into his juice box.

  “How come you never said anything? I didn’t even know you guys were talking.” Sylvie, who was sitting on Michelle’s left, nudged her arm.

  It was true that her best friends talked about their love lives, even prior to getting their boyfriends. Because of those frequent discussions, Michelle knew about their feelings or interests towards their respective boyfriends before they officially got together.

  It was never a total surprise when they announced their retionship status to the group.

  With that in mind, Michelle’s decration would admittedly have seemed like it was coming out of left field for them.

  She had never talked about Caledon to her friends, but that was because there was nothing to talk about. All of their interactions amounted to the couple of times a week their shifts happened to coincide.

  “I mean, there’s nothing to say,” she said, shrugging. “We only talked to each other when we saw each other at work.”

  “Work? You mean, at your part-time job?” Haley said.

  “Oh, you both work at the same café? That’s so cute,” Autumn said, grinning at both her and Caledon.

  “Wait, why didn’t you talk to each other outside of work?” Sylvie asked.

  Michelle took a long gulp of water. “Why did we have to talk outside of work? I don’t understand.”

  When her friends—and their boyfriends—gave her looks that suggested that her ck of comprehension was weird, she stared right back at all of them.

  “What?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Haley said slowly. “You are together, right?”

  “Yeah,” she and Caledon said in unison.

  “But we just got together yesterday,” Caledon said, his brow furrowed. “I don’t see why we had to talk to each other outside of work before that.”

  Michelle turned to him. “Right?”

  At least one of them understood her stance, even if it was only her new boyfriend.

  Autumn cocked an eyebrow at them. “Because you would want to?”

  “But we didn’t particurly want to,” Michelle said. “I didn’t, anyway. No offense if you did, Caledon, but I didn’t get the impression you really wanted to hang out with me when we weren’t working.”

  “Nah, don’t worry,” Caledon said, slurping from his juice box. “I didn’t either.”

  Everyone else at the table stared at them both like they were insane.

  “You didn’t want to?” Sylvie asked. “Don’t you like each other?”

  “Sure, I think he’s a cool guy,” Michelle said, turning her head to look at Caledon. “He’s a great coworker too. I like him.”

  As he nodded at her, a few strands of his wavy brown hair fell into his eyes. “Thanks. I like you too. You’re pretty fun to talk to. I like working with you.”

  “Um,” Haley said. “Are you guys really together?”

  It was Michelle’s turn to shoot her a ft stare. “Yes? I literally just told you that he’s my boyfriend!”

  “That … you don’t particurly feel like talking to,” Sylvie said. “Why did you start dating in the first pce?”

  Now that question was easy for her to answer. “Well, I wanted a boyfriend.”

  “And I wanted a girlfriend,” Caledon added, equally matter of fact in tone.

  Sylvie’s mouth fell agape. “Excuse me?”

  “Let me make sure I got this right,” Autumn said. “You got together not because you like each other, but because you wanted to be in a retionship?”

  “Yeah, but I also like him! I already told you.” Michelle threw her hands up. “I don’t get what the problem is.”

  As he slid his tray off the table and stood up, Caledon said, “I have to go to the toilet. Be back in a bit.”

  Michelle had to suppress the wave of grumpiness that rose up in her due to the fact that he wasn’t the one currently being grilled by her friends.

  “’kay,” she said.

  Once he was out of earshot, Sylvie whispered, “I can’t believe you decided to just go out with some random guy!”

  “Hey! How can you call him a random guy? Rude,” Michelle said, frowning disapprovingly at her. “He’s in our grade! You know him!”

  “Yeah, but from the sounds of it, you don’t,” she said.

  “Yes, I do! I work with the guy at least once a week!”

  “This doesn’t sound like a real reqtionship,” Haley said. “You don’t sound interested in him.”

  “To be fair, he doesn’t sound all that interested in her either,” Carter threw in, earning himself a sharp look from his girlfriend. “Sorry babe, I’m just saying it how I see it.”

  Amusement crossed his handsome face as Xavier said, “Seems like their feelings are mutual.”

  “Ha, ha,” Autumn said, rolling her eyes.

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “Hey, Caledon’s cool. Michelle, I support you guys even if Autumn doesn’t.”

  Despite the worthlessness of his support in Michelle’s eyes, she was polite enough not to voice her opinion out loud.

  “Thanks,” Michelle said instead, before returning her attention to Haley. “It is a real retionship. We made it official and everything!”

  “That’s not … That’s not how it works,” Haley said, her mouth opening and closing as if at a loss for words.

  “Yes, it is—you decided to be Carter’s girlfriend, and vice versa, right? That’s why you’re officially together now. We did the same thing!”

  “You can’t just decide that you’re going to be together and call it a day—that’s just missing the point,” Sylvie said patiently.

  Michelle was pretty sure that that was exactly what her friends did, so she didn’t see the difference.

  “And what is the point?”

  “You don’t even like each other,” Autumn said. “You’re just getting into a retionship for the sake of it. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that our retionship isn’t official for that reason. Also, we already told you that we like each other.”

  “Yeah, as coworkers,” Autumn said, widening her dark blue eyes as she stressed the st word.

  “What did you expect me to say? He is my coworker,” Michelle said. “Anyway, he’s my boyfriend now—period. It’s as official as official gets.”

  Right at that moment, the bell rang. Most of the students had gotten up from their chairs and were milling out of the cafeteria.

  “We should go,” Xavier said, hopping to his feet. “Mrs. Taylor threatened to give me a detention if I’m te for her css again.”

  Jordan was already halfway out of his seat. “Me too. See you ter, Syl.”

  Relieved that the debate was over for now—although she wasn’t sure why they were having this back-and-forth in the first pce—Michelle returned her tray and left the cafeteria with her friends. She almost couldn’t believe that they’d spent the st ten minutes arguing about her new retionship status.

  At least she’d gotten the attention she wanted, although it wasn’t the good kind.

  Haley and Sylvie waved to her and Autumn, whom Michelle had the next css with, before heading off in the opposite direction.

  “I can’t believe you’re not happy for me,” she said to Autumn. “You were so happy for Haley st month.

  “I am,” Autumn said. “I mean, I would be, if you weren’t dating him just to have a boyfriend. This is different.”

  “He’s my boyfriend just as much as Carter is Haley’s!” Michelle protested. “Just ask him.”

  “Are you talking about me?”

  Caught off-guard by the sudden easygoing and friendly voice that had intruded on their conversation, they gnced in its direction.

  Caledon had suddenly appeared in front of them. He slowed down so that he was walking alongside Michelle.

  “What are you doing here? The bell already rang,” she said.

  “I thought I’d walk you to your css,” he said.

  She paused. “Why?”

  “It’s a boyfriend thing to do, I think.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Really?”

  “My friends do it for their girlfriends sometimes. I thought I’d try it, too.”

  The reasoning seemed sound, so she shrugged and nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your next css?” he asked.

  “Literature. I have Mr. Reed,” she said.

  His face fell. “That’s pretty far from mine. Mind if I walk you there really quick?”

  “Uh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m used to brisk-walking. Autumn, are you okay?”

  Her friend, whose eyebrows were drawn together but lips were curved up into an almost entertained smile, shook her head.

  Making a shooing motion at them, Autumn said, “Why don’t you guys go ahead? I’ll take my time walking."

  "Alright. I'll save you a seat!"

  Michelle gave her a brief wave before she took off to css with Caledon. Having someone walk—okay, speed-walk, but it was the same thing, really—to her to css just because felt different, but Michelle had to concede that it wasn’t a bad feeling.

  She was starting to see why her friends were so excited when they got into a retionship. They had someone to accompany them all the time for no reason at all.

  Yeah, it wasn’t a bad feeling.