“Hey.”

Michelle turned to her left to see her new boyfriend leaning against the wall, his head tilted in her direction. Once he’d gotten her attention, Caledon smiled and withdrew his hands from his jeans pocket, stepping towards her.

“What’s up?” she said.

Was this why he’d texted her earlier to ask what class she had before lunch period?

Someone bumped into her shoulder and gave a curt apology. She started walking slowly to avoid dirty looks for blocking others, and Caledon joined her.

“Let’s walk together,” he said. “We agreed to alternate tables every day, right?”

Michelle recalled her friends’ boyfriends sometimes meeting them at their classroom during lunch. Maybe that was also another couple thing, just like handholding.

“Oh, okay.”

They’d decided over text yesterday to take turns sitting at each other’s tables. Hanging out with an unfamiliar group at lunch wasn’t the most appealing idea to Michelle, but it was only fair. She imagined that it had to be the same for Caledon.

To prevent any misunderstandings, she’d told her friends first thing in the morning. It only made sense that they were quick to understand, since her friends went to sit at their own boyfriends’ tables on occasion.

As they walked side by side down the hallway, navigating their way through the rapidly growing crowd, Caledon lifted his left hand with his palm facing upwards to her.

“Should we hold hands?” he asked.

With a shrug, she slipped her right hand into it. “Yeah, why not?”

It’d been years since she’d last held Nathan’s hand, which certainly hadn’t been as big as Caledon’s was now. She could feel the calluses on his palm now, and despite how long and thin his fingers looked, they managed a very firm grip.

This wasn’t like holding Nathan’s hand at all.

Walking with the same distance between them prior to holding hands created a strain on Michelle’s arm, so she stepped closer to him.

Caledon glanced down at her, so she explained, “We were too far apart. My arm was starting to ache. Wasn’t yours?”

“Oh. I thought that was normal.”

Their arms bumped. His arm was behind hers, and even without direct contact she could feel the warmth emanating from it.

She laughed. “What? No way that’s normal. I mean, even children have to walk really close to their parents when they’re holding hands, right? That’s the whole point, so that they don’t get lost.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but you’re not my child. Anyway, you’re not going to get lost here.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she said, shaking her head. “Couples don’t hold hands so that they don’t get lost. They do it to show off how not single they are! So cruel to forever alones … Poor Barnaby.”

“Who’s Barnaby?”

“Oh, some guy from my drama club who hates being single. But I think his reasons for hating it are different from mine.”

Barnaby never seemed to mention anything about not wanting to be a third wheel. He just kept going on and on about how he wanted a girlfriend and to experience love too.

Michelle couldn’t relate.

When they arrived at the cafeteria, they joined the lunch line together and chatted about their favorite and most disliked item on the menu. After they got their lunches, Caledon led her towards his usual table.

There were already two couples seated there, with each respective couple leaning their heads close together and talking quietly. Michelle recognized both girls from around school. They were sufficiently acquainted enough to wave to each other in passing. She hadn’t realized that they were dating Caledon’s friends.

Then again, she hadn’t paid much attention to him or his social circle before they started dating.

“Guys, meet Michelle,” Caledon said, setting his tray down on the table. “She’s sitting with us today.”

They looked up from each other and smiled politely at Michelle. He introduced them to her, and she greeted Dennis and Marcus with a wave.

Dennis had unkempt short black hair, which accentuated his smiling brown eyes and easy grin. He looked just as approachable as Caledon, and she could see why they were friends. His girlfriend, Rachel, a cute petite girl with straight brown hair pulled back in a French braid, commented that they were in the same literature class.

Marcus’ windswept blond hair was equally disheveled but in a different way—he looked more like he got caught out in bad weather as opposed to having just rolled out of bed without brushing his hair. Michelle recognized Scarlett, who was sitting beside him, as a fellow drama club member. They didn’t talk much, but they did at least know each other’s names. Scarlett was tall and slender, and her wavy red hair was pulled into a high ponytail.

“I didn’t know you were going out with Caledon, Michelle,” Rachel said, leaning across the table and resting her chin in her hands.

Her new boyfriend took a seat and she sat in the chair beside him.

“It was a recent thing,” he said. “I just told you guys yesterday, didn’t I?”

“No, you told us that you had a girlfriend now,” Marcus said, “and then you left our table to sit somewhere else. You didn’t say when you got a girlfriend.”

“It was two days ago,” Michelle said. “Really very recent.”

“Oh, is this Michelle?” another deep voice said above them.

Both Caledon and Michelle raised their heads to look at the guy who had just arrived. He brushed his obviously bleached blond hair—his brown roots were showing—out of his eyes and grinned at her.

“That’s Llyod,” Caledon said.

“I’m Llyod,” Llyod said at the same time.

“Nice chemistry,” Michelle commented with a lazy smile. “Hi, Llyod. Nice to meet you. Oh, hey, Jennifer.”

She recognized the light-brown haired girl standing beside Llyod as Jennifer, a girl who was in her biology class.

“Hi, Michelle.” Jennifer returned her smile.

“Wow, you know all the girls,” Caledon said, twisting open his bottle of mineral water.

“The school isn’t that big. Hey, I didn’t realize your table was so nearby.”

She pointed to her usual table, where her best friends were sitting—with their boyfriends, of course. It was only three tables away, at their two o’clock. To her astoundment, they were all staring at her. Were they trying to observe her?

Once they realized that she was looking right back at them, Haley and Autumn flushed and turned back in their seats. Sylvie, however, raised a hand in greeting. Amused by her friends’ strange behavior, Michelle raised an eyebrow and waved back at her.

“How come I never got this much attention when I was single?” she said, mostly talking to herself. “Unfair much?”

“Well, you’re not single now. Isn’t that a good thing?” Caledon said before proceeding to scarf down his roast beef sandwich.

He had a point. Michelle started on her pasta.

All the other couples at her current table were talking quietly to each other and sharing food, like how it was at where she normally sat. The only difference was that these couples didn’t seem as lovesick for each other.

“What do you do on your days off, anyway?” she asked Caledon after swallowing a bite of pasta. “When you’re not working.”

“I go hiking and fishing sometimes. We usually all go together on weekends.”

“Wow. That sounds so cool. When did you learn how to fish?”

“My dad taught me how to fish when I was twelve. Everyone,” he said, lowering his voice and gesturing at his friends with a small wave of his hand, “hung out at my place a lot before they found a girlfriend, so he used to take us all on fishing trips.”

She tried to imagine Haley putting some bait through a hook and failed. In their group, only Michelle and Sylvie weren’t squeamish around creepy-crawlies.

“That sounds really cool,” she repeated. “Are you good at it?”

“I think I’m average. Do you know how to fish?”

“No. Ah, man, it must be really nice.”

The idea of being surrounded by nature, inhaling fresh air from nearby trees, feeling a tug on the line and reeling in the catch, all the time wondering what it was, sounded appealing.

“But recently,” he said, lowering his voice, “you know, I’ve been third wheeling all those trips, so …”

Glumly, Michelle twirled the spaghetti around her fork. “I feel you. My friends and I used to split the cotton candy between us, but now that they have their boyfriends, all they do is share their cotton candy with them. I have to eat the whole thing by myself!”

Caledon made a sympathetic noise.

It felt good to get that off her chest. She’d been holding that in for a long time, but she’d never been able to voice that to her best friends because she was afraid of looking petty.

“But one whole cloud of cotton candy is too much for one person to eat!” she said in despair. “It’s just too much, you know? All I wanted was to share it with a friend.”

He patted her on the shoulder. “I understand. It’s like when you go to the movies and have to buy the small popcorn because you know that nobody’s going to share it with you.”

“Right?” she groaned.

At that moment, Michelle felt eyes on her, so she took another bite of her pasta before looking up.

On the opposite side of the table, Llyod was watching them. Next to him, Jennifer flipped a page of her novel and bit off another piece of her turkey sandwich. She wasn’t paying attention to her boyfriend at all.

Michelle swallowed after chewing and asked, “Yes?”

“How can we help you?” Caledon asked.

“Nothing,” Llyod said, grinning. “I just thought I heard something interesting.”

They both threw him puzzled glances, but Llyod’s expression didn’t falter. Still with that amused smile on his face, he shifted his attention to the juice box in his hand.

Caledon turned to Michelle, evidently uninterested in whatever was on his friend’s mind. “Anyway, don’t forget that we’re going to watch a movie on Friday.”

“I remember,” she reassured him. “We can even share a large popcorn.”

“Sounds good,” he said with a sigh.

She could understand him; she’d really rather be spending quality time with her friends without their boyfriends, but at least this was better than nothing.

Therefore, it was with a commiserating smile that Michelle patted him on the arm and continued eating her lunch.