Gabriel Whitlock walked into the cafeteria and paused once he was well past the threshold. He scanned the room, looking for his girlfriend. She was nowhere in sight.
Suddenly two warm hands covered his eyes from behind his back.
"Guess who!" a feminine voice giggled.
"Gee, I really couldn't say…" Gabriel played along, turning in the arms connected to the hands, which shifted themselves from his head to around his back, clasping behind him once he had come to fully face the possessor of those lovely hands.
And there she stood, the object of his affection for the past almost 4 years, Nakoma Makah.
They stood like that, arms around each other, both sets of eyes lost in the other, for a few minutes, until the cheer squad (Nikki's "posse") came up to them and began to loudly clear their throats.
Nikki turned to them and smiled, slightly embarrassed but not much, if she wasn't so shy she wouldn't have blushed at all.
"Hey guys, what's been happening in the last… uhh, I dunno, 5 minutes or so?" Nikki asked sarcastically.
"How about you tell us, lovebird number one?" Genevieve Jackson, the beta to Nikki's alpha, retaliated, her face, a smirk and eyes daring her to continue the joke.
Nakoma did not continue. She simply grabbed Gabriel's hand, and trod through the lunchroom.
On the way to their table, the group passed a particularly suspicious gathering.
At a table on a far side of the lunch room, a table significantly separated from the rest, sat a group of beautiful, pale-skinned people.
The thing that made them suspicious was 1 specific member of the gathering, a girl, probably junior or senior class, with long blond hair and bright golden eyes. This girl had the same exact necklace that Gabriel had given to Nakoma for her 16th birthday and their 3rd anniversary around her neck.
"Who are they?" Gabe inquired Nikki, they were sitting at their table, directly in the middle of the room, and he turned a bit to indicate the table he was referring to.
Nikki glanced quickly at the group gathered around the table Gabe had gestured to. She shrugged.
"I dunno much about them, they're not very social, all I know is that their names are Jasper and Rosalie Hale, and Emmet, Alice, Edward and Bella Cullen. They're foster sisters and brothers, except for Bella, who's the police chief's daughter." She explained.
"And they're all… together?!?" Gabriel couldn't believe it. How could people that were related, adopted though they were, be involved with each other romantically?
"I guess!" Nakoma giggled, exasperated by his constant questions. "Why do you care?"
"That blonde one…"
"Rosalie Hale?" she offered.
"Yeah, Rosalie, she's wearing your necklace."
"What?!? What are you talking about? Wearing what necklace? Which one?"
"The one I got you for our anniversary. The family crest. Is it possible that she stole it?"
"Nope, no chance. I have that exact piece of jewelry hanging in my jewelry box at home, where none of them have ever been, waiting for a special occasion." Nakoma was certain.
"Stop worrying, I've never worn that necklace to school other than dances, and even then I never took it off. There's no possible way she could have taken mine. Oh yeah, I forgot!"
"What'd you forget?" Gabriel asked.
"I forgot that there's 1 more person in that little group of theirs. Renesmee Cullen, but she's in like 3rd grade, so she wouldn't be here."
"How do you know her?"
"I'm her high school buddy! Nice kid. Sort of ginger, I supposed, but still really nice."
The bell rang and ended their conversation. The girls headed off to gym and he stayed at the table, turning to watch the Cullens leave, but they were already gone.