Author's Note: Hello, guys. It's been awhile, huh? Anyway, I finally sat down and wrote something. Just to be warned, it's not the best, and I'm really not happy with it at all, but I thought you guys deserved something so I dropped this off anyway. I'm having a harder time with this Cafe stuff than I thought I would, but I'm gonna try to think of something, I promise. Anyway, enjoy and please review.
...OUAT...
"What to play a game?" Brooke asked out of nowhere. She hated the silence, she really did. She figured she be used to it, since her house is always empty, but she just hated silence. Whenever there was silence, she was always the first to break it.
"What kind of game do you have in mind?" Haley mused, glancing over to watch Brooke stare out the window. After the two of them had finished their pancakes, neither wanted to return back to the conversation they had been having before, and Brooke quickly moved over to the window, plopping down on a chair and watched the rain pelt down on the road.
"I don't know," Brooke shrugged, spinning on the ledge so she was ignoring the rain and facing Haley. The other girl was still wet, and Brooke was still having a hard time trying to ignore that, but as long as she forced her eyes to look at Haley's face, and as long as Haley stayed behind the counter, she figured she'd be okay. "We could play True or Dare."
"I hate that game," Haley immediately answered, already knowing that was going to be Brooke's suggestion. "Plus, there's only two of us, so that's no fun, and from what I've heard, your games of True and Dare tend to get a little out of hand."
"And who told you that?" Brooke asked with a smirk. She certainly wasn't going to deny the claim; it couldn't of been truer. Her games of Truth or Dare were legendary, but she was surprised that a nobody like Haley James knew that.
"Hey," Haley replied in a fake offended tone. She threw the towel over her shoulder and placed her hands on her hips. "I hear stuff!" Brooke looked at her and raised an eyebrow, telling her that she wasn't buying it. Seeing this, Haley let out a sigh and slumped her shoulders. "Nathan mentioned it."
"I should have known," Brooke smiled triumphantly, flashing Haley her winning smile, dimples in full adorable mode. Haley quickly looked away, not wanting to get caught under Brooke's spell. It happened so many times before, Brooke would flash her amazing smile and she would melt. Just like everyone did.
And the worst part was that Brooke knew exactly what effect her smile had on everyone around her. How could she not know? Haley would watch Brooke use her smile to get out of everything. She would stroll into class an hour late and the teacher wouldn't say a word. Haley was sure she used that to get into clubs and get all the alcohol she wanted.
Haley smiled on the inside. It wasn't going to work on her tonight though because Haley wouldn't let it work. Brooke may have a winning smile that got her out of anything, but Haley had the cutest pout around that did the exact same thing. Though, unlike Brooke, she reserved it for special people; Taylor, Lucas, Peyton and Karen. She only used it for extreme circumstances because one day, Brooke's smile was going to stop working, but if Haley was careful, she'd be able to use her pout for the rest of her life.
"So what's the deal with you two, anyway?" Brooke inquired with a smirk, her smile getting bigger when she saw the look on Haley's face at the question. "Are you all hot and heavy like everyone is saying?"
"Everyone's saying something?" Haley couldn't believe it. People were talking about her and Nathan? People even knew who she was? Haley was having a really hard time wrapping her head around it. Brooke nodded. "About me?"
"Nathan Scott is the king of Tree Hill High," Brooke told her as if Haley didn't go to the school or something. Haley rolled her eyes at Brooke obvious statement and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter. "You've been seen with him a number of times, and not just in a tutorly manner. Of course people are going to talk."
"First," Haley began, pulling the towel off her shoulder and dropping it on the counter so she had something to do with her hands. "Tutorly? That's not a word." Brooke rolled her eyes and got up, strolling back over to the counter.
"And second?" she questioned, stopping behind the stool she had been sitting in before, but not sitting down, not when Haley would be that close to her.
"There's nothing to talk about," Haley sighed, pushing herself off the counter, getting uncomfortable with Brooke so near her. "I just tutor him, we're just friends."
"Yeah right," Brooke laughed, finding that very idea to be hilarious. "Friends With Benefits, maybe."
"I would never do that," Haley immediately denied, feeling disgusted at the very thought. She hated girls that did that, the kind that treated sex and even making out so casual. She couldn't stomach to watch the girls at school get strung along by some guy, willing and ready to please him whenever it was convenient to him. She couldn't imagine that any girl would be so willing to degrade herself like that, they had to think that there was some kind of hope for them to be serious, they had to have feelings for the guy. Either way, she couldn't picture doing that to herself, it was just pathetic.
"First," she began, mocking Haley in a playful way, ignoring Haley attitude towards FWB. "Nathan Scott isn't just friends with girls. Never had been, never will be."
"What about you?" Haley knew Brooke and Nathan weren't exactly bestest friends, nothing like her and Lucas were, but she knew they hung out together, she'd seen them hang out together. Not to mention that Nathan had mentioned her a few times during their talks. "You guys are friends and you're not dating."
"We've slept together," Brooke informed her, but brushed it off like it was no big deal because it really wasn't. To her and Nathan, sleeping with someone wasn't a big deal, especially when it was with another person who didn't think it was a big deal. Haley's eyes widened, almost popping out of her face at the information. Nathan had never mentioned that. "It was just a one night thing, we were plastered. We mentioned it the next day and just went on with our lives. Besides, I'd hardly call me and Nathan friends."
"Have you slept with everyone?" Haley asked before she could stop herself. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, just realizing how truly offensive they were. Her face immediately fell and she was quick to apologize. "Oh, God, that didn't sound right."
"Don't worry about it, Tutor Girl," Brooke tried to tell her, giving her a sad smile. It wasn't like she didn't deserve the statement, it might as well be true, but it didn't make it hurt any less. If someone else had said that, Brooke wouldn't have hesitated to slap them, or at least bitch them out, but she could see the genuinely sorry look on Haley's face and she couldn't even find it in her to be mad at the poor girl.
"I just have this problem," Haley began to ramble. "I tend to say what I'm thinking sometimes, and it usually sounds way more offensive then I meant it to be. Like right there, I totally didn't mean for it to sounds that way. I didn't mean to, like, call you a slut or anything because you're totally not. I don't even know you. So I shouldn't judge by what I've heard or what you just told me, which was probably supposed to be in confidence, which I seriously just blew…"
"You're cute when you ramble," Brooke commented, hoping that off the wall comment would slow down Haley's non-stop run on sentence. Just like she had hoped, her words had stopped Haley in her tracks.
"What?" Brooke couldn't help but smile at the completely confused look on Haley's face. She didn't know why, out of all of the things that she could have said to stop Haley's rant, she had to say that. Maybe she and Haley had more in common than she thought. They both tended to say what they were thinking.
"I said you're cute when you ramble," she repeated, tilting her head to the side to watch Haley's reaction. She was surprised when Haley looked genuinely shocked at the words, before her face broke out in a full blush. It was like no one had ever said that to her before. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"
"No," Haley admitted, feeling stupid for being so affected by such a little comment. She didn't know why, but hearing that from Brooke, it just gave her the weirdest feeling in the put of her stomach. It was kind of like the fluttering she used to get in her stomach when Nathan would flirt with her, but it was so much more intense.
"Really?" Brooke couldn't believe that. She had only spent an hour with the girl, and she already knew that Haley was probably the most adorable thing in the entire world. Haley nodded her head, not meeting her eyes. "I find that hard to believe."
"Well, um," Haley tried, trying not to stutter in embarrassment. "I mean, Taylor tells me that all the time. And Karen does too, but they're, you know, they're Tay and Karen."
"Yeah, so?"
"Taylor's my big sister," she clarified. "Of course she's gonna say that. And Karen's pretty much my mom, so it's the same with her. I've never really believed them."
"Nathan's never told you that?" Brooke asked with that evil smirk of her's. For some strange reason, Brooke was finding herself hoping he hadn't. If she didn't know any better, she would think she was almost jealous of Nathan, which was completely strange considering she'd never been jealous of other girls when they were seeing her 'boyfriends', yet she was jealous of a guy that may or may not be dating a girl that she had only been talking to for an hour?
"We're not dating," Haley said again, this time making sure that Brooke believed her. She didn't know how many times or how many different ways she could say it, but she would keep repeating it until Brooke believed her. Ignoring the party she was throwing on the inside, Brooke gave Haley a disbelieving look. "We're not."
"I've seen the way Nathan looks at you," Brooke teased her, ignoring the bitter feelings she suddenly had. "He totally wants to get with that. And there's no way you would say no. Nobody would say no to Nathan Scott."
"It's not that," Haley admitted, not knowing why she was even going to talk about this with Brooke. Peyton has asked her about it last week, and she didn't want to talk about it, but for some reason, she felt the need to explain herself to Brooke. She sighed and leaned back against the back counter, watching as Brooke finally sat back down in her stool. "It just…never happened."
"What do you mean?" Way to torture yourself, Davis, she chastised herself, trying to figure out why she was so interested in this conversation. Whenever the girls on the squad talked about Nathan and Haley, she was never really interested in what they were saying, not that it was much because Peyton would immediately tell them to shut up and stop talking about Haley. Now though, it was almost like she needed to know if Nathan or Haley were a couple or not.
"At first, there was something there," Haley tried her best to explain the situation that she didn't really understand herself. "We both kinda flirted with each other, you know, and for a bit, I really thought that something was going to happen with it, but it just didn't." She had thought about it over and over, trying to think about what had gone wrong in their almost relationship, but she still hadn't come up with an answer. "I don't know what happened, but one day it just wasn't there anymore. He just sort of shut down with me, and it was just about tutoring again."
"Wow," Brooke breathed, surprisingly giddy over the story. She silently cursed herself, reminding her that there was no reason what so ever to be giddy about this information. "That's weird. I wonder what happened."
"Who knows," Haley shrugged, letting the last of her sad feelings wash away from her. She would let her feelings out about the Nathan thing, but she wasn't going to do it in front of Brooke. She was going to talk to Peyton about it, or Taylor or even Lucas, but it wasn't going to be Brooke. "Maybe he got his sanity back and he realized who I was."
Peyton always hated that. She absolutely hated it when Haley talked bad about herself. Everytime she said something like that, Peyton made her put a quarter in a jar. Haley pretended that she thought it was stupid, but it really meant a lot to her to know that Peyton cared enough about her, thought so highly of her, that she didn't let her talk about herself like that. Taylor, Lucas and Karen would always tell her that what she said wasn't true, but Peyton was the only one that made that much effort to make her stop getting so down on herself, and Haley was thankful for that.
"You shouldn't say that stuff about yourself," Brooke told her, allowing herself to looking Haley up and down quickly. Haley shifted under her gaze and subconsciously folded her arms over her chest. "You're pretty hot, if I do say so myself. Nathan would be lucky to have you. Anyone would be."
"Thanks," Haley mumbled, not sure what she was supposed to say to that. Sure, she'd been told that she was pretty by the four people that she had mentioned countless times, but she never thought much of it because it was expected of them to say that kind of thing.
"No problem." After a few moments, Brooke found that she couldn't bring herself to look at Haley any longer. Seeing her reaction to such a simple comment raised a few different feelings within Brooke. On one hand, seeing Haley blush like that, just confirmed her theory of Haley being the cutest thing alive, but on the other hand, the fact that Haley got so squirmy over something like that made her feel kind of sad. People told her that she was hot all the time, but no one ever said it to Haley. And Brooke couldn't understand why.
Fine, Haley wasn't popular. Hell, before she started tutoring Nathan and hanging out with Peyton, nobody really knew who she was. Brooke didn't know who she was. She'd never admit it to anyone if they'd ask, but she had always noticed Haley. It wasn't that Haley stuck out like a sore thumb her anything, but there was just something about her that always drew Brooke's attention to her.
At the time she just told herself it was because Haley was always with Hot Lucas, and she'd always try to figure out if they were really just best friends or if there was something more there, but if she was being honest, it wasn't Lucas that would catch her eye, it was always Haley.
Brooke would find herself watching Haley in English class. She'd watch as Haley listened intently to what the teacher was saying. She watched as Haley answered question after question correctly, but not once made herself seem better than everyone else. Brooke noticed that Haley was always hesitating to answer in class, maybe afraid of what people would think of her. Brooke also noticed that Haley would always look around her to see if anyone else had their hands up before she would put her's up. Haley only answered the question if nobody else knew the answer. Brooke respected that. It didn't make her feel stupid.
Brooke would find herself watching Haley in the hallway. She'd watch as she laughed at something that Lucas said. She'd watch as she pounded fists with Fergie or jumped on Skills' back. She'd watch Haley be one of the guys. She'd watch Haley try to blend into the background, to go unseen. Brooke noticed that she wasn't very good at that. Brooke always saw her.
"So," Haley drew out, clapping her hands together to break Brooke out of the daze that she had fallen into. Brooke blinked a few times, meeting Haley's gorgeous brown eyes, finding it hard to look away. As always, Haley didn't have a clue of the effect she was having on Brooke. "About that game."
"The game?" Brooke repeated absently, her eyes still lost in Haley's. She didn't think she had ever seen such beautiful eyes before. Realizing what she was doing, Brooke quickly looked away, sitting up straight and putting on a fake smile. "Right, the game."
"I already vetoed Truth or Dare," Haley recapped, making sure that Brooke didn't suggest it again. There wasn't much that she had to hide, she didn't think, but it was the Dare part of the game that Haley was nervous about. When she played it with the guys, it was stupid, childish things like throwing milk balloons at people from the roof or going into the closet for 2 minutes and pretending that something happened. She didn't really know Brooke that well, but she was almost positive that Brooke's dares wouldn't be that innocent. "We could play Spin the Bottle," she suggested with a laugh.
"What!" Brooke exclaimed, almost choking on her own tongue. She silently thanked God that she hadn't been drinking anything at that moment. Her eyes widened in complete shock at her words, trying to decide if she had heard the other girl right or not.
"I was kidding," Haley quickly assured her, surprised at her strong reaction. She thought she had made it pretty clear that it was a joke, and even if she hadn't she didn't think that Brooke would think she was serious. How could she? "I didn't really mean that…"
"Right, yeah," Brooke said quickly, trying to cover up her reaction. She let out a puff of air, waving her hand like it was nothing. "Of course. I was just surprised at the suggestion, you know? Didn't think little Tutor Girl had it in her to joke about something like that."
"O-kay," Haley answered, raising an eyebrow and looking at her strangely. There was definitely something up with Brooke. She had always thought Brooke was weird, but in an endearing kind of way. As much as she had tried in the past, there was just something about Brooke that drew Haley in. She knew it was the dimples. It had to be.
"What about a card game?" Brooke threw out, wanting to get off the subject of Spin the Bottle as soon as possible. She could feel the redness on her cheeks already, and she didn't want Haley to see that. Brooke Davis never blushed. Who would after everything that she had done? Why was she blushing now then? "You don't happen to have any around here do you?"
"Actually," Haley mumbled, pushing herself off the counter and looking around, trying to remember where she had put that deck of cards. "Karen and I usually play when things slow down near closing. I think they're in the back. Just give me a minute."
"Sure." Brooke waited until the door closed behind Haley before she let out her breath.
What the hell was that? She cursed at herself, still feeling completely embarrassed at her outburst just a moment ago. She thanked God that Haley hadn't called her on it, but she was sure that Haley had noticed how weird she was. After all, it was near impossible to miss it.
Why had she reacted like that? She was Brooke Davis; she was queen of the damn school. She'd sleep with all guys worth sleeping with, including the hot new TA in her History class, yet she freaks out and blushes like an idiot at a single mention of possibly kissing Haley during a game?
Brooke didn't know what had gotten into her. Okay, yes, she'd admit that she had been checking Haley out more than innocently on more than one occasion tonight, and at times she couldn't help but think about how adorable Haley was, but that didn't really mean anything, did it?
She would tell Peyton that she was a hot bitch all the time, that didn't mean anything. She would watch the other cheerleaders in the change room; she'd look at their bodies, that didn't mean anything.
Just because she was checking Haley out didn't mean that she wanted to jump her or anything. And so what if she thought that Haley was adorable? It wasn't like that was too hard to figure out. Everyone thought that Haley was adorable; it was just a fact of life. Haley James was adorable. That wasn't exactly news.
It wasn't like she had feelings for the other girl, like she had crush on Haley or something. She wasn't secretly pining after the young tutor and she didn't have any plans to doodle Haley's name all over her notes in class. She didn't want to hang out with Haley, she didn't want to hug Haley and she most certainly did not want to kiss Haley.
"Found them," Haley announced, pushing the door open and tossing the box towards the cheerleader sitting at the counter. Luckily for Brooke, she hadn't been completely lost in her thoughts yet, and she was able to catch the flying box that was coming her way.
"Awesome," she smiled, happy for the distraction. She couldn't think about this anymore, it was making her head hurt. Not to mention the last thing she wanted to do was get caught thinking about Haley by Haley, what with their mutual tendency to say what they were thinking without realizing it. She'd push it to the back of her head, and figure it out later, if she ever felt the sudden need to have a mental breakdown.
"Alrighty," Haley breathed, pulling a stool from out front to behind the counter and plopping down on it. She grabbed the box and pulled out the cards, shuffling them for whatever game they were going to play. "What game did you have in mind?"
"I'm the one that suggested cards," Brooke protested, already forgetting about her previous thoughts and focusing on having fun. "I can't come up with all the brilliant ideas, you know?"
"That's right," Haley laughed, knocking the bottom of the deck on the counter to get all the cards lined up. "We wouldn't want you to hurt herself."
"You're hilarious, Tutor Girl," Brooke told her sarcastically, sticking her tongue out at Haley, though she wasn't really offended at all by the lighthearted comment. "It's a wonder you're not more popular, what with that sparkling wit."
"I'm a riot," Haley informed her confidently, flashing Brooke a winning smile.
"If you say so," Brooke laughed, rolling her eyes at the expression on Haley's face. Haley's smile turned into a pout as she repeated Brooke's gesture from moments before and stuck her tongue out at her. "Okay, okay, pick a game."
"Let's see," Haley mused, turning her eyes up towards the ceiling, sorting through the different card games in her head. "Which game do I want to kick your ass at?" Brooke chuckled at the commented and waited for her to decide. Haley's smile returned and her eyes lit up as she decided. "Snap!"
"Snap?" Brooke repeated, amused at the sheer excitement Haley was displaying over a card game. If Brooke didn't know any better, she would think that Haley had never played before. Haley nodded. "Are you sure? Because I am the reigning Snap champion."
"Oh really?"
"Really," Brooke confirmed with a confident nod, her poker face already in place.
"Bring it on," Haley taunted her, as she began to separate the deck into two piles, one for each of them. "I'll show you whose champion."
"Care to make it interesting?" Brooke questioned, an evil glint in her eyes at the thought. Just thinking about all the possibilities brought a smile to her face. Haley stopped what she was doing at the words, her eyes glued to the cards as she thought about the question. After thinking about it for a moment, Haley continued to sort out the cards, handing Brooke her pile and placing her's in front of her. She looked up and matched Brooke smile with an equally evil one.
"What did you have in mind?"
...OUAT...
See? I told you it sucked. And I know that you all hate me for still holding out on the smootchies, but I'm still trying to figure out how that's going to work. Anyway, I can tell you that they get into a little screaming match in the next chapter hint hint. If you're as big of a fan as you think you are, you should know exactly what that means. Please review and I'll try my best to update as soon as possible.
PS:I was just wondering if anyone reads my other story that I currently write; Fifteen Years In the Making? Because I wanted to know if anyone is even interested in that story anymore or if I should just leave it where it is because I'm having serious writer's block for that story. Let me know.
Review, review, review!