The next week at school, Mack and Bobbi joined them at the lunch table a few days. Both were busy, but every time they had a chance to be all together, they were. It was a nice feeling. When the weekend came, everybody was busy, but Skye still found time to text Fitzsimmons a few times. She had more friends now than she'd had most of her life.
This whole time, though, Skye couldn't help but notice that Grant Ward still sat alone. It had been almost a month and a half, and every day at lunch he ate alone.
"Is he okay? I mean, it's been over a month, and he's never sat with anyone else," Skye asked Simmons one day as they walked to their lunch table.
Simmons' smile vanished. "We don't know. He won't talk about it. He's still in all of his old clubs, and he's friendly when we run into him but...he doesn't say anything more than he has to," she admitted worriedly.
Skye sat down, pursing her lips. "Why don't we go sit with him?"
Fitz picked up on who they were talking about right away. "I offered to sit with him a few weeks ago. He just shook his head and smiled," Fitz said miserably
Skye let the subject drop for a while. It was obviously something that upset Fitz a lot. She couldn't help but think, though, that she could've been in Ward's situation, if Simmons and Fitz hadn't reached out to her. She owed them a lot. Trip also had her back from day one. He'd always watched over and protected her. She frowned to herself. Maybe she was part of the reason that Ward didn't make an effort to reconnect with Fitzsimmons. Maybe he thought she was taking his place.
"Skye. Are you alright?" Simmons asked.
Skye plastered on a smile, nodding. "Yeah, I'm fine. Spacing out. Sorry," she said.
Wednesday rolled around. The day everybody had clubs, except for her. Her clubs were Mondays after-school. Skye walked into the cafeteria, trying to balance her tray. Up until now, she'd managed to avoid eating alone, but she was seeing a serious lack of familiar faces. Crap. As much as Skye was not one for following the crowd, she was also not one for eating alone.
That was when she saw him.
Ward was already at his table, eating by himself, as usual. Skye took a deep breath. What the hell. He could use a friend, and I could use one too.
She walked over to his table. "Uh, hi. I'm Skye."
He just kind of blinked up at her, wide-eyed. "Ward." His voice cracked a little. He coughed. "Grant Ward."
Skye smiled. "Yeah, I know." He nodded, looking like a deer in headlights, kind of. "Um, look, all of my friends are at clubs, and I couldn't help but notice that you eat alone-"
"By choice," he said quickly.
Skye nodded, feeling more embarrassed than she cared to admit. "Oh. Of course. I guess I'll just-"
"Wait, no. I meant, I'm not eating alone because everyone hates me or something. I wasn't- if you really have no where else to sit, I guess I can't stop you."
He gave a sigh like he was annoyed, but she couldn't tell whether or not it was genuine. So she set her tray down slowly and sat down next to him. "Thanks."
Ward had been reading, but he slid the book away. She caught a glimpse of the cover though. Was that Hunger Games? For a moment, they didn't really talk. Which was fine. She tried to read him a little. She was a little distracted by how attractive he was, but whatever. Like seriously, what was this guy, a model? He picked at his lunch, looking like he was concentrating really hard on his food. Was he trying not to look at her?
"You're super fit. Are you, like, a star athlete or something?" Skye asked.
Ward smiled for the first time, thin and nervous, but not insincere. "No. I mean, I'm goalie for the soccer team. No star athlete."
"Just soccer?"
Ward's smiled. It wasn't very big, but it was nice. "And boxing and track."
"Thought so."
Skye smiled then. He started asking her about her interests. And he actually wanted to hear about them, too. She hadn't been expecting that. She found out he was in book club - not expected - and nature club. Alright then. Totally the opposite of her in computer science and all that fun stuff. He seemed intrigued by the stuff she liked, though.
Finally, it was time to start asking the hard questions. "So you and Fitzsimmons used to be pretty tight, hm?" Skye asked.
Ward's smile dropped a little. "Yeah."
"Trip too."
"Correct, again," he said, voice tight. Skye knew she should stop, but she pushed just a little further.
"They miss you, you know. What happened?" she wondered. The smile dropped entirely, he looked away, "Sorry. Didn't mean to pry. Don't like, hate me, okay? I'm just reaching out to you, on their behalf. You should join us at lunch."
Ward seemed to take that into consideration. "Okay...I'll think about it." Skye smiled then, gathering her tray so she could go to her next class. "And about...what happened, it's probably not as big as you think. I just didn't want to drag them into anything."
Cryptic. But oddly reassuring? Skye thought. He looked horrified, like he'd already disclosed way more than he wanted to. Skye always had liked to refer to herself as human truth serum, it had just never been so literal before.
"Alright. Well, I hope you consider it, and I hope you join us tomorrow," Skye said.
He did. As surprising as it was, Ward came over the next day at lunch. Fitz and Simmons both stared up at him in total shock as he asked if he could sit, and Fitz cleared off the table for him. Trip gave him a big high five as he sat down.
"Glad to have you back, man," Trip said with a smile.
"Thank Skye. She pestered me into doing it," Ward said.
Skye lifted her hand to her chest in mock-offense. "Rude."
Ward gave a small, surprisingly shy, smile. It felt really natural, folding him into the group. Everyone seemed happy to see him, now Mack wasn't the only one who made Bobbi seem like a normal sized person, and Skye felt like she'd done her good deed for the year.
He sat with them on Friday too. Skye hadn't really had time to talk to Fitz or Simmons' about how being 'reunited' with Ward felt, but she was crashing at Simmons' house Friday night, so she'd find time.
She waited as long as she could, until it felt right. When Simmons' brought out Middle School yearbooks to show her pictures of what her, Fitz, and Ward looked like, she knew it was the right time.
"Happy to have Ward back?"
Simmons smiled, rolling her eyes like it was obvious. "Yes. Mostly for Fitz' sake, but I missed him, too," she shrugged.
Skye nodded. She'd noticed that Fitz and Ward were pretty close. Weirdly brotherly, even. Maybe weird wasn't the right word. She didn't know. Part of her, despite knowing that they had been friend, had expected to Fitz be kind of jealous of Ward? The guy was like a teenaged Greek God. But there had been no resentment for leaving, no jealousy, no bad feelings at all.
"So what happened to Ward?"
Simmons was about to answer, when something hit her window. Skye jumped. Simmons crawled out of her bed, sighing. She opened the window just in time for Skye to hear Fitz shouting 'Jemma!' from his window.
"Fitz! I told you, Skye's sleeping over tonight!" Simmons' half-shouted.
"But I got a new attachment for my telescope-"
"We'll use your telescope a different night, I promise!"
"Alright, alright. Have fun. I don't want to be a part of your girly night."
Simmons shut her window again, shaking her head. Skye couldn't help but snicker. "So...his telescope. Is that an innuendo...?"
Simmons looked horrified. "Skye! No!" she swatted her arm. "Back to Ward. His father is a senator, you know." Skye didn't know. "And he's got an three siblings. A younger brother and sister...and his older brother Christian. Christian's always been a bit of a bully. And his dad's stern, to say the least. Ward's mom is, um," Simmons stopped, unsure how to tread on.
"Even more strict?" Skye suggested.
Simmons did scrunched up her nose, her way of saying that Skye wasn't completely right. "I guess. And she's, well, she drinks a bit sometimes, and it doesn't end well. There were probably some big fights last year, and Ward didn't want to drag anyone into them. He's like that. He's nice but he can be closed off."
Skye pulled her knees against his chest. Poor Ward. "Could be worse."
Simmons nodded.
Skye could see that he was closed off. She was glad she got to him at all, let alone enough that he decided to hang out with his friends again. She had a solid group of people around her, now. They were not the people that she expected to be friends with, necessarily, but she liked them an awful lot.
"So if you aren't interested in...Fitz's telescope, have any of the group piqued your interest? And Bobbi and I are included in 'the group', by the way," Skye smiled, laying back in Simmons' bed. She definitely had a crush on Fitz, too, but maybe she didn't act on it because she liked someone more. Skye wasn't going to push her on the Fitz front, clearly it was a sensitive subject.
"What? No! I mean, many of our friends are well-muscled, and nice to look at, but that's all. Just looking." Simmons was surprisingly calm as she talked. Not flustered all. "And you? You seemed to flirt with Ward a little. Though for a while I thought you and Trip-"
Skye smiled. "I flirt a lot? Harmless flirting is just part of who I am I guess. I have a boyfriend-thing, though. He's actually coming up tomorrow, while my parents have a date night. So, for now, I guess I'm content to just look, too. But Miles is pretty chill. Even if the flirting wasn't harmless, I'm sure he'd be fine with it," she said with a wave of her hand.
She was excited to see Miles tomorrow. It'd been forever since she'd seen him in person. And sure, he'd tease her about hanging with preps and having gone over to the dark side, but that was part of his scruffy charm.
Preps or not, she loved her friends.