A/N: It's been long, I know, I suck. And I haven't updated Parenting 101 yet, but I'll work on the next chapter today. Some of you have been hounding me for next chapters so here's the update for this story haha
Disclaimer: don't own A&A.
Ally POV
"Ally?"
"What's up?" I asked as Bryce opened my bedroom door. I was casually strumming my guitar but I put it down when he came in.
"Awe come on," he whined. "Why can't I hear you play anything?"
"Because I said so," I told him. I changed the subject. "What do you need?"
"My dad and Penny think we should all go out tonight. For supper and then a movie or something else. We're leaving in an hour."
I raised an eyebrow. "I'll pass."
"Ally, you can't stay in your room all the time," Bryce said.
"Is Claudia going to be at this movie night?"
"Yeah."
"Then I sure as hell can stay in my room."
"It'll be fun," Bryce tried again. He plopped down beside me on my bed. "No one is saying you have to talk to Claudia."
I narrowed my eyes at him in thought. "If I don't have to acknowledge her presence, then fine. I'll go."
"Thanks Ally," my stepbrother smiled. "I think your mom and my dad just want us all to do something together."
I nodded and ruffled his hair.
"Really?" He said, fixing it. "I'm fifteen, not five."
"And I'm sixteen, not six. Your point?"
He shook his head and muttered "girls," before leaving my room.
I grinned and shook my head before picking my guitar up again. I hadn't written a song since my mom and I had moved to Tampa Bay three weeks ago. I had some lyrics down but the melody wasn't there yet; I couldn't figure one out.
I just left my guitar on my bed and walked over to my mirror, staring at myself. I pulled at a piece of my long hair, letting it fall back down to my elbow. I still couldn't get over that Austin hadn't been rude to me a few days previous when I had been at the mall with Dylan and Trish. Well, okay, he had been rude to me, but not as rude as I thought he would've been. It was kind of…nice. Except I take that all back, since he went and ruined it all when he "accidentally" spilled his drink all over my English assignment the next day, resulting in me having to redo the whole thing.
Shaking it off, I turned away from the mirror and headed to my bathroom so I could quickly shower. I got out and changed into black skinny jeans with a red t-shirt and my black combat boots. I dried my hair and let it hang down my back. I went makeup free and just threw on my black rimmed glasses, too lazy to put in my contacts.
"Ally, let's go, honey!" I heard my mom yell.
"I'm coming!" I replied, grabbing my purse and hurrying out the door.
"You look pretty, honey," my mom smiled as I trudged downstairs. She was with Mike and Bryce by the door; Claudia was checking out her nails on the ottoman by the side of the stairs.
I gave my best smile in return as Mike said, "So who feels like Pizza Paradise?"
"Yes!" Bryce exclaimed. "They've got an arcade and everything! You'll love it, Ally,"
Claudia wrinkled her nose. "That place smells like feet."
I bit back the comment, you smell like feet because a: she really didn't, and b: it was totally a junior high thing to say. I settled for a glare, which she didn't notice.
We all piled into the vehicle and arrived at the restaurant a while later.
"You okay, Ally?" Mike asked me as we walked to the building.
"I'm fine, Mike," I replied.
"Alright, if you say so," he said before patting my shoulder and walking ahead with my mom.
"You have to try this one game, Ally," Bryce said before launching into a big explanation of it. I was only half listening; I wasn't a huge video game person.
Claudia sighed. "I could be out with my friends right now."
"Awe, miss the attention?" I said.
"Something you don't get."
"Knock it off, you guys," Bryce said from between us. "Don't ruin this night."
"I don't even want to be here," I said before stalking ahead into the restaurant, past the hostess' cheery "Hi! Table for- one?"
I flopped into a random booth at the far end of the restaurant, where everyone joined me a minute later.
The hostess said, "We actually seat the people," to me.
"Oops, my bad," I sweetly replied as I let Bryce in. She gave me a look before setting our menus down and walking off.
"Ally, what is going on with you tonight?" My mom said from across the table.
"She's mad because Austin Moon is giving her mixed signals," Claudia piped from my mom's left.
"Claudia," I hissed just as she yelped. She glared at Bryce across the table, who was glaring right back at his big sister. I mouthed, "Thank you," to Bryce.
"Who's Austin Moon?" My mom asked, genuinely curious.
"He's nobody, just some jerk in a couple of my classes," I replied.
"This is a surprise; you've never mentioned him before," Mike said to me.
"I'm full of surprises," Claudia piped cheerfully.
"I know something else you're full of," I snapped.
"Allyson," my mom said sharply.
"I'm not pissed about Austin. I'm fine, it has absolutely nothing to do with him, okay?"
Luckily, I was saved by the waitress coming to take our orders and the matter was dropped, but my mom kept glancing at me every now and then during dinner.
"Let's go check out the arcade," Bryce said happily, practically shoving my out of my seat so he could scramble out.
"I bet I've still got some air hockey skills in me," Mike grinned as he took my mom's hand. He left money for the meal on the counter before they followed Bryce through the door to the arcade.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I hissed at Claudia as we slowly followed them.
"What do you mean?" She asked innocently as she tapped away on her phone.
"You know exactly what I mean. Why would you bring up Austin like that when you know how much we hate each other?"
"Because I felt it would bring me great joy and entertainment. Which it did."
"Says the girl who has the hots for him."
She looked at me. "Austin and I are going to be together eventually. You'll see."
"Good luck with that, considering he has a girlfriend," I said.
She waved her hand. "Whatever. He and Sam won't last." She grabbed the door to the arcade. "Are you coming or what?"
I groaned and followed her through. The place was huge and it looked like an awesome arcade, I had to admit. Claudia ditched me and went directly to the ticket counter, presumably to flirt with the guy behind it.
I rolled my eyes and found Bryce at some racing game, already a couple laps in. "So how's it going?"
"I'm kicking ass," he said as he jerked the wheel. "I get ten tickets if I win; I'm going for a thousand tonight."
"A thousand tickets?" I repeated. "You'll be here for hours."
He shook his head. "Oh, Ally, you underestimate my abilities in the arcade. Just you wait."
"Well, you have fun with your little challenge," I told him. "I'm gonna check out the place some more."
He barely heard me, too concentrated on his game, so I snuck off and walked around. My mom and Mike were playing air hockey and from the look on Mike's face, my mom was winning.
I decided to play one of those classic games where you had to toss a ball into holes, each one worth a different number of points. I ended up winning fifteen tickets.
"Sweet up," I said to myself as I pocketed them. "I can get myself an eraser shaped like a duck."
I still didn't see Claudia anywhere, so I figured she was still at the counter. Or she left. Either way, I didn't really care.
While I played a basketball shooting game, my thoughts were everywhere. Claudia was ridiculous. I couldn't believe she brought up Austin, and in that way, too. Now my mom was going to bother me about him all the time. Perfect. As if I didn't have enough problems on my plate already. This one was definitely going to take the-
"Cake?"
I yelped at the voice behind me and the ball completely missed the hoop. I whipped around to see Austin standing there with a plate of cake in his hand.
"What, are you stalking me?" I exclaimed. "And screw you; you just wrecked my shooting record. Now I have to start over."
He grinned and walked over beside me as I grabbed the ball again. "I'm here with my friends. Playing all by yourself? Sounds hardly fun."
"As a matter of fact, I was perfectly content until you showed up. What do you want, Austin?"
He thought for a few seconds, set down his cake, and grabbed a ball from another netted area beside me. "Sixty seconds to make the most baskets. Loser has to give up their tickets."
"I only have fifteen."
"And I have four hundred and seven. Looks like the odds are in your favor." I could tell he thought he was going to win for sure. We'll see about that.
I narrowed my eyes. "Okay, Effie Trinket. You're on."
"Ready...go!" We both lined up and shot...I missed. Austin didn't.
"Come on, Dawson, you'll have to do better than that to beat Austin Moon," he taunted.
I shot...and scored.
I shot again...swoosh went the net as the ball slipped through.
Both of us shot like crazy and when the buzzer went, I looked at my score.
"Yes, 19!" Austin exclaimed.
"Damn," I frowned before adding, "looks like you just lost four hundred and seven tickets. 21, be-yotch. Woo!"
"No way," he said, leaning over to see.
"Ha, hand them over," I grinned, sticking my hand out.
He grumbled and shoved his hand in his pocket, pulling out the rows of tickets. "Where'd you learn to play basketball like that anyway?"
"Same place I learned how to trick gullable blondes in flag football," I said, raising an eyebrow.
He looked at me for a few seconds before saying, "Huh."
"Austin!" came Claudia's girly voice. She appeared from around the corner and latched onto him. "Fancy seeing you here!"
"Uh, hey Claudia," he said. He looked extremely uncomfortable.
"So, what do you say we go play foosball, hmm? You can help me," she added, batting her eyelashes. Excuse me, fake eyelashes.
Help in foosball? Idiot.
"No, thanks," he said. "You can go play by yourself."
I almost snorted with laughter at the look on Claudia's face.
"Fine, whatever," she said before finally noticing me. "Why are you with Amy?"
"For god's sake, it's Ally, Claudia," I told her. "You know that, so quit acting like a dumb ass because Austin is here."
Austin's eyes widened as he looked at me and then at Claudia. He probably feared an all out catfight was about to go down.
"You're one to talk," Claudia snapped.
"What did I do?"
"You- you just- you're just annoying, okay?" She stomped away.
"Wow," Austin said.
"Yep." I held out his tickets. "Here, you can have them back."
He looked surprised. "You won them fair and square."
I shrugged. "They were yours to begin with."
He hesitated but took them anyways. "Thanks."
There was an awkward silence before he spoke. "So...you good at DDR?"
"Dance Dance Revolution? God no, I couldn't dance to save my life."
"Let's go." He grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the dance machines.
"Austin, I'm honestly so bad at dancing," I protested.
"Come on, you can't be that bad." He climbed up beside me and hit a button on mine. "There, it's beginner for you."
I rolled my eyes and missed the first two arrows on the screen. All I had to do was tap my left foot on the beat twice.
"Ally, that was like four seconds in between. You're right, you suck, get off before you embarrass yourself even more," Austin snapped.
"Yep, still an asshole. What is with you?" I exclaimed before stalking out of the arcade and onto a bench outside the restaurant.
I pulled out my phone and saw that I had a text from Kendall.
Hey girl, Logan asked me out!
I texted her back. Sweet! Took him long enough.
Ikr? What are you up to? Miss u :(
Sitting outside a restaurant freezing my ass off. Miss u more!
Well then go inside Ally haha, u okay?
Boy and family troubles.
The joys of being a teen girl. Ooh boy? Deets plz. I rolled my eyes. Kendall was always wanting the latest dish on a guy.
It's not like that. More like asshole boy troubles.
Ouch. Kick him to the curb. But I gtg, ttyl A! Xoxo
L8er K. I put my phone away and wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm. It was November so it was cooling off in the evenings now. I should have brought a sweater to put over my t-shirt.
The door opened up to reveal Austin. "Hi," he said.
"Bye," I answered.
He stuck out a stuffed Stitch through the crack in the open door. "Does this make you feel better?"
"No."
Austin sighed and came over to the bench, sitting down. "Well, here."
I took Stitch. "Wow. You really know how to make a girl feel better. That was total sarcasm, by the way."
"Why are you so mad at me again?"
"Are you kidding me?" I exclaimed. "One minute, you're nice. The next, you're a jerk. I don't understand you, Austin Moon, I really don't."
He was quiet for a moment before he spoke. "I'm sorry."
"You keep saying that, but you never mean it because you keep doing things!" I shivered as a cool wind blew and he unzipped his purple sweater, pulling it off and draping it over my shoulders.
"No, you don't get to do that," I said, shrugging it off.
"Do what?" Austin said exasperatedly.
"Pretend like you care. You don't give a damn about me."
"Ally, you're frozen."
"Ha, you avoided the statement, which means I'm not wrong."
"Look, believe me or not, I'm not all hard interior. I bought you a Stitch with the tickets I won and I spent the evening with you instead of my friends."
"They left you here, didn't they?"
"Maybe."
"Austin, you spent five minutes with me." I paused. "Why did you hang out with me anyway? You hate me."
"I never said I hate you."
"It's pretty damn obvious," I replied. "You almost broke my nose."
"I thought we moved past that," he sighed.
"Austin, my point is, is that you usually don't do that to people you like."
"Well, I don't like different people. I'm so used to everyone being alike around here and then you showed up with your dark clothes, your red lipstick and your chunky boots, so it bothered me. And you got special attention that day with not having to do the assignment, so I lost it."
We were quiet for a minute. I picked at an imaginary string on my shirt before saying, "You know, there are better ways to handle a situation like that rather then violence."
"Sam and I broke up."
I stared at him as the random subject left his mouth. "What? When?"
"Today," he replied, stretching his long legs out.
"Why?"
He shrugged. "She's a great girl, but she wasn't the one for me."
"How can you tell, you're sixteen."
"I just knew. But we're still friends. It was kind of mutual, you could say. You're the first person to know. See? I must care about something in you to tell you that." He stood up and grabbed his sweater. "I'll see you around."
As he walked away, I called out, "Austin?"
He stopped and turned around.
"Thanks...for the Stitch. And for tonight, I guess. I had fun."
"You know what? As much as it pains me to admit this, I did, too," he told me.
"You're being an asshole again."
There was a ghost of a smile on his face. "Goodnight, Ally." He turned around and walked back into the building.
I glanced down at Stitch. "Well, Stitch, what should I do now? Go home and pinch myself because Austin Moon was just nice to me?"
No response.
"I'm talking to a stuffed animal..."
A/N: Review! :) Parenting 101 chapter will be worked on today but I don't know when it will be posted. I'll try for tonight but no promises, I've got a ton of homework and I can't tomorrow or Tuesday because I have school all day and then I work both of those days until late at night. So, yeah :/ Love you guys!
Joelle xx
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