"Fine," Cass said. "We'll get bagels...but fuck coming back here! Let's eat them while we walk. It's like...beautiful outside. Perfect weather. Let's go to the park, so we can get into the Met before it gets too crowded..."
Cass jumped up and down on her combat boots, looking again like an overgrown kid with her quasi-poodle skirt and tight t-shirt. Her dyed red hair was shocking next to her delicate, Eurasian features and dark eyes on pale skin. Cass' ethnicity was a odd mishmash of Thai, Ethiopian and something like Scottish. She mostly looked Thai, I guess, although it was hard to tell under most of her get-ups. She had a tendency to be a lot more liberal with the make-up than I was, so her looks seemed to change with the weather at times.
"...I want to go uptown!" Her voice grew cajoling as she grabbed my arm, trying to get me to jump up and down with her. "Allie, you said we'd go check out the MOMA, and the Guggenheim...even the Natural History Museum if we had time. What are we doing here, sitting in some beer and puke-smelling armpit, waiting to do manual labor for your boyfriend who is blowing us off? There are like five of them, right? They don't need us!"
Again, I had to admit she had a point.
Before I could answer, the door to the street swung open, letting in a bright swath of sunlight and the whole entourage of Eye of Morris. I grimaced a little when Jaden walked in first, seeing that he wasn't alone. It was bad enough that they were late; the girl who hung on his arm, chatting away happily to him while she pushed her ample chest up into the general vicinity of his eyeballs, didn't exactly bring a relieved smile to my lips.
I recognized her, even if I didn't know her exactly. Or even her name, which I'd made a point of not-remembering when she continuously asked me who I was after meeting me like four times. She was one of those girls, the ones who live to make points off of...and generally just piss off...other women. Especially women with hot boyfriends in semi-popular bands.
To his credit, Jaden, rather than looking sheepish, met my gaze directly. As soon as he caught my eye, he sighed a bit, then rolled his eyes subtly in apology, motioning his head towards She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
He smiled at me then, winking.
I fought to smile back, and almost made it.
I knew Jaden thought she was a bimbo, and I loved him enough to trust him, even when it was harder than hell...but it still dug at something in my chest, seeing them walking arm in arm like that. He and I already had that talk too many times before, though. He had his band persona, and then he had me. He couldn't be a dick to his fans and explain it away by saying that he was only doing it because his girlfriend was crazy jealous.