"No! Seriously! Just friends. Darryl and her -- well, not quite, but Darryl was so into her. There was no way --"
"But if Darryl hadn't been into her, you would have, huh?"
"No, Ange, no. Please, just believe me and let it go. Vanessa was a good friend and we're not anymore, and that upsets me, but I was never into her that way, all right?
She slumped a little. "OK, OK. I'm sorry. I don't really get along with her is all. We've never gotten along in all the years we've known each other."
Oh ho, I thought. This would be how it came to be that Jolu knew her for so long and I never met her; she had some kind of thing with Van and he didn't want to bring her around.
She gave me a long hug and we kissed, and a bunch of girls passed us going woooo and we straightened up and headed for the bus-stop. Ahead of us walked Van, who must have gone past while we were kissing. I felt like a complete jerk.
Of course, she was at the stop and on the bus and we didn't say a word to each other, and I tried to make conversation with Ange all the way, but it was awkward.
The plan was to stop for a coffee and head to Ange's place to hang out and "study," i.e. take turns on her Xbox looking at the Xnet. Ange's mom got home late on Tuesdays, which was her night for yoga class and dinner with her girls, and Ange's sister was going out with her boyfriend, so we'd have the place to ourselves. I'd been having pervy thoughts about it ever since we'd made the plan.
We got to her place and went straight to her room and shut the door. Her room was kind of a disaster, covered with layers of clothes and notebooks and parts of PCs that would dig into your stocking feet like caltrops. Her desk was worse than the floor, piled high with books and comics, so we ended up sitting on her bed, which was OK by me.
The awkwardness from seeing Van had gone away somewhat and we got her Xbox up and running. It was in the center of a nest of wires, some going to a wireless antenna she'd hacked into it and stuck to the window so she could tune in the neighbors' WiFi. Some went to a couple of old laptop screens she'd turned into standalone monitors, balanced on stands and bristling with exposed electronics. The screens were on both bedside tables, which was an excellent setup for watching movies or IMing from bed -- she could turn the monitors sidewise and lie on her side and they'd be right-side-up, no matter which side she lay on.