Chapter 4: Dislike

I took in a deep breath of the hot steamy air around me as warm water poured down my body. I was completely relaxed, with nothing on my mind. Maybe that was because I was practically asleep on my feet. A yawn escaped my lips and I shook my head, trying to wake up a bit.
“Come on,” I told myself blearily. “You gotta go invite Riza to the party and keep that hag, Rose off of Edward.”
The thought of having to deal with Rose not only at school, but also at our party this weekend made me want to curl up in bed and go back to sleep for a long time. Why had Paninya inviter her of all people? Her perky voice and constant drooling over Edward was seriously annoying.
But maybe I had no right to get mad, I mean, I’m rather obsessive over Ed myself. Was I just being a jealous jerk? Did I really have the right to hate her simply because she was crushing on my crush?
I giggled softly. Yes, maybe I was just being jealous, but knowing that didn’t make me dislike Rose any less. In fact, my distaste for her had only grown after yesterday in the bathroom and it wasn’t about to diminish!
“Yup Winry, you’re a jealous jerk alright” I thought to myself with a smirk.
I turned the knob to the right and the water turned off. I pulled back the curtain and stepped out of the shower, wrapping myself up in a towel. I got dressed then brushed out and dried my hair.
Deciding to push Rose to the back of my mind, I headed downstairs wondering what I wanted for breakfast. Sadly, the big egg breakfast thing like on my first day, was a one time deal. Granny had to go to work in the mornings so I was left to make my own breakfasts. I didn’t mind though, it’s not like pouring a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice would kill me.
I got downstairs and wandered into the kitchen. After getting a bowl of Apple Jacks and a glass of orange juice I sat down at the table and ate. As I was munching away on those delicious little O’s, my mind drifted off as usual. This time I began thinking about this weekend.
It sure had been a while since I had last gone to the beach. And I sadly had to admit the thought of Ed in his swimsuit did cause my fangirlish heart to flutter. But in my defense, the kid had a really nice chest. It was perfectly natural for a girl my age to get excited about seeing a guy with a good chest, right?
I was pretty sure the answer to that question was yes so I left it at that and finished up my breakfast. I threw my dishes in the sink and ran upstairs to finished getting ready. [hair, earrings, ect.] Once I was satisfied, I grabbed my book bag off my bed and headed out for the bus.
Upon exiting my house I was immediately greeted by my faithful and lovable dog, Den. He ran up to be panting and I bent down to scruff his ears in response.
“Hey Den, how are you today boy?”
I was so busy petting Den I didn’t hear the footsteps of someone approaching.
“Morning you two.”
I jumped and let out a little “squee” of surprise then looked up to see Edward standing there.
“Jeez Ed, do you get some twisted enjoyment out of scaring the crap outta me by sneaking up on me like that?!” I shouted as I playfully hit him on the head. Of course my playful hits aren’t light, so I got an “ouch” in response.
“Sorry, I was just early this morning so I headed over to meet up with you. It’s not my fault you’re so jumpy,” Ed explained while rubbing his head irritably. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“I’m not jumpy!”
He simply rolled his eyes at me and gave Den a pat on the head before turning.
“Well, let’s get going then,” he said. I followed, telling Den to stay, which he did. We arrived at the bus stop and about 30 seconds later, the bus pulled up.
Once we got to our seats Ed whispered, “Well we barely made it in time. If we had missed the bus I would have been seriously pissed.”
I nodded in agreement.
As the bus made its rout, I leaned back and stared out the window, still feeling pretty tired. I was completely zoned out and almost didn’t notice as Riza walked by me on her way to her seat in the back.
“Hey Riza,” I called back to her. She looked back, saw me, and made her way back up to me.
“Hey good morning you two” she greeted. Ed nodded at her in response.
“Morning,” I said. “Say, we’re having a party down at the lake this weekend. Do you wanna come?”
Riza’s kind smile widened.
“A party you say? Well that sounds like it should be pretty fun.”
I nodded. “Yup, on Saturday, Ed, Paninya, Sciezka, me, and some other people are all going down to the lake to celebrate probably one of the last hot days of the year. You should come! You could invite who ever you wanted too.” I explained.
“Well sure, I’ll see if I can go” Riza grinned. “Ok, well I better get back to my seat, talk to you later Winry, you too Ed,” and with that she got up and went back to the back.
As soon as she left, Ed turned to me. “You are aware that she’s almost definitely going to invite all of those guys in her group, along with that jerk Mustang right?” he asked unhappily.
I nodded. “Well yeah, she has the right to invite her friends.”
Ed looked at me like I had spoken a foreign language.
“Winry, before long we’re gunna have the whole damned high school at the lake. And I really don’t want Roy there to ruin my perfectly good day.”
As if on cue, the bus stopped at the next stop and Roy hopped on. As he walked by he winked at me, and then sat back with Riza and a few of the others who were there already. I did my best to ignore him while Ed snorted.
“Look at him, acting like he’s all that. I’d love to go push him off of his make-believe throne.”
I laughed. Ed sure knew how to say something like that, that was absolutely true, yet funny at the same time.

School seemed to be dragging on forever, until finally lunch time rolled around. My usual gang, Ed, Paninya, Sciezka and I, were all sitting together when suddenly Riza walked up to us.
“Hey Winry, just letting you know that I invited Fuery, Havoc, Breda, Falman, Roy, and our other friend Hughes to the party thing this Saturday. Is that alright?”
I could almost hear Ed thinking “NO” next to me, but I smiled up and Riza and said, “Yup that’s great!”
“Awesome, can’t wait,” she said, then headed back to her table.
“Wow,” Paninya said. “I’m thinking this is gunna be a pretty big party!”
“Great, who all did you invite?” Ed asked irritably.
“Well let’s see. I invited Rose, Noah, Armony, and a girl named Ruby. You guys don’t know her but she’s cool. Then we have Winry here who invited Riza who invited all those guys. Sciezka, did you invite anyone?”
Sciezka looked at us sheepishly. “Well, uh, I didn’t really have anyone to invite actually.”
“Hey, that’s fine” Paninya reassured her. “So Ed, who’d you invite?”
Edward sighed.
“Well, my little brother Alphonse is coming, and I invited Russell Tringum and his little brother Fletcher. That’s it for me.”
“Well shit, we’ve got how many then?” Paninya began counting people up. “Shit, 18 people! Now that’s a party!”
I heard Edward groan slightly. I knew he wasn’t all that thrilled to hear so many people would be coming.
And it just kept adding on from there.
Later on that day, Riza came up to me saying that that Hughes guy she had invited wanted to bring his girlfriend. I couldn’t say no, so that made 19 people coming. A bit later, a terrified Sciezka came up to me saying someone by the name of Alex Louise Armstrong had heard about the party and had been heart broken because he hadn’t been invited. She had invited him then to be nice and apparently he had burst into happy tears and bear hugged her afterwards.
“Come on Sciezka, why are you so shaken up? It was just a hug wasn’t it?” I had asked.
“Winry, Armstrong is not normal. He is walking muscle. He’s gigantic!! Being bear hugged by him nearly crushed me. The odd thing is he’s extremely emotional from what I can see. He burst into tears and started saying things about how wonderful it was that I was so polite and that I was now one of his closest friends” she exclaimed shakily.
I took note to stay clear of anyone with large muscles at the party. I also took note that there were now 20 people coming.
Finally school ended and I headed out to the bus loading area. I found Edward making his way towards the bus through the sea of people. I did my best to forge through myself and eventually made it on. I had just seated myself next to Edward as usual when I heard a voice directly behind me.
“Well hey there Winry!”
I turned and was face to face with a particular tan skinned, pink banged, brown haired girl.
“Oh, hey Rose” I replied emotionlessly. I looked over to see one of her little followers seated next to her. She too had darker skin and brown hair, but thankfully no pink bangs.
“You don’t usually ride on this bus do you?” I asked Rose nonchalantly.
“ Yeah, but I’m going to Noah’s house today,” she replied while nodding towards her friend next to her, “and then I saw Edward sitting here and thought we might as well sit behind our friend” she added on. The look she cast over to Edward made my skin crawl. Ed looked back at her and smiled, obviously not understanding Rose’s true intentions.
“Well that’s nice,” I sighed and turned around, nudging Ed in the ribs as I did so. He looked down at me, confusion in his eyes. I heard Rose and Noah break off into their own little conversation so I leaned over to Ed and whispered,
“Why did you let them sit there?”
He looked at me, obviously still a bit confused, then quietly replied, “I have no right to say where they sit. They can sit where ever they want, it’s not my bus.”
I glared at him. Damn boys could be so stupid.
“Ed, you could have easily said someone was already sitting there or something. But no, you just had to make all friendly with her didn’t you?”
“So I’m guessing you don’t like them?” he asked bluntly.
I blinked, and then face palmed his forehead.
“No, what ever gave you that idea?” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
He scowled at me for hitting him then shrugged. “How am I supposed to know these things huh?” he sighed. “She said she was friends with you when she introduced herself.”
“She did what?!” I asked way too loudly and probably a bit squeakily. I bit my lip and did all I could from exploding into a fit of rage. Ok yeah sure, Rose wasn’t aware of my hatred for her. In fact, she probably thought I liked her. But I didn’t. And the fact that she told Ed she was my friend and was now acting all buddy like with him made my blood boil.
Calm down Winry, she’s just on our bus for today. Don’t let her get to you.

“So Ed, you excited for the party this weekend?” Rose asked in a sickly sweet voice as she leaned over the back of our seat. Edward nodded.
“Huh? Oh, yeah it should be fun,” he replied. “Though it sounds like there’s gunna be a lot of people.”
“There are 20 of us last I heard,” I interrupted.
“20?!? I thought it was only 18” Ed exclaimed.
“Yeah well we picked up two more.”
“Wow, sounds like it’s going to be busy,” Rose giggled. I shot a quick glare at her over my shoulder then sunk down into the seat, deciding to ignore the rest of the conversation. I was in a foul mood and didn’t want her to catch on and start questioning me about it.
Finally, she and Noah got off the bus. My head was throbbing, and I was happy Ed and I were the last ones to get dropped off so we had a little bit of silence.
“Sorry about that Win,” Ed apologized as he leaned against the window. “If I had known you didn’t like her I would have done something to make her sit somewhere else.”
“It’s ok Ed, you didn’t know” I sighed.
“I won’t let it happen again,” he said. The warmth and honesty in his voice made me smile. Dumb as he may be at times, he still was a sweetheart.
I looked up and him a laughed a little.
“Alright.”
And with that, I tiredly rested my head down on his shoulder. Ed stiffened for a moment then relaxed a bit. We were all alone on the bus so I didn’t have to worry about anyone gawking at us. Plus his shoulder was so much more comfortable then the bus seats. I took a deep breath, taking in his scent, closed my eyes, and relaxed the rest of the way home.