Best Friends and True Love
School
Chapter 3
I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel before opening the door and closing it behind myself.
I didn’t really need a towel to enter my room since it was my own private bathroom, but I never knew when Ed might come in through my window and catch my off guard.
It had never happened before, but I didn’t want to take that chance.
Making sure my window was locked and the curtains were shut, I finished drying off and then got dressed.
It was Monday morning and I had to go to school today. I was a senior. Soon I’d be graduating and off to college.
And then…I might be separated from Ed…
I didn’t want that so I might have to force him to go to the same college as me…
I didn’t care if people found me unusual for it, but I wanted to become a mechanic. I loved to work on cars and other objects.
Ed always called me a “loser machine junkie” but I didn’t really care. He was a science geek in my opinion since he always got the highest grade in a science class.
We were in the same Chemistry class and he must’ve had a hundred in there while I probably had a B.
We walked to school every morning, my, Ed, and Al, at least when it wasn’t cold outside. On those days, however, we went in Ed’s car.
As I closed the front door behind myself, I saw them waiting for me at the bottom of the steps.
“And just where were you yesterday Alphonse?” I asked in a “mother hen” tone.
“Oh, some girl from school asked me to meet her yesterday. She asked me out but I told her no. After that I went home, but Ed wasn’t there and you were gone so I just hung out with dad all day.”
“Look!” I said as I pulled the wrench out of my backpack. “Ed bought this for me yesterday. Do you like it?”
“Gosh I. You make it sound like I bought you a new outfit and you’re showing it off. It’s a wrench, dammit, and you shouldn’t take it to school.”
“Ignore brother,” Al said as he put his hand over Edward’s mouth. “It’s nice, but it looks expensive.”
“It was expensive, but I should be worth it, right Alphonse?”
Al laughed nervously before nodding his head.
“Of course you’re worth it,” he said before offering me his arm. I took it and they walked ahead of Ed.
I looked behind us at Ed and stuck my tongue out at him. He rolled his eyes.
We almost had the same schedule. The majority of our classes were the same so we saw plenty of each other, Ed and I.
As I sat in our first period class, Chemistry, I rubbed my forehead. I was getting a headache from this nonsense.
“I just don’t get it,” I said as I looked at Ed who had already finished his work. “I just suck at this. How in the world do you change this from grams to moles?!”
He laughed at me and grabbed my pencil. “Look,” he said as he pulled the paper closer. “It’s simple.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said as I glared at him. He ignored me.
“Look, this stuff is easy. If you don’t understand this, I know you won’t understand balancing equations when the teacher moves us on to that.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I already know that. I haven’t really understood anything in the class all year.”
“You mean you didn’t understand anything until I helped you, right? And now you have a B so you have nothing to complain about.”
I rolled my eyes again.
“Look here,” he began.
My mind trailed off. I tried to pay attention to what he was saying, really, I did. However, he looked so good today that I began to think about how hot he was yet again.
He hadn’t braided his hair today. Instead, he had it back in a ponytail. Even though yesterday had been really warm, this morning had been strangely cold. He’d worn his favorite red coat, but now he had it laying on the back of his chair.
Since he wasn‘t wearing the coat, I was thinking about the muscles he was hiding underneath the black short sleeved shirt he was wearing.
I loved it when he wore black. Black was definitely a good color for him.
“And then that leaves you with 131.2 moles of Cl, which is chlorine. Did you get that? You’re not listening, are you?”
“Hmm?” I asked faintly.
“Winry,” he said as he waved his hand in front of my face.
“Oh, hi Ed,” I said as I stopped playing with his ponytail, which I had no idea I’d been doing.
“I knew it. Winry, how do you expect to understand this when you don’t pay attention? I’m done helping you.”
I laughed at him and began playing with his ponytail again.
“I just got distracted,” I explained. “It won’t happen next time.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Distracted? Distracted by what?” he asked, curious.
I blushed and looked away. I couldn’t let him know that I’d been distracted my thoughts of him, could I?
“Nothing really. You’re right, I need to pay more attention.”
“Oh come on. You can tell me the truth,” he continued.
“Nope. That’s not gonna happen,” I told him as I avoided his gaze.
He would’ve continued to question me, but he was interrupted by our classmate, Noah.
“Hey Ed,” she said in her normal friendly and somewhat desperate tone. “Could you help me out with number five?”
“Yeah,” he told her as he grabbed her paper.”
Noah was nice enough, but she made me mad a lot. She had a crush on Ed, a huge crush, and she talked to him every chance she got.
I got tired of it. Whether he knew it or not, he was mine, and she would never have him! I would make her stop, but Ed didn’t know I was in love with him and since I knew he wasn’t in love with me, it’d only make things worse.
Instead, I grabbed his coat and rolled it up into a ball, burying my face in it and growling slightly under my breath.
Noah was an annoyance. I was jealous, I must admit. I was definitely jealous even though there wasn’t really anything to be jealous of. Still, though, I couldn’t help it.
I needed a nap and his coat would serve as my pillow. With my nose buried in the fabric, I couldn’t help but smell the scent that lingered on it.
‘It smells just like Ed,’ I thought absently as my eyes drifted closed.
Ed always smelled great. I don’t know if it was the soap he used, the cologne he wore, his shampoo, or what, but he always smelled good.
I was happy that I didn’t snore because I was knocked out within a few short seconds.
Ed soon woke me up by yanking on my hair and told me I’d better pay attention as he began to explain the work to me again.
I told him “good luck” before he started, but I paid attention anyway.
I was a good student, honest. I was on the honor roll, in fact. It’s just that sometimes Ed could be distracting without really trying.
By the time he shut his mouth, I did have a better understanding of it and I was able to finally finish my work by myself since he didn’t let me copy down his answers, that goodie two shoes…
And Noah was able to do her own work, thankfully.
When the bell rang, I was the one wearing the coat out of the classroom. It was too big for me, but I didn’t care. I wore his coat many times.
Whenever we got into water fights at his house I sometimes had to wear his clothes, anyway, so the coat wasn’t a big deal…
I grabbed onto his arm and hurried to my locker. His was right next to mine so I wasn’t inconveniencing him.
I got my book and closed my locker, putting the lock back on. Ed, however, had forgotten his combination again.
“Um…Winry,” he said, pointing at his lock. “A little help here?”
“Move aside,” I said as I grabbed the lock and unlocked it easily. “Really now, what would you do without me? You’ll never remember your combination.”
“I’d be lost without you,” he said sarcastically. “By the way, what is my combination?”
“Right twenty three, left two, and right eleven,” I replied as I grabbed his book and shoved it into his arms. “What do I have to do, tattoo it onto your forehead?”
But I loved the fact that he couldn’t remember his combination. I liked opening his locker for him. I felt as if he really needed me, as weird as that might sound.
Whenever I was absent from school he usually had to go to the office and have them tell him his combination or else see if Al remembered it. Sometimes, though, he got lucky and actually remembered it on his own.
As we walked down the hallway we noticed that there was a group of girls standing around Alphonse. Al looked like he wanted to get away, so I decided that I might have to chase them all away with a stick. But in my case, however, the stick would probably be my new shiny wrench.
“Oh no you don’t,” Ed said as he pushed me back. “You’re not going to threaten them.”
“I wasn’t going to threaten them,” I protested. “I was just going to tell them all that I had to speak to Al.”
He obviously wasn’t convinced by my answer since he went to help Al on his own.
“Hey Alphonse,” he said as he made his way through the crowd of girls. “I need to talk to you.”
“Well would you look at that?” Al said quickly, happy to see a way to get away. “It’s been nice talking to you ladies, but my brother needs me.”
I was happy that “operation: save Alphonse” was a success. What I wasn’t happy about, however, was the way that the girls eyes had shifted from gazing at Al to gazing at Ed.
They were looking at him like he was a tasty piece of meat or something. Sure, I imagine that I looked at him like that sometimes when he wasn’t paying attention, but that was okay for me to do. I didn’t like it when they did it.
Some of them I knew and they waved at me. The angry expression on my face shifted to a friendly one as I waved back and said a few nice words to the ones that I knew.
“Winry is so lucky,” I heard one of them say as we walked away. “She’s friends with Ed and Al. She even lives right next door to them!”
“If I lived next door to them, I’d be able to spy on them when they were coming out of the shower, getting dressed,…”
That last sentence was cut off as we turned the corner.
Sure I could do all of that. But I wasn’t some sick stalker…
Al was smart when it came to science, too. The both of them made me sick, yep, but I guess that deathly ill would be more like it.
Fifth period was a free period for me. I didn’t have a class to go to so I usually hung out in the gym and watched Ed and Al, who were in gym class.
Unfortunately, there were many other girls who had the same idea. I tried not to let that get to me since I was enjoying watching Ed playing basketball.
It made my day to see him running around in his gym clothes and dominating the court. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of shorts, exactly what he usually wore.
Al passed Ed the ball and he raised his strong arms and shot it into the basket, winning the game.
Okay, with all of my talk about how hot Ed is everything else, you must think that I’m some lovesick puppy or something.
You might even be getting sick of me going on and on about his hotness. In that case, I‘m very sorry.
Anyway, much to my discontent, Noah also liked to spend this period in the gym. I imagine that the expression on her face probably resembled mine and I had no right to get angry since Ed wasn’t my boyfriend, but I couldn’t help it.
Ed and Al’s team ended up winning the game and they all went to the showers. I waited patiently for them to return, making small talk with Noah even though I didn’t like the fact that she liked Ed.
The gym teacher was also the Chemistry teacher. Izumi Curtis was one of the prettiest women I’d ever seen, yet she could also be very brutal.
Though I had to admit that she’d whipped the Elric brothers into pretty good shape.
Noah had been saying something about something and I wasn’t really paying attention to her when Ed and Al came out of the locker room and came to the bleachers.
“Hi Ed,” Noah said as they reached us. “Good game today.”
Okay, I didn’t really hate Noah. I’d always liked her except for when she was all over Ed. I don’t want to sound psycho or anything or hateful so I’ll admit to that. I actually thought she was beautiful and I loved the shade of her skin.
So if that makes me sound less mean, then good.
“Hey Noah,” he said. “Did you finish your Chemistry?”
She nodded.
“Yep. I think I did great on it, all thanks to you.”
“Here,” I said as I grabbed my brush and fixed Al’s hair, which had looked a little wild at the moment.
“Oh, thanks,” he said as he gave me a smile.
A few seconds later, Russell Tringham came over to me and we started talking.
He was a year younger than me, a junior like Alphonse, but we’d always been friends.
Ed looked at us out of the corner of his eyes and I could’ve sworn I saw him glare at Russell. As a matter of fact, I’d caught him glaring at him a couple of times when I we were talking.
I shrugged in confusion.
At the time, I had no idea what the look meant even though it should’ve been obvious. That glare obviously represented jealousy.
