Cole was seated cross-legged on Kyle’s bed, his nose down as he scribbled away at his homework. Kyle’s plan had been to do the same as him, but with the slightly older boy sitting on his bed with his tongue poking at his cheek in concentration, Kyle’s focus was ruined. He took twice as long to do the simplest math problems simply because he spent every other second glancing up at Cole. He was an amazing sight.

Today was the day that they were going to study with Angela. Angela had to go home before she came over so when she went back to her house, Cole and Kyle went to his place together. Cole turned out to be serious about studying and instead of talking or goofing around with Kyle, he had immediately started working. Kyle was actually a bit disappointed by that but took comfort in the fact that they would probably be goofing around again the moment that they finished studying. 

The two of them continued to work on homework for another half-hour, Cole probably coming close to finishing and Kyle only on his second page of math, when the doorbell rang. Cole tensed considerably and Kyle stood up to go and open it.

"I'll be right back after I let Angela in." He told Cole, knowing that he already knew but feeling the need to tell him anyways. Cole simply nodded and Kyle gave him a smile before leaving the room. By the time he got to the foyer, Angela had already taken her shoes off and was smiling gently at Kyle’s dad.

Kyle’s father, Charles Bonheur, worked as an editor for a couple of different newspapers and magazines. Because he edited the articles and didn't have to write them, thus never interviewing people, he amply enjoyed the benefits of working from home.

Unfortunately for Angela, that meant that she had to hold a conversation with the older man while Kyle was coming down the stairs.

Angela didn't seem very uncomfortable at the moment, but Kyle knew that it would get worse when his father started ranting about some new information that he learned from one of the articles that he had been editing.

Kyle started to walk up and pull Angela out of her predicament but Maddie got to her sooner.

"Hey, Angela!" Maddie beamed, walking easily out of the dining room where she had probably been doing her homework. Maddie then turned to her father and gave him a teasing frown. "Papa, you haven't been boring poor Angela, have you?"

Papa rolled his eyes and huffed.

"No, I have not." He replied, frowning harder when he saw that all of the kids around him were smiling. "You kids tease me for being smarter than you. Don't think that I don't know how to leave you with nothing but vegetables in the fridge."

Maddie frowned but Kyle just shrugged his shoulders.

"Maddie might have a problem but I am always trying to eat healthy for Rugby anyway, Papa. I would just thank you for keeping the temptations away from me." Kyle was smirking when he finished and Papa scowled.

"Curse these kids' mindset on Junk Food. What happened to him being American." He grumbled in French, giving Angela a small, dejected wave before walking off. "He must get his love of vegetables from his mother."

"Bye Mr. Bonheur." Angela giggled, smiling at Maddie and Kyle when he left. Maddie talked to Angela for a bit before going back to her work, leaving Kyle and Angela to head up to his room.

They were almost to the door when Angela let out a soft "oh!" Angela held Kyle's arm to stop him and looked up at Kyle with her large, doe eyes.

"What had your father been saying? I couldn't understand his French." Kyle smiled and continued to walk towards his room.

"He had been complaining about my mindset towards food and blaming my mom for my good attitude towards vegetables."

Angela was still laughing when she had walked into the room and found Cole sitting on Kyle's bed, waiting for them.

Angela quickly stopped laughing because she immediately felt the tension in the room. Kyle looked between Cole and Angela and decided to try and ease the atmosphere.

"Uh, Angela, this is my friend Cole." Kyle started, gesturing towards the shorter boy sitting on the bed. "Cole, this is Angela."

"Hi." Angela greeted, smiling awkwardly. Cole gave her a small ‘hi’ back and put on a short tight smile before returning to his plain face. Angela glanced at Kyle, her eyes slightly pleading. But Kyle just shrugged because he didn't know what to do. Things were just weird between them and Kyle had no way of helping.

It was at that moment that Kyle knew that this would be a very awkward day.

—————

At first, it went as terribly as Kyle thought it would. Kyle had to take the lead with what they would study because of the tension between his friends. Cole was stand-offish when interacting with Angela and Angela was awkward, trying not to interact with Cole much because of his attitude towards her. Kyle wanted to yell out of frustration because of Cole's attitude, but it was hard to be angry at the redhead and he didn't want to start a fight.

The three of them then moved onto their third subject and Kyle's patience was running thin. It felt as if Cole refused to be nice towards Angela and Kyle was left wondering why. Why did Cole dislike her so much?

Now, Kyle was trying to explain a certain aspect of biology that was difficult to word.

"The endoplasmic reticulum is . . . how do I say this?" Kyle mumbled, biting his lip as he thought of the molecule. "In the cell, it acts like--gosh this is hard to phrase." Kyle looked between Angela and Cole, but neither of them seemed to have a better way to describe it.

Angela sighed and placed her chin on her hand.

"Cell structure sucks! Why do they have to teach this to us anyway?" She rhetorically asked, sighing heavily. Angela continued to pout for a while, but then a slow smile started to appear on her face. "They should just let us use super expensive microscopes and have us describe what we see for cell structure. Seeing a fungus cell or poop cell is much more educational than being able to name the functions of a ribosome."

Cole let out a startled laugh before exploding into a series of deep guffaws. Seeing Cole laugh so hard made Kyle start to laugh too, and soon the two of them were clutching their stomachs in pain. Angela watched the two with a small smile but was still confused as to why they were laughing.

"What's the problem, you guys? I was just being honest." She told them, hoping that they would calm down so that they could all study more. 

"Oh my gosh!" Cole gasped out, tears leaking out from his silver eyes. "That was so freaking weird!"

Angela seemed unsure whether that was a good or bad thing but when Cole calmed down and looked at her with a large smile, she figured out the answer to that question.

After that, everything was kind of . . . perfect. Cole finally relaxed and once Cole was open around Angela, she was able to relax as well. By the time they were finished, the two were giggling together and Cole was asking for Angela's Instagram account. It blew Kyle's mind how well they now got along compared to before, but he was not complaining.

The only downside to the situation was that Cole and Angela took great pleasure in working together when they went to tease Kyle. He was practically defenseless when trying to shield himself from a two-against-one.

But Kyle would live. When he hung out with the two of them again with Neal around, the playing field would be even.