As Erik listened to the girls over the next hour, between helping the occasional customer, he mentally took note of the study questions and tactics that these girls were attempting to help their friend. It didn't surprise him that the leader was an airhead with nothing but her money and beauty to get her through life. She would probably never have to lift a finger after she graduates, so she didn't have to worry.
It also sounded like Liona was having a large birthday bash that was her motivation for studying in the first place. It was pretty typical, in his head, that her parents were threatening to take away the things that were important to her if she didn't pass. He had heard other rich kids whine about their credit cards getting taken away for whatever reason at his old schools. So, he didn't see this probably large and ostentatious party happening if she didn't actually put in any effort.
Erik chalked it up to her being an airhead at first, but on occasion she would pull something out of thin air and correlate it to what her friends were helping with. Over time, as the girls came back for more refills on their drinks, he slowly started to see Liona as someone who thought outside the box so much that typical reasoning and correlation didn't sync with her so she couldn't make that connection.
It was similar to how he is, but the difference was that he didn't have anyone breathing down his neck trying to force him into a box. His moving so often meant that whatever teachers he had, had no expectations of him so he could just put whatever answer he came up with down and they never looked twice at how he came up with it.
Erik could sympathize a little bit with Liona, and slowly realized that she really wasn't an airhead like he initially judged her as. By the time that his break was upon him, the girls had moved onto other subjects and pulled out expensive-looking books and study guides. As he gladly took the hamburger and fries with a small drink that was his lunch over to a corner table to eat, he could still hear the whines and complaints, as the girls each had a subject they were bad at.
As he listened to the questions and the study session, he realized that this stuff was really easy for him to answer. He found himself answering the study questions in his head as he ate. This was all material he had learned in previous schools when he had been shuffled between grades when he was younger. Most of these questions were really like freshman or sophomore test questions so he wondered if this school was not as advanced in what it was teaching as his old schools.
When his break was over, Erik made his way back to his post. The girls spent the entirety of his remaining work hours hunched over their table, reviewing material that they were likely to be tested on. As he was preparing to leave for his evening job, the girls were packing up their stuff and going back to their giggly selves. Their talk once again revolved around this epic birthday of their leader and how it was going to be the birthday bash of the century. They compared it to such-and-such celebrity party and then giggled when they said that Liona's 18th birthday was going to be bigger and the only thing that would be a bigger party was going to be her wedding.
"Come on! You don't think your grandparents aren't going to spend an entire fortune on you when you get married? Look at their weddings and compare it to your Mom and Dads! Those weddings were so over the top and they were sooo romantic!" The girl named Allison proclaimed with an exaggerated swoon.
It made Erik want to laugh at her theatrics. Instead he just smiled to himself as he worked.
"Hah! If I get married, I know Grandpa Ash is gonna bawl! Did you see the behind-the-scenes footage of my Mom's wedding? He was crying more than Mom was that day!" Liona laughed.
"But your Grandpa Darr, will totally support him and help him come to terms with it. But for some reason, I have a feeling that your dad is gonna be more of a crier than your Grandpa Ash! Really! Remember how he reacted to your first boyfriend? He totally lost it and was so happy that you introduced him to your family!" The one named Chloe exclaimed.
"Your mom on the other hand was the one to glower the whole time! I swear she was so frosty to Richard, that I thought he would pee himself in fear!" Allison laughed.
"I was 15 back then, of course my mom was overprotective! She had every right to be, especially when he decided to be a total asshole and brag to the whole school that he was gonna be my future husband! I was only dating him 'cause he was cute and marriage was the furthest from my mind at the time! I broke up with him the very next day. After that, I never brought a boy home to meet my mom, and only ran them by my dad first. At least even if Dad does look into the boys I date, or their family, he doesn't go overboard and forbid me from seeing them or tell me their life story in a nutshell." Liona countered.
"Your dad is totally awesome, Liona! That's why we know your birthday is gonna be totally epic! Oh, is your mom gonna be home for the party? Or is she gonna be working again this year?" Allison asked.
Erik was trying to tune out the conversation of the girls as he finished his end-of-shift cleaning duties, but it was hard to do so when their conversation carried so well in the near empty restaurant. It wasn't going to get busy again until the dinner rush, but that was thankfully long after he started his shift at the grocery store for the evening slam of shoppers. He sighed as he thought of what new hell was going to await him during today's shift. As he finished sweeping the dining area, he continued to listen to the girls as they packed up their study materials.
"Mom is probably going to work the day of the party for all my friends, but Dad will be home along with Auntie Yui to help chaperone. But she's definitely going to be home for the birthday with the family. She NEVER misses those days. She even goes so far as to take a vacation day for it, so she never gets called in. She does it for Noah and Nolan as well as Ariel and Aurora's birthdays as well." He heard Liona explain.
"Your mom is totally awesome, yours too, Chloe!" Allison proclaimed.
Erik watched as she and the other girls dumped their soda cups and cleaned up after themselves, leaving him nothing to do but to wipe down their table once they left. Before the girls left, though, Liona turned and flashed him a smile that shone brilliantly. It sent his stomach a flutter and cringed inwardly as he thought that he didn't deserve that smile.
Once the girls left, his manager came up behind him and startled him out of his depressing thoughts.
"Those girls were totally digging you! So which one are you going after? Mmm! The one with the red hair was fiiine!" Erik cringed at his much older manager, Jack.
He was such a creep when it came to girls. He was disgustingly describing the girls and their figures, so since he didn't want to lose his job, he just pretended to nod and agree with him. Dirty old men like him were people he had learned to be wary of since he had so many sisters. It wasn't uncommon to encounter people like him that only looked at girls, regardless of their secondary genders as nothing but a piece of ass.
However, he learned early on, that calling these creeps out for their behavior ended in one of two ways. One he would end up flat on his ass, as he was either punched or kicked down; or he would have the accusation of indecency pushed onto him in the other person's place and he ended up being resented for that behavior with no way to defend himself and refute it. No one listened to a poor person's side of things after all. They were always guilty and being innocent wasn't something that was recognized from a rich person's perspective.
As Erik made his way across town, yet again, for his next job, he contemplated what he had overheard from the girls today. He had been surprised that Liona wasn't just a pretty ball of fluff between her ears, and she seemed to genuinely struggle with remembering and absorbing the material she was trying to study. He wanted to help her, but then shook his head. What was he thinking? A rich kid like her would never accept help from someone like him…