Luckily by the time I got home, dad was in bed. I stayed at Raegan’s late enough so that would be the case and she made us some ridiculously sweet hot chocolate. No wonder she had trouble sleeping if she drank that stuff every night. I had to brush my teeth twice.
Remi was waiting for me though and demanded to know what had happened. She apparently didn’t want to hear his side of the story before mine. And she was understandably pissed when I did explain all the finer details.
‘But we already know he’s a flake,’ Remi pointed out from her perch on the end of my bed. ‘I don’t know why you let him get to you so much. It’s not even your birthday he’s going to miss!’
‘Let’s talk later,’ I sighed, flopping down face first on my mattress.
‘Hope you didn’t frighten Raegan off with your dramatic ass,’ she snorted.
‘It’d take a lot more than that to scare her away,’ I replied, rolling onto my back.
‘Make sure you don’t do that then, I enjoy having her around, you know,’ Remi said, getting to her feet. ‘You should invite her over Saturday when Suze is here. I’m bringing Kyle.’
‘Kyle's your boyfriend,’ I said pointedly.
Raegan wasn’t my girlfriend. Wouldn’t it be weird if I brought her? Then again, everything about our relationship could be classed as weird. Whyever shouldn’t I bring her along for the hell of it?
‘So, invite her over as a friend or something,’ Remi said, rolling her eyes. ‘You’re going to be hanging out with her all day anyway, aren’t you?’
‘I – well, yeah...’
‘It’s not very fair that you hog all of her time,’ Remi added. ‘And she hogs all of yours. I want to hang out with the whole group sometimes and it’s not the same when certain people are missing.’
‘Sorry,’ I smiled guiltily. ‘I’m just-’ I broke off, not knowing how to word it. Distracted?
‘Infatuated,’ Remi said, pretending to go weak at the knees and fainting on the end of my bed.
‘Shut up,’ I laughed as she stuck out her tongue and pretended to drool. Probably quite an accurate depiction of me.
‘You even sound like her now!’
‘Remi,’ I complained before realising that actually, she made a good point, we didn’t hang out with the others enough. ‘Want to go to the lake Saturday? Maybe we can convince dad to let us have the boat. Scratch that, I’m not asking him for shit. But we should still go there.’
‘With everyone?’ Remi asked and I nodded. ‘Sure. I’ll make a group chat. Assuming Raegan is coming?’
‘Uh-huh. Don’t tell her though. She hates surprises so naturally...’
‘We must surprise her,’ Remi bobbed her head. ‘I’m going to bed. Kyle’s staying the night so I’m set for a lift to school. You can play Raegan’s personal taxi driver in peace.’
‘Get out.’
* * *
‘Miss me?’
‘Always, George,’ I replied automatically without looking up from my textbook. We only had a couple minutes left in class and our lecture had wrapped up early so we had some free time. ‘What’s up?’
‘Witnessed coach berating a freshman before this class I think the poor girl is going to be traumatised for life,’ George replied, slumping into the chair next to mine. ‘Anyway, he said you still haven’t gotten your shit out of your locker and he said he’d set fire to it in the parking lot if it wasn’t gone by tomorrow morning.’
