BF(F?): A Josh Richards Fanfiction *completed*

19

"Um, God, I'm going to sound absolutely crazy," I sighed. "Why the hell is Nessa texting you?" 
He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe Josh is being weird? I can't know unless I look at the text and see what she said."
"Maybe I'm psycho, but it doesn't really matter to me what she said, except for the fact that she's calling you baby. That's the part that makes me think that maybe I'm not crazy for asking," I said, looking down at my hands and picking at my cuticles again. 

We had left the Starbucks parking lot, and he pulled over not far from the school. "What the hell are you doing?" I asked. "We're already late. "Can you please just drive us to school?" 
He shook his head. "You're a little crazy for looking at my phone in the first place. Why don't you trust me? This relationship has literally been official for three days. If I was going to leave you or cheat on you, I would never have asked you to be my girlfriend." 
"This feels gaslight-y. I'll walk the rest of the way," I scoffed, opening the door and pulling my backpack onto my shoulder. "Keep your latte. I don't need that, and I certainly don't need anyone that anyone else is calling 'baby.'"

I got out of the car, walking down the sidewalk. I heard him following me slowly in his car. "Can you get back in the car, please? I want to talk about this," he shouted out the open passenger side window. 
"No thanks!" I yelled back. "See you in class!"
Exasperated, he peeled off, revving the engine. 

As soon as he was out of view, I sat down on the curb, crossing my legs underneath me. "You stupid bitch," I scolded myself. "There was one person in this world that you could trust one hundred and ten percent of the time, and you fucked it all up for a boy who literally fucked you over three days in."
I probably looked like a psycho. What seventeen-year-old girl sits on the curb on the fourth day of the school year, crying about someone that didn't care about her? Well, this seventeen-year-old girl, I suppose. 
Even if he was mad at me, I needed my best friend. I couldn't do this on my own right now. 

I dialed his number, waiting patiently for him to answer. 
"Yo, where the hell are you at? I haven't seen you since I left for school this morning, and Jaden rolled his eyes at me when I asked where you were at," he answered, barely taking a breath.
I immediately started crying. "I, I got out of the car."
Josh was obviously confused. "Obviously, honey, but where did you go after that? Are you safe? Is everything okay? Why are you crying right now?"
"I think that I just broke up with Jaden," I finally managed to stammer out. 

He hung up the phone, and my heart broke all over again. I was really all alone in the middle of town with no one to call. 
As I sat with my head in my hands, I heard a car pull up and two doors slam. "Hey," Josh's voice whispered above me. I looked up, wiping the tears from my cheeks. 
"How did you find me?" I asked, sniffling. 
"Two ways," he began, "Jaden isn't mad at Nessa, so he told her where he last saw you, and we share our locations with each other for a reason, don't we?"

For the first time, I looked around to see who the second door was. Nessa. 
Now, I was being confronted with a moral dilemma. I definitely shouldn't tell him right now, but should I tell him at all? This was literally going to pull me apart from the inside out. 
"Thank you, guys, for coming to get me. I really need to start going to school, but, uh, I really don't want to right now. I, uh, just don't know if I can."
"Honey," Nessa began, sitting down next to me, "I'm not really sure what happened, but I know that this is hard regardless. You guys really got to know each other these last few months, and that's going to be really hard for you to just up and forget that. Unfortunately, life will always go on. I mean, this is your junior year! You have to start out strong, and we're not really doing so hot, are we?"
God, I wanted to punch her in her stupid face. How was I even supposed to hate her? She was perfect. Of course, Jaden was going to choose her. Hell, I probably would've, too, if I was him.
"No, you're right," I agreed, avoiding eye contact and nodding. "Let's go."

We pulled into the school parking lot, and Josh turned the car off. We sat in silence for a few moments, and Josh looked over at Nessa. "Can I get a few minutes alone with Haley?"
"Oh, yeah, of course," she said, leaning over and kissing Josh. "I'll see you at lunch."
Josh turned around in his seat to look at me. "Do you want to talk about it?" 
I shook my head. "Nah. I don't want to even begin to deal with it. There's way too much going on around that."
"You know that I'm here for you, right?"
I nodded. "I'm definitely aware. I know that we had kind of a little tussle yesterday, but we're okay."
Sitting in this car with him was making me nauseous. What if I slipped up and told him about Jaden and Nessa?
"I'll beat him up a little bit if you want," Josh suggested, opening his car door. "C'mon, sis. Let's go inside. You can't fail out of your junior year four days in."

I followed him into the school, shaking as I saw Jaden in the hallway, seeming to be innocently talking to Nessa. This was going to be harder than I thought. How was I supposed to keep a secret this big when I would see all three people involved every day? Maybe I should consider switching to online school.