A Trip to Remember

History

Chapter 20

The next few days were generally uneventful. Natalie spent most of her time either out doing things with her family or hanging out with Jeremy and some of the other kids around the lake. She saw a lot of Devon, since the Willis’ and the Taylors did a lot of stuff together, however after their last day alone, they had hardly said a word to each other.

She had caught glimpses of Devon and Ivy together on more than one occasion. Natalie wasn’t completely sure how she felt about it.

It was entirely crazy, but Natalie sometimes felt almost as if she missed arguing with him.

One afternoon, Natalie was with Jeremy down at the beach. It was just the two of them and they were sitting on the warm sand, just chatting lightly. Over the last couple of days she had really grown to like him. And thankfully, she didn’t get super flustered every time she saw him now.

“You know today’s my last day here.” Jeremy told her.

Natalie turned to him, surprised. “What? I didn’t know!”

“Yeah,” he smiled a bit sadly. “I have summer school, so I have to go back earlier this year.”

She frowned. “That sucks.”

He nodded in agreement.

“We’ll keep in touch right?” Jeremy nudged her playfully.

“Yep. So much that you’ll want to get rid of me.” Natalie grinned jokingly.

He chuckled. “You should come down to San Diego to visit me some time. It’s not that far from LA.”

“Definitely.”

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while. Natalie swirled her finger around in the soft sand, making little patterns.

“So… before I leave. Are you going to tell me what’s really up with you and the Devon guy? I’m really, really curious.” Jeremy asked.

Natalie sighed, and put her head in her arms. She felt Jeremy put his hand on her arm.

“Hey.” His voice, concerned. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”

She looked up and smiled softly. “No, it’s okay. I’ll tell you. I need someone to talk to about it anyway.”

Natalie loved Reyna to death but, it was obvious she could never talk to her about Devon. She couldn’t talk about him to any of the girls she hung out with.

“I’ve known him for a really long time.” Natalie started, looking up at the clear, cloudless sky. “We’d been friends for as long as I could remember. Our families were really good friends too. They still are. We weren’t just friends either, we were best friends and we were always, always together. We started playing guitar around sixth grade and we both fell in love with it. Devon and I would practice every chance we got. We started to sing too, and I guess we weren’t so bad. People always told us that it was as if our voices were meant for each other, the way we could do a duet.”

Natalie paused here to chuckle a bit. “We had big plans you know? Devon and I wanted to be big name musicians when we grew up. Anyway we actually got really good, obviously since we basically practiced every day. The thing about us was that, other than each other, we didn’t really have any other close friends. I think it was because we felt like we didn’t really need anyone else. And no one else would really understand us completely like we did anyway. In eighth grade, we started dating. I know it was totally cliché, you know best friend turned boyfriend. And, this is going to sound stupid but, even though it was only eighth grade, our relationship wasn’t silly or immature or try-hard. It was like, we’d known each other for so long, it was just right.”