Scars...and Other Short-Shorts

            Julie curled up on the couch, surrounded by tissues and Gatorade. The blanket her dad had brought home from Iraq was tightly pulled around her as she flipped through the channels on the television. After lying on the couch all day, her pent up energy starkly contrasted the aches and pains all over her body.

            “I hate being sick,” she mumbled to the television, turning it off. She rolled over to stare at the ceiling fan, spinning above her head. Closing her heavy eyes, she let her imagination run wild.

            She was wearing that gorgeous red dress currently in her closet.  A fast song was playing, good for dancing. She was laughing with Natalya when the song changed. People around her began to slow down, as the melody carried them along the dance floor. She backed up, right into him. He took her hand, and spun her back on to the dance floor. She smiled and looked up into those gorgeous blue eyes, knowing he was all hers tonight.

            Julie sighed, and opened her eyes. Trent was all hers in her fantasies, but he wasn’t hers anywhere else.

            Sure he’d taped that adorable note to her front door last week, asking her to prom. And she’d definitely said yes. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Hadn’t Nick asked Sarah, even though they weren’t dating? But what if…

            When the doorbell rang, Julie leapt off the couch, eager to use some of her stockpiled energy for something other than enabling her hopelessly romantic mind.

            She ran to open the door, the blanket still wrapped around her black sweats and white tank-top. Her jaw dropped.

            Trent stood there with a folder in one hand, as Amanda Seyfried and Christopher Eogan smiled from the cover in his other, his usual crooked grin plastered cockily on his face.

            “I know you hate missing school, so I got your homework from all your classes, and I brought your favorite movie over so we could watch it together,” he explained. He walked in, making his way to the living room as she stared at him in astonishment. She drifted unconsciously to the couch and sat as he put the disk in the DVD player.

            “Hey! Guess what!” he told her, as he sat down next to her.

            “What?” she answered.

            “Sarah asked Nick out today, and he said yes.”

            Smiling, she laughed, and curled up next to him, rolling her eyes at the ceiling fan still twirling above them.

            What if? she thought. What if?