❝I know it's hard for you to be friends with a girl without objectifying her - but lucky me, not everyone's you!❞
❝Oh yeah. 𝙁𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨. The lady goth protest too much.❞
❝𝘿𝙤𝙩𝙝, Gavin. Doth.❞
→ From Van Zandt family disappointment and Grade 8...
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If not for group, I don't know if I would've handled the Terri stuff all that well.
But I had group, and it was my one saving grace in all of the madness.
I still had Ellie, and Ashley was almost bearable without Craig or any other guy — as long as we had Ellie as a buffer. We listened to the same music and she was a big nerd about the piano and her poetry. They didn't say anything about Manny around me, and that was for the best.
Manny was mostly withdrawn for a while but I offered 'girls' days' where we would go to the mall and window shop at the trendiest stores. Despite all of that, her favorite store was still the pet store. That did more for her in one trip than any amount of junk food or rom-com binge-fest. It wasn't my preferred method of coping, but she wasn't me, and it was nice to see her open up again.
It'd been almost a month since what happened to Terri. I went in a few times, got rides home from Paige, if you could believe it. A few times, I even called shotgun and made Spinner sit in the back.
And...
Well, and...
And I hadn't said one word to Craig Manning since all the Manny stuff went down three months ago. I buried his Christmas present in my closet, along with what I assume were my presents from him, and put off trashing them every time I saw them. They laid there next to the duffel bag full of wires from the sound system I brought back to my apartment before Christmas, despite knowing I needed to get that equipment back to Jimmy at some point.
Didn't matter.
It was nice having a life outside of this one person. I liked hanging out with Sean, Ellie, and Marco, even when Marco dropped big, fat hints about the band. I showed them Seekers, and we wasted time at Novak's Convenience Store.
Outside of all that, I liked complaining with Manny while we shopped. I liked that neither of us wanted to even hear Craig's name aloud. We saw Honey twice before it finally left theaters sometime back in February, and despite it being my least favorite thing I ever paid money for, I was happy that Manny was happy.
