All Planned Out

Seventeen (Alex)

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you so okay with it?"

"I just am."

Whatever was going on between her and Montana and their trips to the skate park was apparently none of my business, but they must have made some kind of connection if I had Montana calling me to chew me out like she did last night. On the other hand, I was not sure where I would place Stuart and me on the spectrum of friendship besides the fact that he was close to my cousin and lived near enough to my house, and hers, that going to school together was not as weird a thing as my entire body was telling me it was as I drove the couple of blocks to pick both of them up.

The entirety of our interactions with Stuart from the afternoon Montana outed herself to now were a few conversations in homeroom, at lunch, and at the coffee shop. Most of those conversations were either rote small talk or were about the idea of our two best friends possibly becoming a couple.

Oh, and maybe I'm just trying to block out all the things about his writing and seeing him with his shirt off because I have pulled into Montana's driveway and he is standing on her porch looking almost as nervous as I was to be doing what we were about to do.

"Did you seriously chauffeur your sweet, precious girlfriend over here?" Montana said as she opened the back door. "You could have sat in the front, Charley."

"Charley is just fine back here, Monty." She said. "Wanted to let the giraffe have shotgun."

"Hey!" Stuart had just opened the passenger door. "The only one who's allowed to call me the g-word is her." He thumbed at Montana, then I saw his eyes go wide. "Did you refer to me like that in front of her?"

"Maybe." Montana and Charlotte shared a giggle. "It was an accident."

I was no longer the only one rolling my eyes. "I don't mind all the golden retriever stuff. That's fun. I like fun. All giraffes do is eat trees."

"Are you not the same Stuart Crane who has ate at least two salads a week for the past however long?" Montana threw herself into the car and dropped her bag in between herself and Charlotte, then immediately moved it down in between her legs. A noise came from Charlotte's direction, but the distractions from last night were right back in front of me as I watched Stuart kneel onto his seat and lean his body next to me and into the back.

"If those salads were stuck to a tree, I wouldn't bother." He said, but all I could focus on was the bottom of his t-shirt riding up the small of his back and revealing the top of his saggy cargo shorts and, more noticeably, his baby blue boxer briefs. "Also, my neck is perfectly normal sized."

"How about—"

"—Nope!" Stuart pulled himself back past me, spun around, and fell into his seat. "I saw that look. I know exactly what you're going to say and I'm warning you."

Montana huffed as he closed his door and finally all four of us were trapped together. "Fine. We can just go back to the conversation we were having before the chauffeur showed up."

"I'm not disagreeing with you that it's a lazy plot device, but I like it. There's nothing wrong with it other than being lazy."

"It's not real, Stu."

"What...what are you talking about?" Charlotte asked. I could see that she was just as confused as I was.

"Stu here thinks that all those dumb Hallmark movies are fantastic. That's what."

"I don't know if I used the word 'fantastic', exactly." Stuart said. "They just have a job to do and they do it. That's all."

"You watch those?"