A Thousand and One Nights

Chapter 1

"Lauren are you almost ready to go?" I hear my boyfriend shout.

"Yeah, I'll be out in a minute," I say while pushing my hair behind my ears. I walk out into the living room of our apartment.

Clark starts to grab some of my bags and says, "I'll go put these in the car."

"Thanks," I say while grabbing the rest of my bags and heading towards the door.

"Goodbye Michigan," I say to no one in particular. "I'll miss you these few months."

I walk outside and get into Clark's car. "Thanks for driving me to the airport."

"Of course. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I made my girlfriend take a cab to the airport?" He kisses my cheek.

I blush and stare out the window. I don't know what it is but in the two and a half years that we've been together, I've never really liked Clark that much. I mean of course I like him, but I don't like him as much as I should. Yes, we say I love you, but I always feel like I don't really mean it.

We pull up to Ann Arbor Municipal Airport and he says, "call me when you land."

I plaster on a fake smile and say, "of course." We kiss and I walk inside the airport alone.

Checking in and security goes by surprisingly quickly. I begin to walk to gate D2 when I hear a somewhat familiar voice shout "Lauren Lopez!" I turn around and try to find the owner of who shouted my name. And then, I spot him. Even though I haven't seen him in years and we were never that close in the first place, it's sort of nice to see a familiar face.

"Hey Walker. Where are you going?"

"I'm actually leaving for a study abroad trip to Belize. What about you?"

"Me too," I say sort of energetically.

We start to walk to the gate together when he says, "so what happened to you that summer? You just left with no explanation. I don't get it."

"It's a long story."

He's about to say something but is stopped when a voice on the loudspeaker announces, "Flight 2048 to Belize City has been delayed. It will now depart at 2:30 instead of 12:30."

I look at my watch and sarcastically say, "great now we have three until our flight boards."

"Looks like we have time for you to tell me that story," Walker says while laughing. I give him a nasty look and he says, "sorry. How about we go to the gate, see if anyone else from our trip is there and go get lunch?"

"Ugh fine," I say as we approach the gate.

We see a group of students wearing the same "University of Michigan" shirts as us. I hate whoever decided that all of the study abroad students have to wear the same shirt to the airport. We're twenty, not two.

We walk over to the group and Walker says, "Hey, we're going on the study abroad trip too. I'm Walker and this is Lauren."

"Hi," I reply while nervously looking around the group. There's a tall girl with red hair, a boy with longish blond hair, a girl with medium length brown hair and bangs who sort of looks familiar, and oh shit, it's him.

"Hi I'm Devin," replies the tall girl with red hair. "We were just thinking about getting lunch, do you guys want to join us?"

"Sure," I reply. "I'm always ready for food."

Our group starts to walk towards a California Pizza Kitchen that's right across from our gate. We are quickly seated and I'm sitting next to the familiar looking girl with the bangs and the boy with longish blond hair.

The guy with blond hair says, "Hey, I'm Jeff. It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too," I reply. I turn towards the girl with the bangs and say, "what's your name?"

"I'm Julia. Also, don't take this the wrong way, but you look really familiar."

Suddenly everything clicks together. "Did you work at Camp Blue Brook like almost three years ago?"

"Oh my god, Lauren! I thought it was you, but I wasn't sure. How are you? Are you okay from everything that happened?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. This is such a weird coincidence, I mean, me, you, and Walker all worked there together and we're all on this trip."

He clears his throat. "And Joey," Julia adds.

We make eye contact for the first time in a thousand and one nights, and it's felt like a lifetime has passed. Strangely, he looks pretty much the same as the last time I saw him, the same crooked jaw, gorgeous eyes, and adorable smile. Lauren stop. You have to get over him. Remember, you chose yourself.

"That's so great how y'all already know each other. I just hope we can all be the bestest of friends by the end of this," Devin says.

We all smile and awkwardly look at each other when our waitress walks over. "Are you guys ready to place your order?"

Everyone nods and Devin starts to order her food and everyone following afterwards.