In Another Life

Two

A/N: I won't usually be updating this frequently but I already have the first three chapters written so I wanted to go ahead and publish the second one today! Thank you so much to everyone who read the first chapter and left comments, I appreciate it so much :)

Summertime came and went far too quickly.

One day Mitch was at his high school graduation, walking across the stage to get his diploma and blushing because Scott and Kirstie were cheering him on way too loudly in the audience. And then next thing he knew, three months had gone by and he had just a few days until he had to leave for college.

He was overwhelmed, to say the least. He was certainly excited – he'd dreamed for the longest damn time to get far away from Texas and to move to some exciting city. And Los Angeles was as exciting as it got.

But that didn't make it any less terrifying. All he'd known his entire life was the same house in Arlington, where he constantly had his parents for emotional support. He knew he was going to be full of anxiety and self doubt for the first few weeks and he was definitely a little stressed out about it.

Maybe a little stressed out was an understatement, actually. In reality, he'd been stressed out enough that Kirstie had noticed and got fed up with it. And her solution was an end-of-summer slumber party, complete with facials and junk food.

"I don't know what this shit is that you have on my face, but it fucking burns," Mitch complained as he sat in her bed, fanning his face with one hand and holding a slice of pizza in the other. "I thought this was supposed to help me de-stress?"

"You'll definitely feel at least a little less stressed once you see how clear your face is afterwards, trust me," Kirstie promised. The girl sat across from him, doing her best to paint her toe-nails and eat pizza at the same time.

Mitch felt like he was in a 90's teen romcom or something. But he loved it, honestly. Kirstie knew him well.

"It better work as well as you say it's going to. If I see a single zit on my face tomorrow I'm going to be very upset," Mitch told her as he picked up his phone. He'd given up on making his face feel any better, so he might as well occupy himself while Kirstie was busy painting her nails.

"I learned the recipe from some of the sorority girls back at OU. Sorority girls know about facials, Mitch," Kirstie told him seriously.

Mitch snorted, glancing up at her from his phone. "Yeah, I'm sure they do," he smirked.

Kirstie rolled her eyes at him but let out a small giggle as well. "Who are you texting over there, anyways? A booooy?" she teased, changing the subject.

It was Mitch's turn to roll his eyes. "I mean, technically. But it's just Scott, he sent me a picture from Venice," Mitch answered.

Scott had left a few days ago to go on vacation in Italy with his family. He was going to be there for the rest of Summer, and as pathetic as it was, Mitch was already missing him way too much. They had been texting each other pretty much non stop since he left.

"Ugh, why is his family so cool?" Kirstie complained. "And you're boring. I was hoping you'd have some kind of gossip for me."

"Well sorry that there's such a short supply of cute gay boys in Texas," Mitch replied sarcastically, setting his phone back down.

As he looked up at Kirstie again he could see her raise her eyebrows at him. "Oh yeah? What about that guy Scott tried to hook you up with? What was his name... Trevor?"

"Travis," Mitch corrected.

"He was cute," Kirstie told him. "And very gay, and very interested in you."