A Year Around the Sun

f o u r - i think you're strange

I leaned back and crossed my arms, frowning a bit. "He's an idiot if he doesn't realize that you like him," I mused, more so to myself than to them.

Jodie let out a disheartening laugh and ran her fingers through her hair, a sign that she's clearly upset over this. Part of me wanted to kick Ryan in the balls for putting my friend through this much trouble, because she doesn't deserve to be jerked around by a guy who she's been pining over for the past few months now.

"How hard is it to find a guy who will just, like, be honest and not play games? I'm not asking for marriage – I just want to kiss you and hang out, you know? I'm really low maintenance, it shouldn't be this hard!" Jodie slammed her fist down on the table, earning a look of detest from the couple sitting behind her.

If I knew how guys worked, then maybe it'd be easier for me to help Jodie in this situation. But seeing as I can't even figure out how to tell Noah the truth on how I don't like him, it looks like I'm the wrong person to go to. I'm her best friend though, and no matter what, I have to spit out some kind of wise words.

"To me, it doesn't seem like he's worth it," I confessed with a shrug. My two best friends both looked at me, a little astonished, but they didn't fight it. "You don't need a guy who's going to 'play games'. I mean, I know we're still kids, but come on."

Sadie cut in then, agreeing with me in a wholehearted nod. "And besides, there's tons of other guys out there, just in our town. We're lucky we have a big school, because that makes it easy for you to find someone else."

A heavy sigh was Jodie's first reaction as her gaze was hooked on her crumpled straw wrapper she was playing with. Then she cast her eyes up at us sitting across from her, and a small smile broke through.

"You guys are right," she nodded along.

"We know," Sadie and I chorused together, which made her grin. Our waiter came then and dropped off our food, dispersing everything to each of us and making sure the orders were right. I didn't neglect to notice the way his eyes hung onto Jodie for a little while longer before he left our table.

After we downed our food in record timing, we didn't waste too much more time. A friend of ours invited us to her house later on, due to the fact that her parents were gone for the weekend, so we planned on going back to my place in the meantime. We left Mack's with full stomachs and a healthy tip on the table for our adorable waiter.

As the three of us walked down the boardwalk together, towards the parking lot I parked in, Sadie came to a halt.

"Do you guys mind if we run to the bathroom real quick? I don't think I can wait any longer," she pleaded, her eyes going over to the public restroom building on the other side. Jodie and I both nodded and she took off, leading the way while we waited by the sinks for her.

Standing in silence with the hum of the air conditioning the only noise, my mind started to wander. Back to the same thing it's been hooked on for the past week – Surfer Boy.

Who is he?

I could not stop thinking about him since I saw him on the beach last Friday. He sparked my curiosity, which developed into a raging fire, blazing inside me. Something like this has never happened to me before and I don't know how to deal with it. But my overbearing eagerness got the best of me, so I found myself asking Jodie a pretty ambiguous question.

"Jod, who surfs at our school?" I kept my eyes down at first, not wanting to see her immediate reaction, but I had to look up when she didn't say anything right away.

Her eyebrows furrowed, a puzzled look pulling at her features. "Um... well, everyone does. A lot of the seniors that just graduated do, and I think there's a handful of kids in our grade that surf too. I'm not really sure about the underclassmen though," she answered, but her expression quickly changed to a skeptic one. "Why do you ask?"