Laugh Until You Cry

4 Party Planning

“Okay, so we have to get a list together of what we need at the store and then we can head off,” Mason says as I enter the lobby of the dorm building. Nobody asks me what’s wrong or why I came in late, which I appreciate, and we just start talking like normal.

“Well, we’re going to serve lunch, so we’ll need plates, plastic silverware, and napkins,” Sienna pipes. “And we definitely need a piñata.”

“I like the way that girl thinks,” I pipe, agreeing with her fabulous idea of having a piñata at the party. “And we will also need birthday balloons and streamers. Purple and black streamers because purple is Mary’s favorite color.”

“Candy,” Brian adds. “For the piñata and just to have around. She really likes candy.”

“Very true,” Mason agrees, writing everything down on a long notepad. “Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of for today. Should we plan out how we’re going to invite people without Mary finding out about it?” I add. “I mean, some people have a big mouth but they still should come to the party.”

“We will tell them about it on Friday that way, they don’t have enough time to talk to her and mess it up but I do know who you’re talking about,” She says. We’re talking about Lucas because he really can’t keep a secret worth his life so we won’t be able to tell him about it or he’ll blab to Mary about it pretty quickly. “But other than him, we can just keep it verbal and make sure people write down the information about it so that they remember but we can’t have an official invitation or anything.”

“Penn and I will be in charge of the cake,” Sienna offers up. “The bakery is just outside of campus.”

“Awesome, so then we need two people to do decorations and two people for food,” Mason speaks up. “Me and Stella can do decorations since we’re kind of awesome at that stuff and Andrew and Brian can get all of the food together.”

“Oh, and should I get a DJ?” Sienna pipes. “Penn has a lot of friends in fraternities so I’m sure he knows a few good DJs.”

“Yes! Oh my gosh, I totally almost forget about music,” Mason grins thankfully at Sienna. “That’s perfect. So are we ready to get to the store?”

The three of us nod so we all stand up off of the couches that we’ve been sitting on in the lobby and leave the building. The walk to the parking lot isn’t too long and when we get there, we take Brian’s car since it’s the biggest and we have to fit four people in it.

“Wait, I should invite Andrew,” I sigh. “So that he can reject me but at least he won’t yell at me for not inviting him. Give me a sec.”

I pull my phone out and call him. I would just text him but if he’s playing his video games, he’ll just ignore texts but he might pause the game or continue to play while talking on the phone if I call him.

“Hey, Babe,” He answers the phone, obviously reading the caller ID to be able to tell that I’m the one calling him.

“Hey,” I sigh, loving that he just called me ‘babe’ which he hasn’t done in a while. We haven’t spoken all day and maybe that’s what we needed- just some space. “So we’re going shopping for Mary’s party this weekend. Do you want to come with us?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, now,” I confirm.

“Uh, I can’t,” He mumbles, seemingly more apologetic than he usually is when he turns down plans.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” I sighed. “Well, I’ll see you later. I love you.”

“I love you too, Stella,” He assures me with more affection than he’s been using recently. He seems like he’s in a much better mood right now and it feels good. It definitely puts me in a much better mood knowing that we just had a two second conversation without it turning into a fight. That must be a first in the past two weeks or so.

“Okay, let’s go,” I chirp as I put my phone back in my pocket and we all file into the car.

“So he’s not coming?” Sienna wonders, sitting beside me in the backseat. “You seem a lot happier about that than usual.”

“No, I’m not happy that he’s not coming, it’s just nice that we didn’t fight about it,” I explain. “I swear, that’s the first conversation we’ve had in weeks that hasn’t turned into an argument.”

“See? It’s the light at the end of the tunnel,” Sienna grins at me, obviously almost as excited about the revelation as I am. “We told you that it would happen.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, looking out the window with a small smile on my face. Maybe Sienna is right. Maybe this is the light at the end of the tunnel. I sure hope so.

*I'm going to continue updating but there won't be an update schedule and the updates will be slow until I get more written. I don't want to feel stressed out about this because I have enough irl to be stressed about so I'm just going to take it easy, updating probably about every two weeks. Idk, we'll see. thanks for hanging in there tho. You're the best! <3

*Also, the picture to the side is Lucy Hale, who plays Sienna