"Tess, get up, you have psych in ten!" my roommate Whitney said one afternoon, shaking me awake.
"Shit," I said as I rolled out of bed to see it was ten minutes to two in the afternoon and I had a class across campus in ten minutes.
"I've been trying to wake you up for ten minutes," she laughed.
"I've gotta go," I said, sliding on my sandals over my fuzzy socks and grabbing my phone and notebook before rushing out the door.
I wasn't the greatest on being on time, I had always had to set alarms for everything, and I mean everything. I'm not stupid, I'm actually quite brilliant but I don't seem to apply that brilliance to everyday situations very well.
"Late again," Taylor, my best friend, remarked with a smirk as I sat down next to him in class.
"I fell asleep at one and my alarm didn't go off. Whit got me up five minutes ago," I whispered, opening to a clean sheet of notebook paper.
"Here's a pen," he smirked, answering my question before I even asked it. I swear we had spent so much time together he could now read my mind.
"Since when are you prepared for class?" I asked, taking the pen from his hand.
"Today," he replied with a wink.
###
"Going to Caf tonight?" Taylor asked as we walked out of class an hour later.
"Uh no," I replied, "Don't you remember? It's the home opener tomorrow against St. Norbert who we apparently barely beat for the league title last year, everyone on the team has been talking about it non stop since school started."
Sometimes it was like we had been around each other so long he started ignoring me whenever I went off on a tangent, which happened pretty often.
"Oh yeah," he replied, "I remember now."
"Yeah right," I remarked, rolling my eyes as we walked across campus, the trees and ground covered in a light blanket of crisp white snow, making me slightly regret my decision to just slip on a pair of sandals instead of closed toe shoes.
"I remembered! It's on my phone! Kayla's reminded me of it like five times in the past week," he replied.
"Oh," I replied quietly, rolling my eyes ever so slightly.
Kayla was Taylor's girlfriend since the beginning of the school year, she played on the varsity hockey team with me and I could not stand the girl. She was nice enough when Taylor was around but she didn't speak to me at all outside of that. I also suspected she was slightly jealous both that I was just as good as she was at hockey and best friends with her boyfriend.
"I'll see you tomorrow night then," he said as we got back to my dorm.
"Yeah," I said, "See you tomorrow night."
###
"You and Taylor are so cute," Whitney smirked as I walked into our room.
"Not in the mood for it Whit," I sighed, throwing my backpack onto my desk.
"Sorry," she said as I flopped down on my bed with a huff.
"Don't you have class?" I asked.
"It got canceled," she replied, flopping down on her bed and texting away on her phone.
Whitney and I had been friends since our sophomore year of high school back in New York where we were from. That's where I met Taylor too, my eighth-grade year.
We were Taylor's billet family when he played junior hockey in my hometown. My Dad thought I needed company while he was at work and decided that bringing in a 16-year-old hockey player to befriend his 14-year-old daughter was a fantastic idea. We were kind of forced to be friends at first and I tried to steer clear of him at school especially because he and his teammates were so popular and I was pretty much a fly on the wall at school. It wasn't until my freshman year that we really hit it off. I can still remember the first time we hung out together.
It was early on in my freshman year, I was kind of at a dorky stage in my life, middle school in general had been my dorky stage. I also had a bad attitude, which I still hadn't quite grown out of. I had made quite a few enemies in the first month of school, not a surprise to me or my dad. I wasn't meek and quiet, I was loud and pretty much said whatever I felt like saying to whoever I felt like saying it, much to the disapproval of teachers and upperclassmen. The captain of the volleyball team, in particular, was not fond of me. She tormented me nearly every day because I was in some of her junior level classes and drove her absolutely insane. She was dumber than a box of rocks but I was one of the brightest in my class and excelled at pretty much everything, giving her even more reason to hate me.
Taylor was popular at school, all the girls wanted to date him, or at least hook up with him. He was a superstar along with the rest of his teammates at our school. He was pretty much a pretty boy with an ego, making every girl swoon with his sly grin that he wore often on his face.
I never bought the bull of his sly grin and smugness, he was just another guy to me. I lived with him and knew he was a huge softie that wouldn't say no to me if we both went for the last cookie in the cookie jar or the last bowl of cereal. I also knew that he liked to listen to Taylor Swift and sing in the shower so he didn't dare say anything to piss me off.
It was a typical Tuesday in the cafeteria, I was sitting alone in the corner, by choice of course, when Keisha Thomas, the captain of the volleyball team, decided to come torment me. I was ignoring her until Taylor out of all people came to sit with me. He never sat with me or lunch, he barely talked to me at school, but apparently, he knew exactly what was going on with Keisha. He sat with me at lunch that day, and every day after that while he was still in school. The first week or so we didn't really say much, but after that, we talked nonstop.
From that point on, we were nearly inseparable. Nothing ever went on between us romantically, we were just best friends, and we still were to this day. We did everything together at school and he would still insist on picking me up from school every day the two years I was in school after he graduated. We'd also have practices back to back after school so he would wait around for me and we'd always stop and get milkshakes at the same little shack between the rink at my house after every practice. I never thought of him as anything more than just my best friend and he never thought of me that way. We ended up going to college the same year because he was playing junior hockey and we both got recruited to play NCAA DIII in a little college in Michigan called Aladine College.
I had been there through all the girls, all the tough losses, the championship celebrations, I was the one he'd call when he got drunk to give him a ride, he was the one I'd call when a guy stood me up or my date was lame. Unfortunately, that also meant that I got a lot of shit from a lot of girls that he "dated" or fucked around with because they couldn't fathom having a relationship with a guy that didn't involve trying to sleep with him. Taylor's type was not the type of girl smart or mature enough to understand having the kind of relationship that the two of us had had since I was 14.
It was about six thirty when my phone started ringing, think of the devil and he shall call I guess.
"What?" I asked, answering the phone.
"Lovely greeting," he laughed on the other end.
"Only the best for you," I replied, "What's up?"
"You sure you don't want to go out tonight? You don't have to drink," he said.
"I'll get scratched if someone rats me out Tay, I'm sorry," I sighed, "Call me if you want a ride though, you really shouldn't walk home, I heard someone got mugged last week."
"I'll call you when I'm leaving then," he laughed, "Thanks for worrying."
"Anytime," I smiled, hanging up the phone.
"Was that him?" Whitney asked.
"Yeah," I replied, "He wanted me to go out to the Caf with him but I can't because of the game tomorrow night."
"Why doesn't he call his girlfriend for that?" she asked.
"Because she won't drink before gameday," I replied.
"And you will?" Whitney asked.
"Even if I did, I'm not stupid enough to go do it in public at Caf," I replied, "Besides, I stay up late anyway and it wouldn't affect me being out late."
I won't lie, Taylor was a slightly poor influence on me in my high school days. He was drinking at sixteen when he came to Buffalo to play, he had me drinking at seventeen when I had my first heartbreak and I had been going to parties since I was sixteen and earned the title of his personal designated driver. Most of the time, we'd go to his buddy's house across the neighborhood and stumble back home together, often times ending up in the same bed for God only knows what reason, mostly because I was super freaked out of the dark, especially when I had been drinking, his room was also up in the attic above the garage and he had a separate lock on his door. Usually, only one of us would remain sober enough to remember our keys so he would end up in my bed or me in his every Friday or Saturday night. It would usually be his dumb ass too, I was the designated driver more often than not and he'd forget his house key in the living room before we left so I'd end up dragging him up the stairs and into my room in his drunken stupor. But he knew how to cheer me up when I was down and always had my back. I loved the dumbass even if he was bad influence occasionally.
"Good to know," Whitney laughed, going back to her magazine.
###
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