Our story started with a gaming session. My friends and I were crowded around my TV set in the living room, controllers in hand as we stared robotically at the TV screen.
"And I beat you again...sucker," I stated, proudly. I gave my friend a smug look and twirled a lock of my short blonde around my index finger.
"Shut up, Bridget," Hudson mumbled, as he threw down his Xbox controller. "You know I don't play Battle Ground much."
"Such lies," Gavin said, rolling his eyes. "You've been playing this game for the past two years now—how does that constitute as 'not playing much?'"
Hudson blushed. "I only play it whenever Bridget asks me to," he replied, hotly.
"Uh-huh, so please explain to me why you have all of the Battle Ground games at home?" I asked, smirking. There's a total of five games in the Battle Ground franchise. The first two are based on real-life wars, the others fictional. The fourth and fifth games have a sci-fi twist to it, while the third is just a fictional war based in Europe. We like the third one, and that's the one we play the most—along with most other Battle Ground fans. In fact, it's the one that gets used in competitions the most. The company who made the game redefined the multiplayer experience with it; no longer were you stuck in teams of 16; now it was teams of 64, making it a total of 128 players in a map! Also, the physics of the game and the visuals were just incredible. It's almost as if you were participating in an actual war.
Hudson glared at me. "If you don't recall, you were the one who forced me to buy them all so I could play with you. I'm three seconds away from burning all of your videogames," he threatened.
I fake gasped. "You wouldn't!" I narrowed my eyes at him.
"Just watch me," he said, as a huge smirk tugged on those thin lips of his.
"I really hate you, Hudson, I hope you know that."
"And right back at ya." Hudson winked at me through his glasses. His stupid, overly-sized blue glasses.
I chucked my controller at him.
"Hey!" He winced as the controller collided with his shin. "That was not cool, Bridget!"
"And threatening to burn my life is not cool, either," I retorted.
Gavin burst out laughing. "Oh my god, Bridget. Your life?" Gavin doubled over on the couch, clutching his stomach, his face turning red.
"Alright, for your information, that may have been a slight exaggeration... But you know how much I prize my videogames, Milton!"
Milton is Gavin's last name and sometimes, to catch his attention and make a point to him, I'll call him that instead of his first name.
"But still, you're a girl. Can't you find something better to—Bridget!" Gavin gasped, when his face met the throw pillow in my hands.
"Stereotype me again and it'll be my fist the next time," I hissed.
"Is it just me, or is Bridget being especially feisty this afternoon?" Hudson asked, amusingly, as he scratched the back of his head. His light blonde hair fell loosely over his oceanic blue eyes as he tilted his head up slightly towards me. He smirked.
"Esmond probably winked at her or something today," Gavin mused.
I felt my cheeks flame at the mention of "The Guy."
"Gavin!" I snapped. "How could you even think that?!" I lifted the pillow in my hands, about to smack him again, when I suddenly felt it being ripped away from me.
"Let's not do that, shall we?" There was a twinkle of amusement in Hudson's eyes as he set the pillow back down onto the couch.
"Yeah, don't do that, Bridget," Gavin repeated, mockingly, as he sat up on the couch to make room for Hudson and I.
"Sometimes, I wonder how I even became friends with you," I huffed, sitting between them. I glared at Gavin. Out of Hudson and me, Gavin's the eldest—but only by three months when compared to me. I'm the second eldest, being a January baby, and Hudson's the youngest (his birthday's in May). Gavin and I always tease him about it.
It's actually pretty funny how Gavin, Hudson, and I met. I still remember it as if it were something that had happened yesterday. It was kindergarten and being that I hated to hang out with girls, I was pretty much a loner...at least until Hudson came along. I was sitting at a table, drawing, when Hudson came up to me and started scribbling nonsense over my stunning drawing of Barney, the beautiful purple dinosaur. As with most five year olds, I started to cry. I mean, you'd be crying too if some jerk that you barely knew came up to you and started ruining a perfectly drawn picture of Barney you had tried so hard to perfect!
I actually still have the drawing, believe it or not. It's in my room and every time Hudson and I look at it, we'd shoot knowing glances at each other before bursting into laughter.
Anyways, after Mrs. Herring, our kindergarten teacher, found out about what Hudson did to me, she scolded him and made him apologize to me. Surprisingly enough, Hudson actually came over to apologize. And then, as a sad attempt to cheer me up, Hudson showed me his cool new toy car and then I forgot all about the drawing he had ruined, and we started conversing as if nothing had really happened between us. We became fast friends after that. Then, a few months later, Gavin joined us. He was the new kid in town and he had a lot of trouble making new friends because a lot of the kids were scared of him.
Yeah, you heard that right.
Kids were scared of him.
Now, you may be wondering why so many of the kindergarteners were afraid of him. Well, you see, Gavin's a ginger, and being that Hudson and I lived in a town with less than five hundred people, there weren't many gingers here.
So a lot of the kids started to think that Gavin was an alien from Mars or something and they started screaming every time they saw him—I know, stupid right?
Hudson and I were probably the only two people in our fifteen-student class to have not been afraid of him and so, as an act of kindness, we invited him into our sad little group of two and ever since then, we were inseparable.
To be honest, besides Gavin and Hudson, I don't have many other friends. I mean, I do converse with other kids in my high school, but none of them are actually people whom I can consider as friends. I've never had a female friend—and quite frankly, I couldn't care less about it. Girls scare me, to be honest. I'm always seeing girl drama between them nowadays. They always seem to be fighting over a guy or back talking about their own best friends—like hello? Why would you even think about back talking about your own friend? That's just messed up.
I hate how girls gossip, too. It's ridiculous! I mean seriously, unless the gossip was on something related to you or your best friend, it's honestly not that healthy to gossip about other people whom you barely know. I hear girls asking other girls about crushes or 'who's dating who' and all I'm thinking in my head is, "Uh...so what if she's dating him? It's not as if it's going to affect you in any way."
So yeah, that's why I don't make friends with girls. I stick to guys instead (being that they are way less complicated to deal with), although some girls at my school automatically assume I'm a 'slut,' which is really ironic for them to say because I'm sure most of them have already lost their big V already.
"Because I'm awesome and super cool?" Gavin suggested. It took me a moment to realize that he was responding to my rhetorical question. He waggled his eyebrows at me and crossed his eyes and puffed up his cheeks, in an attempt to make me laugh.
It worked. I laughed. "Nowhere near," I rasped out, between giggles.
"You look more like a bloated clown fish," Hudson piped.
Gavin stopped making funny faces and glared at Hudson. "Har, har, aren't you funny."
"What? It's the truth."
I rolled my eyes at Hudson. "Well, I think you're cute," I stated. And I'm being serious. Gavin still has some baby fat on him—something that I tease him relentlessly about—and he has beautiful orange hair (they remind me of oranges; go figure). His green eyes are like emeralds, too.
"Aw schucks, how you make me blush," Gavin joked, as he waved off my statement.
"So, are you guys up for another round of Survival?" I asked, as I lifted my Xbox controller. In Battle Ground, there's a game mode known as Survival where the goal is for players to survive as many waves of attacks as possible. That means if you're Team USA, then you try to hold off your defense points for as long as you can against Team Europe. Team USA consists of eight soldiers, all played by actual people. There are an infinite number of soldiers on Team Europe's side. Survival is set in a dystopian world, so it has a very different feel to the actual multiplayer experience (and the game in general).
"Nope," Hudson piped, slapping the controller out of my hands.
I scowled, tilting my head up to glare at him. "Well..."
"We have soccer practice today," Gavin said, getting up from the couch.
Right. I had completely forgotten about that. Gavin and Hudson both play soccer at my school. They're really good at it—Gavin especially. I know he's been playing soccer since he was eight.
"I see how it is. Leaving me alone..." I teased.
"You wanna come watch us?" Hudson asked, even though he knows that I always tag along with them.
"I thought you'd never ask!" I said, clasping my hands together and beaming at him.
"Then hurry up and get your butt out the door."
"Says the guy who hasn't even gotten his butt out the door."
"Why are you so mean to me?" Hudson said, putting on the saddest face he could muster.
My simple reply: sticking out my tongue.