“Why do you live so far away?” I asked my best friend Addison, or Addie for short.
“It’s not my fault I live on this secluded little island and the bus only comes every half hour” she replied with an annoyed tone.
“Whatever, can we just start tanning already? My skin is getting more and more white every minute I’m out of the sun.”
We headed outside and onto the deck where we laid out our towels all ready to tan. It was almost the end of summer, but the weather was still hot and humid.
“So tell me all about it!” I said excited as I rubbed sun tanning lotion onto my legs.
“Well… we made out!” Addie said, a smile forming on her face.
“And… That’s all you’re going to tell me? No details?”
“He texted me and asked if he could come over, but my mom was home. So I told him I was taking the dog out for a walk and he could meet me at the park. We got to the park… and it just happened. I don’t know what got into me. Once we started, I couldn’t stop and now I really think I like him.”
“Aww Addie!” I said as I reached over and gave her a huge hug “You do know this is Marc were talking about, right? The kid who said he could see into the future when we were in seventh grade?”
“Hahaha, very funny! I think he’s matured a little bit in the past 3 years. Anyway were going to be starting grade 11 in a couple weeks and we need to make it count.”
“What exactly did you have in mind?” I asked with a smirk on my face. Addie and I were constantly making up bets on things we wanted to accomplish.
“Well I was thinking that this year is going to be the year of boys.”
“Every year is the year of boys for you Addie. How many boys have you talked about this summer?”
“I like boys, so what? At least I’m not still hung up on a certain someone from 2 years ago”
“William!” I said trying to hide it with a cough “Speaking of Willy Wonka, how has he been?”
“He’s good, I’ve been texting him a lot lately.” Addie replied blushing a little bit.
“What about Marc, you can’t just hook up with him and then ditch him for Will.”
Sometimes I sounded more like her mom then her best friend. Addie liked boys, and when I say boys I mean boys plural. Her liking more than one boy at a time wasn’t uncommon for her. Now she wasn’t a slut or a whore like she would like to believe. She’s more of a jump the gun kind of girl. She falls easy and then when they don’t catch her, I have to glue her back together. Kind of like what a mom does for her child.
“For right now, I’m just looking at my options and I’m not going to make any decisions right now.”
“That’s a first.” I said rolling my eyes.
“Shut up. Anyway, enough about me and my love life. What’s going on with you? How’s that two faced hoe from work?”
“I don’t talk to her anymore, and quite frankly no one talks to her anymore.”
You see, over the summer I had developed a crush on one of the guys at work. One of my other best friends (or should I say ex-best friend), decided to go for him and didn’t even bother to let me know. When I found out, I wasn’t mad at the fact that they had a thing going on, I was mad because she didn’t even tell me about it and she tried to hide it from me. Long story short, she backstabbed me, he saw her for what she truly was, he dumped her and now she has no friends.
“Good, I never really liked her anyway.”
As I was lying outside, soaking up the sun I began to think about all the boys that have been in my life in the past few years. The thought of them all made me cringe. It felt like so long ago and they weren’t something that I liked to think about very much. My thoughts were disturbed by the vibrations of my phone. I went to pick up my phone and noticed it was a text from mine and Addie’s other best friend Jennifer.
“Jen’s here. I’ll get the door.” I said as I got up from where I was sitting and headed towards the front of the house.
“Okay.” Addie replied.
As I got to the front of my house I noticed Jen standing there looking a little lost as usual. I got closer and began to become aware of a dark purple bruise forming under her eye.
“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.
“N-nothing I fell. It’s n-not a big deal. I’m fine.” She replied stuttering.
I knew right away that it wasn’t nothing. There was something she wasn’t telling me. Come to think of it she’d been acting weird all summer. Almost as if she was covering up something. I didn’t want to get into it right now with her, so I left it alone. She already looked miserable and I didn’t want to make her feel worse.
“Okay.” I said as we started to head towards the backyard.
As we got near the deck I head Addie shriek “OH.MY.GOD! What happened to you Jen?”
“I-I- fell.” Jen replied her voice shaking.
I turned to Addie and gave her a look, hoping she would understand to just back off. She saw my look immediately and changed the subject.
“So I made out with Marc yesterday.” Addie said turning her attention back to Jen.
“Yeah, apparently it was amazing and it gave her butterflies” I said in an exaggerated tone.
“Stella! I did not say that.”
“So it sucked.”
“NO! It was just… different.”
“Different good or different bad? If it’s different good then you have nothing to worry about.” Jen said.
“Well some of us don’t have a perfect love life like you Jen.” Addie said.
“Speaking of Alex, how is he Jen?” I said flipping over on my front side.
“He’s okay. We got into a fight today, but everything is fine now. So Marc huh?” Jen said switching subjects. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about Alex.
“Yeah, but I don’t know about him. I haven’t talked to him since yesterday. Maybe it was just a one time thing.”
“Why don’t you just text him?” I said.
“I did but he never replied.” She replied.
“When did you text him?”
“Yesterday… It’s a bad thing that he didn’t reply right?” Addie said in a worried tone.
“Not necessarily. Maybe his phone died or something. He’ll reply soon enough.”
“Yeah.” She replied a little disappointed.
Once again my phone started vibrating. I turned to check it and saw it was a text from my mom telling me to be home soon. It was already 4:30 and I still had chores to do.
“Sorry to break up our girls day, but I got to start heading home now.”
“Aw, okay.” They both said in unison.
“Are we still going to see a movie Friday night?” I asked them.
“Yeah, I just need to check with my mom, but it should be okay.” Jen replied.
“Ya, I can come too.” Addie added.
“Okay I’ll see you guys Friday then. Oh and we still need to pick a movie.”
“I’ll check the movies when I get home” Jen said.
“Okay, sounds good.”
I started walking towards the front of the house when I heard Addie shout “Oh and Stella, don’t forget about what I said before about the year of boys.”
“Oh I won’t, anyway you’ll be reminding me every day. Bye guys!”
As I started walking towards the bus stop, I pulled out my iPod and selected a song. No one was at the bus stop, so I took a seat on the bench. A few minutes later, the bus came into view and I got up making my way towards it. I took a seat towards the back and continued to listen to my music, after a few minutes I was completely zoned out. A tap on my shoulder brought be back to Earth.
“Stella?”
I looked up from my iPod, and was shocked to see who was staring back at me.
“Zach?”
Kill me. Kill me right now.