"I love Arrow, you know that," Tory supplied suddenly, "It's just what she's doing right now is wrong, and you obviously don't see that."
"Oh, trust me," he huffed thickly, "I see it. It's all I can see."
"But what you're doing is no better."
"I'm being used."
Vince sighed, "You're aware of that...why don't you do something about it!?"
Kasin made a face in Vince direction, it was one of those she's-got-to-be-kidding-me looks, but Vince only nodded in agreement with his girlfriend. If Kasin thought he was trapped before, he was surely wrong, because there was no real way of getting out of this ordeal.
"You're waiting for her," Tory gasped in realization, leaping forward and closing the space between them for a hug. "Oh, Kasin," she breathed into the shoulder of his jacket, "You don't need to wait for her."
Kasin's muddled expression hardened, eyeing her as if she had just spoken a foreign language. "What the hell is she talking about, Vince?"
Vince mirrored his confusion, just as lost, "No clue."
"I'm not waiting for anyone...whoever you're talking about."
Tory reeled back, eyes glossed over, "You know I love Arrow."
"You already said that," Kasin informed her, "Twice now."
"I just don't trust her," she admitted bashfully, ducking her head in embarrassment.
Arrow and Tory had been best friends since Year 6, which was longer than Vince and Kasin had known each other. Tory was the one who thought it was fate when the two guy best friends had paired up with the two girl best friends. Tory soon learned, by fate she meant tragedy. And ever since, Tory never learned how to forgive herself for setting Kasin and Arrow up together and staring their infamous rollercoaster of an entanglement.
"I don't trust her," she had went on, "because I honestly don't know what she's thinking."
"She's unpredictable," Kasin supplied. She was unpredictable and that was why he was so crazy about her. Not being able to solve her was half of the fun, he had once told himself years ago. But Arrow was more of a puzzle than he had known then. "She's not going to do me any harm."
"Not to you physically," she said, placing a hand onto his shoulder, then pointed a finger to his temple, "But she's doing all sorts of fucked up shit to you mentally and it'll only get worse. I've seen her do it before. It won't end pretty."
Kasin rolled his eyes, "You're over exaggerating," he rested a hand over hers, giving it a light squeeze. "I'll be fine. Besides, she wants to play hard to get or whatever, I'll-"
"Wait for her," Tory filled in for him, winking her nose in displeasure.
"That's not what I was going to say," he proclaimed with a gentle chuckle, "I'll play just as hard as she is, and if she really wants to be with Leon, then good for her. I'll leave. Simple as that."
"Simple as that?" Vince said for the first time in minutes. "Why do I feel like you're lying?"
Kasin merely shrugged, "You'll have to wait and see if it's true or not."
As the night tumbled nearer and the shore retracted back off of the sand, the three friends found themselves back inside the car toward Woodland Hills. Vince was cuddled in the back with Tory, leaving Kasin by himself in the front of the car.
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in time with the music on the radio, lost in thought for the millionth time. Was he truly as sensitive as he had said he was?
He merely shrugged the question off and moved on to bigger thoughts that were racing his thoughts. Talking to a girl wouldn't be hard to do tomorrow at school; deciding which girl, now that was the tricky part.
Most girls at Grand Arts were the same; vain, inconsiderate, frilly things who cared about their father's paychecks more than they put thought to their own grades. Diamonds, drugs, booze, and celebrities was the only languages they spoke. Those reasons alone was why he had fallen so hard for Arrow in the first place. Being a first generation American in her family, like Kasin, had bonded them closer. Together, they related with the cultural differences. On top of that, they were both middleclass schoolmates who didn't have the same privileges as their other friends. Arrow understood him like they didn't. In a way not even Vince, his closest friend, could ever truly get where he was coming from and all that his family had sacrificed on their trip to America.
Was it even possible to find someone remotely close to that?
Kasin didn't think so.
***
"Walmart?" Vince read the blinking title with a cocked eyebrow and a disappointed frown. He was oblivious at their sudden detour to the beach until Kasin had parked the car. "I wanted to go to the beach."
"Hold your horses," Kasin unbuckled his seatbelt and leaped out of his van. "We'll go someplace more interesting. I just need to get something," when Kasin saw Vince's hands beginning to move toward his own seatbelt, he stopped him. "Alone."
He dropped the buckle, "Hurry up then."
"I will, I will," he repeated, kicking the door shut. Swiftly, he retrieved his cellphone from his back pocket and phoned Amira. Amira had texted him on his way down the stairs of Vince's apartment, asking him to stop and get a new refill of his inhaler for his little brother Hamid.
"You're already at the store?" Amira asked in shock. "That was quick that heap of metal of yours."
He dismissed her last remark, "What is it that I'm supposed to pick up again?"
"Just go to the pharmacy section of the store and say you're there to pick up Hamid's prescription."
Something faint made a sound in the far background. Amira laughed, adding, "And he said to get him a chocolate candy bar while you're at it."
"The ones that has Captain Klark's face on it!" Hamid's small voice howled into the phone. Kasin knew exactly what he was talking about. Captain Klark was all the rage for kids in Hamid age group. The ultimate, crime fighting, action hero that was sweeping the nation by storm.
Kasin glanced down at his wallet. The lonely dollar bill and two quarters that sat untouched inside his slit of the wallet. Kasin let out a sigh, "I don't know if I can, H-"
"Pretty please! Please, please, please, please, please-"
"Okay! I'll get it," Kasin surrendered, entering the store. "But, only on one condition."
"What?"
"You have to share at least one fourth of it."
"Okay," he agreed joyously. His voice turned muffled, probably turning to Amira as he asked, "How much is one fourth?" A short babble of a response uttered out of Amira and Hamid said something in return. "That's fine with me," he said into the receiver of the phone, "Just don't get the icky peanut flavored ones."
"Got it, Captain," Kasin grinned to himself, feeling the smile Hamid was most certainly giving him in return. "I'll see you when I get home."
After their brief goodbyes, Kasin made a beeline for the pharmacy, ducking and weaving past shopping carts and hurrying shoppers. His head shot up, reading the aisle names and the boards that hung above.
"Pharmacy, pharmacy, pharmacy," he muttered softly under his breath. A sudden jab shot up his side, stopping him in his tracks. He glanced down to see what he had ran into.
Or rather in this case, who.
A girl with bright punky purple hair stumbled past him, murmuring a choppy apology as she scurried off to the checkout line with a soda in hand. Her sharp facial features and slim figure seemed oddly familiar, but from where? He didn't know exactly how, but he could have sworn to have seen her face somewhere. But with the nose piercing puncture into her left nostril and the unsettling shade of purple deep to her roots left Kasin confused on to who she reminded him of.
"K..." his tongue began to start on her name. She turned at the same time, seeing him. As though the same thought was working through her mind, she smiled at the sight of him. After an embrace, she said how she remembered him at the Urgent Care center, recalling their conversation about the school he attended. When she said she would be enrolling at Grand Arts this coming semester, a lightbulb went off.
Before thinking about it for a moment too long, Kasin got an idea that was sure to get his friends out of his hair. "Are you busy right now? Are you up to anything?"