At Least I Had Her
3 hours and 20 minutes before

With school finally over, I find Carly at her locker. She’s such a jumpy person so I make a plan to scare her. I walk along a crowd of people who are going to pass her and then come up behind her and start to tickle her. She screams so loud that people turn around to look at what’s going on but I just wave them off.

“What did you do that for?” she says while simultaneously hitting me.

“Oww! I was just messing with you, miss jumpy!” I say while laughing in pain. “I’m so ready to go home and just chill for the weekend.”

“Hey, you wanna come over tomorrow? My parents were planning on grilling up some stuff,” she says.

“Hell yeah, that’ll be cool. We haven’t really just...hung out lately, you know,” I say sheepishly while looking down at my shoes.

“Well,” she says with a little grin, “maybe after dinner we can leave my parents to hang out with Lexi and we can go up to the roof and smoke a little, like the old days of like a month ago.”

I roll my eyes and can feel my cheeks starting to warm up so I quickly turn my head away from her. “Umm, when’s your mom gonna be here?” I ask to distract her.

“Oh yeah, she just texted, said she picked up Lex so I guess we should get movin’.”

We make our way outside to the roundabout where everyone waits to be picked up. Annoyingly there are some people in our class that already have their license, yet we just have to sit here and wait for parents to decide where we go next.

Carly’s mom rolls up and Lexi leans out the back window waving furiously at us with the fattest grin on her face. I don’t know why she is always so freaking chipper, but I guess I remember when I was that age. I push her head softly towards the inside of the car, “You’re gonna fall out one day doing that. Scooch!” and I get in the back seat next to her. I ask her, “How was school today?”

She answers with, “Ehh...it was alright. We did some times tables and for some reason I just can’t get the 9’s,” she says, balling her fist while making a pouty face.

I laugh. “Hey, I’ll teach you a trick later on. How about that?”

“They’re like the easiest ones to learn, honestly”, Carly says, bouncing off of what I just said. “Hey mom what are we eating?” she continues.

“Well I got some chicken and mac and cheese cooking up in the oven,” Carly’s mom says, and I can see the utter excitement on Lexi’s face.

“Yes! I love mac and cheese!” she yells.

Carly’s mom chuckles. “I know. Your dad said you loved yourself some mac and cheese, but that you are completely disgusted by...Broccoli!”

“Noo! Not broccoli’” she says dramatically while acting like she was passing out. I nudge her shoulder and chuckle a little bit.

We finally make it to Carly’s house and her dad is walking up to the door at the same time.

“Hey! Is that the Woods’!” he says as we get out of the car. “How’s your dad doing on his trip so far?”

“He’s doing good so far I think. He texted me during class that he landed safely, checked into his hotel, and then he’s off to work!” I answer.

“He’s doing some good stuff for this country for sure. Technology is always on the rise and the upgrade! Come on in guys!” he says politely.

We walk in and the house smells so freaking good with food. Maybe it’s just because I’m hungry. My stomach growls as I think that so yes, yes, I’m very hungry. We all take our shoes off as we enter and drop our back packs down.

“Dinner will be done soon, kids, so stay close. Lexi you can go ahead and turn the tv on if you want,” Mrs. Wright says. Lexi skips over to the couch in front of the tv and Carly taps my shoulder and nods towards the stairs. I follow her up to her room.

“Keep the door open,” her dad says.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says back.

We get to her room and she goes over to her closet as I sit on the edge of her bed. “I’ve...got something to show ya,” she says as she comes out of her closet slowly. “Tada! New bowl!”

She brings the bowl over and hands it to me. “Where the hell do you get this stuff?” I ask with utter confusion.

“I know a guy.” She takes the bowl back and puts it back in her closet, surely where she keeps all of her other paraphernalia. She comes back over to her bed and sits facing towards me. “So,” she says.

“So,” I say, turning my body towards her.

“So, what’s been going on man? I feel like we only see each other at school now and text.”

“Everyday, at least,” I say back to her. “I don’t know. School’s honestly been kicking me in my ass.”

“You know you’ve always got me though,” she says putting a hand on my shoulder. “I could always help you out.”

I look at her hand on my shoulder as she slides it down to my forearm. I just look up at her and bite the inside of my lip. “I know. You’ve always been there for me, ever since that first field trip when you first started at the school.”

She moves a little closer, enough to where no one else would notice but I always notice when she gets closer to me.

“You’ve always been there for me, more than the other way around. You’ve always protected me, just like you do with your sister,” she says as she just looks at me and I can’t help but look back. She’s just so pretty it hurts. Her eyes are so blue and almond shaped. Her brown hair falls just a little on her face and I can’t help but move it behind her ear, slowly. I look down at her lips and she moves her head a little bit closer and so do I. God, I want to kiss her so bad.

“Dinner’s ready!” Lexi yells through the door and we pull apart so quickly I almost fall out of the bed.

“We’re coming,” I say back nervously. She sneaks away slowly from the door while staring at us with suspicion. Carly and I just look at each other and we start laughing.

An hour or so passed when we finished eating and Carly’s mom says she’ll drive us home. We get our shoes and our backpacks and head out the door, Lexi running like a crazy person to the car. Carly catches my hand before I walk out. “Hey. Maybe we can pick up where we left off tomorrow? We can use my new bowl.”

“I’d be totally down with that.”

“Okay,” she says while smiling and looking down at her feet. She pulls me into a hug and kisses me on the cheek slowly and whispers, “I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

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