Adolescent

15.

As soon as I stepped out into the cooling May night, I saw Aaron standing away from a group of smokers, right under a streetlight. I held my breath walking past the group of people killing their lungs, and went to Aaron. I stood beside him and grabbed his hand, threading my fingers through his, like he usually did to me. He jumped, then saw me and relaxed.

"I'm sorry." he whispered, tracing circles on my hand with his thumb.

"You don't need to be. I'm sorry for being such a smartass." I apologized, glancing up at him, admiring the shadows cast upon his face by his eyelashes that made his sapphire eyes seem to glow in the darkness.

Those eyes turned toward me, and a smirk took over Aaron's face. "You're apologizing for, like, half of your personality?"

I laughed. "Sometimes it needs it."

Aaron laughed, taking my other hand and turning me toward him. He bent to press a kiss to my forehead, then another to my lips, the cold metal of his lip ring nearly giving me shivers. I felt heat rise to my face, and grinned against his lingering lips. He chuckled, then wrapped his arms around me and tucked my head underneath his chin. I encircled his waist with my own arms, clasping my hands together in the small of his back.

"You think they're missing us right now?" Aaron asked after about a minute.

"I think that they're thinking we're off in some secluded place, making out. Which would be the best guess, knowing them." I mused.

I felt him laugh. "Probably. Does that mean that we should get inside so Sam doesn't come for me?"

"Good idea." I said, laughing. He released all of me but my right hand and we went back into Mangled Guitar.

On the way in, I spotted a familiar-looking girl, but couldn't exactly make a correct identification because she was making out with a beefy guy and wasn't facing me. But the girl held a damn striking resemblance to my cousin Meredith, who also happened to be Sam's girlfriend of maybe five or six months. Then, the girl stopped kissing the guy and turned around, seemingly hearing someone call her name. And damn if it wasn't her. And damn if it wasn't her ex-boyfriend Nathan that she'd been kissing. Her eyes met mine from across the room, and I saw her lips form my name. That was when I started hurrying Aaron along toward where Cade, Hayden and Sam were. I didn't even have time to react to Sam - in a weird, borderline-formal way - introducing Aaron and I to the members of Set It Off; I just shook hands and grinned my best, not even pausing at the new fact that we'd be performing and writing with the quintet for the encore/collaboration show scheduled for the next night. And then of course, I had to hear someone come up behind me and Mere's voice.

"Hey, Ro! Fancy seeing you here!" Meredith said false-cheerfully. I turned to face her and leant against the wall behind me.

"Babe!" Sam interjected, jumping up to peck her cheek. I cringed internally. If only he knew.

I'd honestly been expecting Meredith to cheat on Sam - she did that to every boy she dated, and liked to date my friends, though all were younger than her at her age of nineteen, to torture me and turn them against me since she and I practically looked like sisters because of the fact of our mothers having been identical twins. She'd done it before. I knew she was going to do it again; it was just her style. But I hadn't known that her next victim would be Sam until she asked him and he accepted, not even knowing what he was getting himself into. The poor boy. She was going to crush him - I knew he liked her a lot.

"Hi!" she said with the same false cheer. Then, to me, in Russian, "Can we talk?"

"Fine," I walked in front of her to the entrance to the stage-audience area. Then, I demanded of her, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?! You can't just keep destroying my friends emotionally!"