The Girl With The Dice Necklace

Chapter 21- A Boy's Usual Morning

   I woke up again this morning, missing something-- someone, rather. I knew exactly what it was that was making me feel this way. I knew who I was missing.

     I stood up from bed, the early Saturday sunshine shining in my eyes, and lighting my whole room. My clock read 11:18. I stared in the mirror that I awkwardly placed in the corner of my room back at the beginning of middle school; that awful time in my life where suddenly my looks and impressions mattered. I stepped back, now fitting my whole body into the mirror. My usually messed up hair was even more messed up and my hazel eyes were squinty from having just woke up. My worn-down, white pajama shirt was almost see-through. I grabbed my hood from hanging on the back of my door and zipped it up most of the way. My plaid pajama pants were extra long even for me and gathered in a pile of extra fabric at the bottoms. 

     I walked up the stairs to the first floor, making myself a bowl of mini wheat cereal with chocolate milk. I drank a mug of coffee, emptying it in nearly one sip. I sat on the couch watching the early news, and then, when becoming bored of trying to be adult-like, flipped back to my guilty pleasure: the New Jersey Reality TV Shows. 

      The Jersey women yelled in those ridiculous Jersey accents, cursing often, their long French nails clawing at everything in sight. Overly hairsprayed hair bobbed back and forth at the camera with every sassy movement. Their fake tans colored their skin an unnatural shade of bright orange. And yet somehow, I found this all extremely addicting and entertaining. Somehow I rather just sit here on the couch with an empty mug of coffee and watch exaggerated families yell at each other rather than deal with my own life. Like the fact that someone was missing.

     I missed Audrey. It was odd admitting this but I truly did. We hadn't talked much after our awkward not-so-first-time meeting each other. That wasn't at all how either of us expected it to go. It was just so quick and awkward and strangely natural. The...cuddling (such a foreign word) was completely accidental and uncalled for but once it had happened it felt strangely comfortable.

     Although it seemed as though we both agreed, not to each other but to ourselves, that whatever had happened that evening at the movies should not have happened. It seemed as though after that we both decided to stick to our own mental standards. Not standards like those Reality TV Shows I watch-- not the ones about "and my girlfriend should be blond and slutty"-- standards as in our shared mental standard of "just friends". 

     Despite my worries of embarrassment or of not following my promise to be only friends, I still wanted to see her-- se Audrey. Although this time I was planning to stick to my "just friends". I still didn't know if I could get the guts to call her. I could still remember how hard it was last time-- and that was BEFORE we...cuddled...? No, cross that out. That wasn't what happened. Nothing happened.