"J-Jason, what happened last night?" I asked from across the table as Jason's mom put bacon in a pan on the stove, the sizzle of it hitting a hot pan filling the quiet kitchen. "I nearly had a h-heart attack."
"Just a bad dream, okay?" He mumbled almost inaudibly as he prodded his egg yolks with his toast.
He looked absolutely shaken, even after going back to bed. I don't think he slept after that; he seemed to struggle to keep his eyes open. I guess I understood the feeling, how embarrassing that would be... But he wouldn't even tell me what the dream was about! I'm his best friend. I mean, we always talked about our dreams. It made me wonder what was so bad about this one.
"Bad dream?" His mother asked from behind us, "Was that why you were yelling last night?" My mother looked between us as she leaned against the counter. "I thought you two were fighting or having sex or--"
"Whoa!" Jason and I shouted in unison. I found myself burning a bright pink, staring at the plate in front of me.
His mother laughed. "Calm down, it's totally natural you know. Just be sure to be safe about it and use--"
"For the love of God, we weren't doing anything other than trying to kill each other in Streetfighter." I saw him point his fork at her defensively as I glanced up at him-- he was also quite red, so maybe my embarrassment wasn't so obvious.
His mother meant well, she just didn't seem to grasp the fact... that he didn't see me that way.
"I'm sorry Amy," she started, rubbing her arm with a shy smile on her lips. "you guys spend so much time together I just assume..." She shook her head, her loose hair falling in front of her face. "I shouldn't keep pushing this, I'm sorry."
I looked up and cleared the lump from my throat, "It's fine... I-I guess I would assume the s-same thing," I said with a soft laugh.
That wasn't fair. I knew it wasn't as soon as the words left my lips. It wasn't his fault I felt so... unwanted.
I found myself staring at my plate, too guilty to eat. It's not like I don't want to! I just can't... I cannot ruin this. Hell, even just considering it almost ruined our whole friendship.
I sigh. The memories of the night flooded back.
It was a few months ago, the middle of summer; Jole invited us over to his house, but they were repainting the place, so we had to stay in the basement. We had plans of watching movies, and maybe squeezing in some video games, but when the whole upper part of the house smells like paint it kinda squashes the fun. Plan: B from Jole was an impromptu board game night in the basement with snacks and whatever movies we could illegally download onto our phones. Of course, we were all cool with it and got permission from our parents, so we broke out a board game and some junk food from the pantry. It was honestly the best, just hanging out and laughing, tossing chips at each other, and cheating in Monopoly.
But as we all feared, we soon ran out of junk food. Jole and I lost to Amy in a wicked rock paper scissors match (who knew she would pull a paper on two rocks) so we had to suffer the paint smell to get some more when I spotted two six-packs of beer in his fridge. He tried to persuade me to just ignore the fact that he had somehow gotten this amount of alcohol without his mom finding out, seeing as she was super against drinking; then he had the audacity to try to say it was all for himself! I finally convinced him to bring it to the basement with us so we could try it after what felt like ten minutes of arguing-- my winning point was the fact I'd rather experience it with my friends in a safe place than at a party or something; kinda hard to argue against that.
YOU ARE READING
Hybrid
Paranormal(Number 3 in Demonic and Angelic!) Jason is your ordinary guy. He may sleep in class and forget some things, but other than that he's not someone you'd find particularly interesting. Too bad that he isn't as ordinary as he thought. After his best fr...
