A Book of Firsts!

Fifth Chapter One! (✔)

"You went to a party last night?" my best friend asked, a little more surprised than I had expected him to be.

"Yeah," I said with a chuckle. I ran through the scenario in my head recounting how a group from my history class had convinced me to join them.

"Hm." He hummed.

I looked over, catching him in thought, and waited until he met my eyes. I gave him a look that said, 'and?'

He smirked. "What?"

"Oh, wait! Is this the part where I'm supposed to give you a speech about your comfort zone and how getting out of it will be life changing?"

"Or maybe this is more of the, 'you do you, boo,' convo," he joked, resting his forearms on the ledge outside his window.

"Neither," I deadpanned while picking up a pair of socks I had folded into a ball.

"You sure? Because as your best friend I find it important to give you those important talks."

I rolled my eyes and lobbed the socks at him. It hit him harmlessly in his arm but he gave me an appalled look nonetheless as he bent to pick the fallen socks up. He admired the Princess Peach design as he rolled the sock ball around in his palm.

"These are mine now. You shouldn't have thrown them."

"You want to keep my Princess Peach socks?" I asked incredulously, raising a suspicious eyebrow.

"Yeah, guess I'm just a Princess Peach kind of guy."

"Keep it up and you can have the whole collection," I teased, smiling as he threw the socks over his shoulder and onto his unmade bed.

"You have an entire collection of Super Mario Bros themed socks?" he asked with a snort.

"You don't know everything about me," I challenged, finally walking away from the mountain of clean clothes to my open window that sat across from his.

"Oh yeah, you're a real mystery," he responded flatly.

"Hey! I can be mysterious."

"Suuure," he replied with a face that said, 'I'm totally calling your bluff.'

I grabbed one of the dryer balls that had tumbled out of one of my clothing baskets and chucked it at him. He had the reflexes that came from several years as a baseball player and was easily able to catch it before it hit him in the head.

"Hey!" He laughed, tossing it up and down before looking back at me.

"Is this going to be a new thing with you, throwing things at me?

"Would it change anything?" I countered, watching as he rolled it back and forth between both hands.

"Nah, not really. What is this anyway?"

"It's a dryer ball."

"Weird," he commented as he started to poke at it with his fingers before lobbing it back to me.

Being as uncoordinated as I was, I totally missed it and felt it ram into my nose and bounce off to roll under my dresser.

"Oops. Sorry Clo," he said with an impish giggle.

"No you're not," I accused, rubbing the end of my nose before moving away from the window to pick up my phone which had started to buzz.

"I am too," he argued, watching with a small smile as I pulled the phone up to my ear. I held a finger up to my mouth in the universal shh sign. He zipped an imaginary zipper across his lips in return and silently observed as I listened to the familiar voice of my sister.