After All These Years

Eighteen

Sixteen years.  Elizabeth Manning had known Jason Cunningham for sixteen years, since they were teenagers.   He started off her twin brother's closest friend after they had relocated to a new town when her father took a new job.  He was just a kid that her brother met during the summer at a local rec center playing a pick up game of basketball.  That quickly transitioned into someone that was a constant presence in her house and in her pool through the rest of that summer.   Once her junior year started, he was her brother's teammate on the football team, which then continued into basketball season. Most of her brother's teammates either pretended she was invisible or treated her as if she was their annoying little sister, except for Jason who treated her like a human being.  He made an effort to get to know her, to engage her in the school hallways, to engage her in conversation, and to come around the house regardless if NIcholas was even home or not.   She almost felt if maybe he was more her friend, than her brother's, but she didn't want to get her hopes up considering she always found it difficult to make friends as she was always one of the guys.  Having her brother as the star athlete and constantly living in his shadow created a lot of doubt surrounding if people really wanted to be friends with her, or if they were just trying to use her to get closer to her brother. 

A turning point in her junior year was when she was being passive aggressively bullied by Brittany Sheffield, one of the head cheerleaders, who Nicholas had mistakenly casually dated for a few months.  After Elizabeth found out that Brittany was cheating on Nicholas with someone from the soccer team,  Elizabeth waited until the day before Nicholas was supposed to take Brittany to the sold out concert of the year to tell him about Brittany's discretions.  Nicholas's immediate reaction was to end things with Brittany before he scalped the tickets for a profit.  A few days later he wound up using some of that money to take out Valerie Reynolds on a very nice and expensive date that increased Brittany's level of infuriation ten fold.  

Brittany blamed Elizabeth for the breakup, and in retaliation, she left Elizabeth in a very vulnerable situation after gym class after she stole all of elizabeth's clothes from the shower partition, though was nice enough to leave behind her underwear.  Elizabeth was mortified and knew she couldn't call her brother to bail out because of his nuclear like temper, and she decided if anyone would come through for her, it would be Jason.

Jason did not disappoint her, and after he recovered a spare set of shorts from the lost and found and his favorite Metallica tour shirt that he kept in his locker, he rescued her from humiliation.   He went so far as to take her home so that she could change into her own clothes before they grabbed a bite to eat together and returned to school just as their lunch period was ending.    That day, Elizabeth's and Jason's relationship shifted to something of real substance. 

The days she stayed after school to help work on their live production set design, or when she needed to run lines with the cast of the plays or musicals she was in, Jason was there for her.  He had become more dependable in her life than her own brother, who had managed to forget her at the movies twice that year. 

In the summer between her junior and senior year of high school, she spent most of her summer earning money teaching private swim classes for children and barely saw Jason except for on the weekends.  As the relationship with Nicholas and Valerie seemed to become more serious, she felt herself leaning on Jason more both emotionally and physically.  He was the person she started to run everything by, the person she shared her life and her emotions with, and on the days where she was a bit of a mess feeling exhausted and as if she was missing out on her summer by working so hard, he was more than just a sounding board.  He encouraged her to give herself some grace, take time to herself when she needed it, and not to let the pressure of paying for college keep her from living her life.