It Was Always You

Chapter Twenty Seven

An hour later Jared walks into his bedroom and was surprised to see Cale sitting on his bed looking through his homework packet that he refused to do. Not because he didn't like the subject but only because he felt uninterested in the project. Cale looks up from the pages and smiles.

"Why hello there Jared, been waiting for you to get home." He puts the papers down on his lap and looks at him expectantly.

Jared shuts his bedroom door. "Well I hope you haven't been waiting to long."

"Eh, no more than twenty minutes or so." He waved off.

Jared paused a moment before sitting into his desk chair. "Must be important if you decided to wait for me that long Cale."

The old man took a deep breath. "Your sister called me Jared."

He looks away in annoyance. Cale gave him a good hard look. "Care to tell me what's been going on with you?"

As proof that something was wrong he held up the homework packet and waited silently for him to answer. Jared took a moment before he got up and sat down next to him on the bed.

"Mila and Evan got together." was all he said.

Cale raised his eyebrows. "Well, this is news to me." He frowned then nodded to himself. "Stop mopping around Jared, if I know my pumpkin it's something she must figure out herself."

Jared looked confused. "What do you mean?"

Cale scratched his chin ignoring Jared's question and said instead, "You feel in Conflict between wanting her yourself, but being loyal to your best friend so you don't know what to do or how to act."

Jared stared at him for he completely nailed it on the head.

"I'm guessing there are times you want to hate Evan?"

He looked away feeling guilty. "I can't help feeling that way. In my mind he doesn't deserve her, but at other times he's like a brother to me and I don't want anything to jeopardize that." he tells him.

Cale was nodding his head as if he completely understood. "I'm going to tell you a story on how I met my very first love. I was eighteen, I was getting ready to ship out to Vietnam, at that time she was already engaged to my best friend George. She was the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. At first we didn't hit off to well. I accidently pushed her in a pile of mud. Completely by accident of course. But for the next three days all we did was argue about anything. Even though I knew she couldn't stand me, I fell in love with her."

"The day I was to leave she came to me and cried in my arms. She told me she and George got into bad and that he threatened to call off their engagement. I told her that George would never do that I mean how could he? She was beautiful, talented, smart and caring. I told her that if he called it off then he was a complete dumb ass. She looked up at me and you know what she said?"

Jared was completely in raptured of the story. Cale stared him down. "She told me, 'I'm not crying because George wants to break it off, I'm crying because if he does I will never see you again.' She was from France and her parents only agreed to let her stay in America because George proposed to her. if George broke it off she would be deported back the next day and that's when I knew."

Jared was shocked. "Knew what?"

"That she loved me and not my best friend." Cale said softly.

Jared was speechless. There were so many things that matched the same as own story. Cale got off the bed and took the packet and threw it down on Jared's lap. "You should finish that." And he went to go leave.