Never Walk Alone

Chapter 12

      During the weekend, I knocked on the door of Darren's house, nervous and shaky. I had no idea how to confront him, or what exactly I was going to say. So when I rang the doorbell and up popped Darren, I got the slightest bit confused. His eyes were tired and droopy, but his lips were upturned in a forceful smile.
I cleared my throat, my head spinning with so many thoughts that I couldn't muster. I had so many questions. But instead I just asked the next-to-simplest one.
"Wanna go out to the waterfall?"
It seemed so stupid when I asked it. He had just gotten over something so huge and I was asking if he wanted to hang out. But to my surprise, he looked excited; his smile did, anyways. But he still looked tired and droopy. The mood change confused me; it was almost completely uncomfortable.
"Sure!" he exclaimed.
So I walked without asking anything, which is pretty good for me. And we splashed in the water like old times even though it was the middle of August. I almost completely forgot about his dad; Although it was selfish, I know.
"Did you and Garrett have fun last night?" Darren asked me.
I looked up at him momentarily. Wait, I thought.
"You heard?" I said. There was one thing for sure; he didn't hear it from me.
"Oh yeah," he laughed, "Garret told me all about it,"
I blushed.
We waited for several minutes.
Finally, he spoke up.
"Do you like Garrett?" he asked simply.
I was going to answer no, but I thought about it. Did I? It was hard to tell. Harder than it should have been. I would have liked to just tell Darren no, but I would feel bad giving him a straightforward lie. So without thinking, I shrugged. I shrugged.
Darren laughed. Obviously quite amused with himself, Darren began writing on a piece of paper. He passed me a sheet of paper with a phone number on it. I grasped it, confused.
"It's Garrett's," Darren answered my thoughts, "I thought you might want it,"
He smirked and I wanted to punch him in the face. So I gave him a dirty look, the paper still in my hands.
"You can text him. He won't know it's you," he added.
I just blinked at him.
"Don't you know how to flirt?" he asked me.
I looked taken aback. He was asking me, of all people, to flirt? Was he an idiot?
"Um, no, stupid. I read in my free time and can go without talking all day at school," I said.
"Well, it's easier through text. Let me show you,"
Darren grabbed my phone and typed in the number. He passed it back to me.
"Type in 'guess who?' or something girly like that," he nodded.
I wasn't exactly keen on following Darren's advice, but after a few minutes I decided I would try it. So I typed what Darren suggested and waited. A few seconds later, a text bubble popped up. I picked it up, a little too excitedly.

Is this Annalise? read the message.
I huffed out a breath and looked expectantly at Darren. He shrugged and started laughing. I punched him in the gut and began to type.
Dang it. I typed.
A few seconds later, and another text appeared.
It was a laughing emoji, I learned from Darren. After discovering emojis, I was a changed person. I texted emoji after emoji, and soon our whole conversation was just random emojis. It was pretty entertaining for me. I decided it had been the best day I'd had in a few weeks. Even if Darren had acted fake at the beginning of the day, he had started to really talk to me again. It was starting to be just like it had always been between us. The rest of the day, Darren and I texted Garrett and laughed the whole way through.