Since You've Been Gone

Chapter 15

When Alex got here, he froze the instant he saw me sitting there. He saw that I was looking at him and he said, "Uh, hi Alexis," and awkwardly took his seat on the ground. "Hi. Your acting kind of funny, whats up?" He sighed. "Well, this is kinda awkward cause I had a crush on you in twelfth grade," he said. I sat there, dead silent, stunned. "You did? Funny, I had a crush on you in twelfth grade, too." I said, since I didn't know what else to say. We both sat there in dead silence for five minutes. That's when he fell back, sorta like he was gazing up at the sky. I did the same, because, what else would I do? He leaned to his side so he was facing me. "Wanna know a secret?" he said a hushed tone. His shaggy red hair fell in front of his face. So I whispered back, "Sure." Almost as soon as I stopped talking, he said, "I still like you know." I smiled. "You wanna know a secret? I like you too?" We hugged and fell back on our backs. The sky was a beautiful array of millions of stars. We gazed up at the sky for about ten minutes and then started talking. He told me how his girlfriend was murdered by Aaron Fleckbort. I stared at him, not moving or talking. "Something wrong Alexis?" he said sounding worried. "My fiance Josh was murdered by that same man." We both stared at each other stunned at by what we were hearing.

"That's weird. How both of our partners were murdered by the same guy," he said. "Yeah. Me and his sister had a court meeting. He was found guilty, and a very long time in prison," I said. "Wow. I'm really glad he's in jail. When he killed Vanessa, he served five years in the slammer, that's it. It got us mad. But, I thought he would've learned his lesson, apparently he didn't. We stared up at the stars again and started talking about stuff we wanted to do. Adventures. Apparently, Alex wants to go to Fiji before he dies. I really want to make it to Paris. I checked my phone. 9:36. We had time. We kept talking about dreams. We actually tried to make our dreams into plans. That was actually not a bad idea. I thought of an amazing idea suddenly. I sat up and said, "You got any plans for the next two and a half weeks?" He looked confused. "Uh, no, why?" he asked. "Well, I have a good amount of money for a trip, we should head to Fiji for two and a half weeks. You said it yourself. Let's turn our dreams into plans. You in?" I said eagerly. He thought about what I had just said for a moment. "Alexis, you may have loads of crazy ideas, but this is not one of them. This is an amazing idea. Of course I'm in!" he said. "Yay!" I jumped into a hug. We hugged for five minutes or something before his phone started to ring.

"Hello," he said,"yeah, I'll be there in about five minutes." He hung up and put his phone in his pocket and kissed my forehead. "Hey what's your number? We should maybe meet up for coffee tomorrow," I said grabbing my small purse and taking out my phone. He gave me his number and I typed it into my phone. "Hey, wanna walk home together?" he said standing up. We only lived two houses away from each other. Why wouldn't I walk home with him? "Yeah," I said, standing up too. "Can't wait for coffee tomorrow morning," he said. And then he did something I would NOT expect: he grabbed my hand. We were holding hands now. I seemed chill on the outside, but on the inside I was freaking out. We talked more about Fiji. When we got to his house after about five minutes, he released his grip and gave me a kiss. "See you tomorrow, princess," he said. "Bye," I said, smiling. I walked over to my house. I freaked out and collapsed onto my bed.

That was amazing.