Unexpected Love

Chapter 17: Bonfire

Hayes

"I know you're friends with Lauren. But can you not hang out with her that much? I need to know that you'll be loyal to me and me only."

"No!" I blurt out.
"Wait, what?"
"Paige, I guess I'll be your boyfriend, but not if I can't hang out with my other friends!"
"But what if you start to like other girls more than me?"
Um, I already do. And that's when I break up with you, dumb*ss.
"I won't." That's all I say. I mean, probably not truthful in anyway, but she doesn't know that.
"Thanks Hayes! I've always known that we would make the perfect couple!"
I laugh but cover it up with a cough. "Okay bye," I say. For some reason I feel like there's only one person I can talk to about this.

"You promise you won't tell her?" I ask Lauren. "I just really don't like her that way, and I don't want to hurt her feelings." She looks like she's deep in thought. "But what makes her different from other girls?" She asks. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you've had to have rejected numerous girls before. What makes her different that you have to agree to be her boyfriend just so you don't hurt her feelings?" She responds.
"I'm not sure. She just gives me a creepy feeling like she's so...calm I guess in person. But I feel like if I said no she would somehow get me back..."
"Hayes. She's 14. You're 14. I'm 14. We don't really think about revenge at this age." She laughs and then continues. "Or any age. Maybe you'll like her if you get to know her better."
"But there's something else," I add. She raises an eyebrow. "She told me that she doesn't want me to hang out with you. But don't worry, I told her no," I say to her startled reaction.
"That's weird. Usually she tries to get boys to hang out with me. But I think I understand why she said that. She had this boyfriend for a little bit a few months ago that hated me for some reason. And I hated him. So she always tried to get us to hang out, in and out of school. We became friends, but then he cheated on her with like, other girls or something. So they broke up. That's why she doesn't want you to talk to me, she doesn't want you to cheat on her like Max did."
I call Paige and put the phone on speaker. Lauren sits right in front of me on the ground, and we are both hunched over my phone waiting for Paige to pick up. When she hears the click, she tilts her head up towards me and I notice her ponytail sway side to side. I pick up my phone.
"Hi Paige."
"Hi Hayes."
"I just wanted to tell you that I would never cheat on you or anything. I know why you didn't want me to talk to or hang out with Lauren. She told me about your previous-"
"Wait. Are you with Lauren right now?"
"Yeah. Anyways she said that your previous boyfriend, um Max? That he cheated on you. Is that why you didn't want me to talk to Lauren? Or other girls?"
I hear her sigh on the other line. "Yeah," she says. Lauren grabs my phone.
"Paige I'm your best friend. I would never do something like that to you."
"I know," Paige says. "I have to go though. I'm going out to dinner with my fam."
"Alright bye," Lauren and I say at the same time.

We walk down the hall. I reach the front door and start to put on my shoes. "Hayes you don't have to leave," Lauren says. "Emma and I were thinking of starting a bonfire tonight. You could make hotdogs and s'mores with us. If you want." "Okay!" I say. She runs to Emma's room and brings her out. "Hi Hayes!" She says upon seeing me. Then she turns to her sister. "Do you want to get the fire started right now?"
"Yeah," Lauren beams, looking up at her sister. We head outside and over to a huge red thing with benches around it.
"This is what we call the burning barrel," Emma says, gesturing to it. She thrusts a box of matches into my hands. "Lauren will show you what to do. I'll go get grass and stuff."
Lauren unscrews the top of the burning barrel and throws it aside. Emma comes back with newspaper, then leaves. "It's literally just like starting a fire. Not that hard to explain. But we can't use a lighter cuz it makes the actual barrel catch on fire. So we have to use a bunch of matches. The newspaper is the starter. Now just make fire," Lauren explains. She strikes a match and watches it burn. Then she throws it into the barrel. We do this until our boxes of matches are empty. Emma comes back occasionally to put weeds and twigs in.
I'm surprised at how big the fire actually is. The flames seem like they're five feet tall. The smoke curls up into the air. I dust my hands off as Lauren hands me a stick. We shove the hotdogs on the ends and start roasting them. They catch on fire and cook quickly, but don't burn. By now, the sky is dark. I listen to the girl's conversation.
"Have you seen mom yet today?" Emma asks.
"No," Lauren replies, studying her hot dog. "I haven't seen her since yesterday."
"Oh. Well I saw her this morning before she went to work. You know how Arby's needed her last night? She was promoted to a manager position!"
"Really? That's great. But she's only part time," Lauren says.
"I know! But apparently she's been working hard or whatever and someone noticed."
"Yay. I'll congratulate her when I see her," Lauren says. She hands me a bottle of ketchup.
When we're all finished, Emma adds some more grass to the fire. Then Lauren comes out of the house with the s'more stuff which she places on a picnic table. "You put Reese's cups on your s'mores too? I thought I was the only one," I say, picking one up. "Me too!" She exclaims. "It's like we were meant to be," I say laughing. "Just don't tell Paige I said that." She laughs too. "I won't."
I burn my marshmallow to make it crispy, the way I like it. But I watch as Lauren and Emma each take their time to make theirs' golden brown. I go to the picnic table and break a graham cracker in half, placing one down on a little glass plate. I unwrap a Reese's cup and stack it on top of the graham cracker, then my marshmallow. You know how it goes. Lauren comes over to make her's, looks at mine and snorts. "Don't eat that," she says. She points at the little glass plate. "That's an ashtray." I pick up my s'more and look at what I thought was a plate. Oops. I take my s'more and throw it into the fire, grabbing another marshmallow.
In less than a couple minutes, we go from making s'mores to having a marshmallow war. It starts when Lauren walks behind me and sticks a burnt marshmallow to my head. At first, I didn't know what she had done. But I felt my hair with my hand and touched the hot marshmallow. Somehow, I rubbed it throughout my hair making it really sticky. I hear Lauren laugh, turn around, and stick my marshmallow right on her forehead. Her expression changes, and her eyes dart up to her head and then to me. "You've officially started a war," she says grinning mischievously. She grabs two marshmallows and before I can react, she sticks them against my ears. Then she runs.
I chase her. I step on a whole bunch of plants and stuff, so it's difficult to run. But she seems used to it and isn't bothered by all the rocks and thorns against her bare feet.  I start chucking marshmallows at her, but she dodges them. Suddenly, she disappears. I stop running and look around. I walk over to her pond and dunk my head underwater to rinse the sticky marshmallow away. When my head comes back up to the surface, I'm knocked off balance when Lauren jumps onto my back. She tackles me right into the pond.
"You've gone too far!" I scream loudly. I dunk her head under too. She swims quickly, right over to the little floating dock. She climbs up onto it. I know what she's going to do next. She backs up to the edge of the dock. I start to swim away, but it's too late. She runs and jumps right onto me, pulling me under.
We both come up at the same time. The moonlight seems to shine right on her face. Without thinking, I brush her wet blonde hair out of her eyes. "If I wasn't friends with you, I don't know if I ever would get into a marshmallow war," I say. She giggles and grabs my hand from her hair. Then she pulls me back to shore.
Lauren walks home with me. When I get there, we go to the man cave. I put in a random movie, and it happens to be Poltergeist, the movie we watched together when we first met. It's really late, so it doesn't surprise me when Lauren falls asleep. I try to wake her up, but in the process I start to drift away too.

When I wake up the next morning, I notice someone put a blanket over me. I turn my head and see that I wasn't sleeping on a pillow; I was sleeping on Lauren's head, which is on my shoulder. I unlock my phone to see a text message from Nash. I open it up and look at the picture he sent me. He also wrote "I put this on Twitter😂"
Oh no. The picture is of Lauren and me sleeping on one another. At first I don't think anything of it. But if he posted it on Twitter, then...Paige might see it.
"Nash!"
Lauren stirs beside me and wakes up. "Well thanks for the awakening," she says while blinking. "What's that?" She then asks, peering at my phone. I quickly turn it away. "Just Nash being a butt." I say quickly.

Later, after Lauren leaves, I hunt down Nash. I take the X-box controller from his hand and throw it to the ground. "Delete that picture off Twitter. Now." I demand. He pulls his account up. "But look at all these comments you're getting! People love you two together! They're making ship names for you!"
I feel my face turn red, a little from anger, but oddly enough, a lot from embarrassment. "I have a girlfriend now. I told her I wouldn't like, start liking other girls." Nash raises an eyebrow. "Er, that came out wrong. I don't like Lauren, not like that." He smirks and says a one word reply. "Okaaayyyyyy." Then he deletes the picture.

The good thing is, Paige never saw the tweet. I'm pretty sure she would come to my house with weapons and an angry mob if she did see it. Especially the day after we started "dating".

Ughhhh. I shudder. I really, REALLY don't like thinking of her as a girlfriend. Or a girl that's a friend.