Jake X Jane Homestuck Fanfiction

What Happened To Goodbye?

Chapter Seven : What happened to Goodbye?

Back at the house, I unpacked my suitcase, finished putting away the groceries, and moved our couch four places in the living room before deciding it looked best in the very spot my  dad and I unceremoniously dropped it on the day before we even brought it from the U-Haul. Just to be sure, though, I  plopped down on it with a glass of milk and booted up my laptop.

My home page was still set to my Pesterchum site. Said friends were just below, all one hundred and forty of them, face after tiny face I would, most likely, never see again. I scroll down to a handful of new messages.

Girl, we miss you already! The last board meeting totally sucked without you.

Beth, I heard from Mary you moved. Awful short notice, hope you are ok. Call me!

What happened to goodbye?

I leaned a little closer to the screen, reading these four words again,and once more. Then, against my better judgement, I clicked on the face beside them. Bringing up Andrew's page. There he was, sitting on the seawall, in his wet suit, his hair wet and wicking up in the back. He was looking to the right, at the ocean, and seeing him I felt that same little nervous tug at my stomach. We'd only known each other for a couple of months, since meeting on the beach one morning when I was taking a walk and he was out catching early swells. I spent 6:45 to 7:15 with him for weeks, working up to...well, nothing, as it turned out.

But he was right. I hadn't said goodbye. It had been easier, like always, to just disappear, sparing myself the messy details of another farewell. Now, my fingers hovered over my track pad, moving the cursor down to his comment section before I stopped myself. What was the point? Anything I said now would be an afterthought.

In truth, since my parent's split, I hadn't much faith in relationships and even less of an inclination to start any lasting ones of my own. At home, I'd had several friends I'd known since grade school, girls I'd played Rainbow  Soccer with and stuck close to in middle school. I'd had a couple of boyfriends, and gotten my heart broken more than once. I was a normal girl in a normal town, until the divorce happened.

Then, suddenly, I wasn't just one of the group anymore : no one else had a coach for a stepfather, a scandal sat home, and new siblings on the way as an aftermath. It was all so public and awful, and while my friends tried to be there for me, it was too difficult to explain what was going on. So I pulled back from everything and everyone I'd known. It'd hadn't been until we got to Pete that I realized I'd been changing even before we started moving, that my reinvention began when I was still in the most familiar of places. Once the setting was totally new, though, I could finally be, as well.

Since we'd been moving, I'd gotten smart about dealing with people. I knew I wouldn't be staying forever, so I kept my feelings at the temporary stage, too. Which meant making friends easily, but never taking sides, and picking guys I knew wouldn't last for the long haul, or any haul at all, for that matter. My best relationships, in fact, usually started when I knew we were about to move to a new place. Then, I could just go all in and totally relax, knowing that whatever happened, I could cut and run. It was why I'd started hanging out with whom I could never have any sort of future. That way, when I didn't, it was no surprise.

I clicked to my Pesterchum page, and was just about to log out when my computer made a cheerful beeping noise and my webcam activated itself.

Crap, I thought, quickly hurting down my laptop on the coffee table and darting into the kitchen. The video chat application, had somehow preloaded my computer, and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to disable it. Which shouldn't have been an issue, really, as none of my friends used it anyway. Unfortunately, someone else did.