There For Me Always

Chapter 2

Wednesday afternoon the following week, I was throwing my unneeded textbooks into my locker. After closing the door and reattaching the combination lock, I turned around swiftly and began walking to my last period class. Upon rounding the corner, my friend Caylen fell into step next to me. He nudged my arm playfully, causing me to go slightly off balance. Once I regained my steps we walked in a fit of laughter to our physics classroom. Once we entered the room, we took our assigned seats which were a few rows apart. I grabbed my notebook from my backpack and immediately remembered the homework that had been assigned the day before. Looking around in a slight panic, I noticed no one else was really in the class yet, because technically lunch wouldn't end for another few minutes. Picking up my pen, I gently threw it at Caylens shoulder.

"Caylen. Psst. Caylen." I whispered rather loudly.

He turned around, eyebrows raised, and gave me a look that said 'what do you want?'

Giving him my best innocent smile, I bit my lip and said, "Well, I may of sorta kinda forgot to do the homework.... and i was just, oh i don't know, I guess you could say wondering if you could let me copy yours?"

I knew he would say yes no matter how i asked him, but it was fun to mess with him. Sighing, he tried to hold back a smile while tossing his notebook on my desk. Giving him an obnoxious grin, I quickly flipped open my notebook and began copying over his calculations. I finished just in time and gave Caylen his notebook back. The class was boring as it always was, and i didn't understand more than half of what was going on. What seemed like a century later, the final bell rang. I gathered all my stuff and hi-tailed it out of there in a matter of seconds. After pulling my heavy purple sweatshirt over my grey t-shirt and ripped jeans, most likely ruining my hair, I made my way over to Caylen's locker.

"Hola." i said casually while I tried to smooth down my hair. Using my iPhone screen as a mirror i checked to make sure the loose, brushed out curls in my hair were back in place. Satisfied, i shoved my phone back in my pocket just as Caylen was shutting his locker.

"Ready?" I asked, to which he replied with a nod and put his arm around my shoulder. He wasn't my boyfriend and we didn't have those kinds of feelings for each other, but he was one of my closest friends and it just felt right. We had a really deep rooted friendship and were often quite affectionate with each other and didn't think much of it. We approached the parking lot and continued on until we reached Caylen's car. Once we were a few feet away, We noticed that a group of guys were crowded around near the back of the car. Soon we were right next to them, and could see that they were just hanging out and a few of them were smoking. I began to cough from the polluted air.

"Guys, gross. Not near my car, would you please?" Caylen asked with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

He lightly shooed them off with his hand, and I continued to look down at my phone. I didn't know these guys and I didn't want to talk to them, so I diverted my attention to anything and everything else.

"Sure man, sorry." One of the guys said.

"No big deal, Matt." Caylen replied.

My head snapped up at the sound of his voice. My eyes directly connected with his, and he smirked.

"Oh, hey Andrea. Didn't know Caylen here was your boyfriend." He said in a playful tone, and gave me a toothy grin.

I immediately tensed under Caylen's arm, and he must have noticed because he pulled it away.

"He's not uhm, my boyfriend." I stammered. I wasn't usually this nervous around guys, but for some reason I couldn't act like myself around Matt. Why does he keep showing up everywhere all of a sudden?