Before You

Chapter Nine.

It took exactly two minutes and fifty eight seconds for me to fully regret what I'd said.

I got into my car, blared the music, and tried to shut off my mind, but that was an impossibility. What the hell was I thinking? I freaking volunteered for a double date with the guy who I was trying to avoid. I groaned, smacking my hands against the hot steering wheel. It's going to be the most awkward night of my life.

Work was good. Even as far as first days go. It felt good to be actually doing something and helping out my parents. We might have money now, but that wasn't always the case and I don't ever want to be like some of the people I'd gone to high school with that never have and probably never will have any idea what it's like to be hungry or to go without something that you want or need. I'd always told myself I would never sit back and let my parents pay my way for me in life, and yet that was exactly what I'd been doing.

I think in a lot of ways, after everything that happened with....him, I'd really lost my way. No one else can really understand how it is for me, because at the time that I was with him, he kept me isolated and I didn't have any friends. Now I have great friends, but they don't get it because they were never actually around at the time that everything was happening. He'd done a lot to ruin me, and yet the reason I don't like to think of him is because, as sick as it makes me feel to admit it, I always had the thought in the back of my mind that if he were to ever come back, I'm not sure I'd be able to turn away. He'd been my first love and I, as stupid as it sounds, had been convinced that he and I were going to be the kids that defeat the odds and get married. I had a whole life I planned with him, and having it all vanish pretty much overnight had been a rough adjustment.

I shook my head at myself as I finished stocking the last shelf with the newest shipment of books, pushing down the urge to use my store credit to already start buying a few of them, and I blocked thoughts of him and that rough summer out of my mind.

I'm not that girl anymore.

I won't let a boy ever have control over me and my heart the way I'd done before. I was bettering myself. Finally setting out to do the things I'd always had planned for myself. Granted, a few of those things were from Hunter's influence, but it was my own will to actually go out and make those things happen.

Maybe we actually could be friends.

That is, if we can pull off tomorrow night that we've never hung out before.

A new audible groan escaped my lips when I remembered the other guy in this equation. I'd somehow only let myself worry over Jess and Hunter, I hadn't even thought about Aaron. All I remember about him was that he was good looking, but kind of an ass. Hopefully Hunter had a talk with him and he'll know not to mention anything about my being at Hunter's house that night.

***

I spent most of the next day cleaning my apartment like a mad woman.

"You're turning into your mom." Macy laughed when she walked in to find me on the kitchen floor scrubbing a scuff off of the tiles.

I shot her the bird and tilted my head. "You take that back."

Macy shook her head and then shrieked when I threw my dirty rag at her face and she ran to the other side of the kitchen island to duck and cover. "You do know you're only nineteen, right?" She giggled.

"You do know you could grab a sponge and start helping me instead of teasing me, right?" I laughed back, knowing that the real joke here was Macy actually cleaning something. I'm the one who does her laundry after all.

She stood up slowly, making sure I didn't have anything else to throw at her, then she propped her elbows on the island and leaned into her hands. "So, would this cleaning frenzy, and I mean this greatly appreciated cleaning frenzy have anything to do with this double date I heard about tonight?" She asked, her dark eyebrows already set high on her forehead.