House Rules

Chapter 2: frienemies

"All I'm saying is I work my butt off to be at that cash register." I say as I plop down at a table on our porch. "Whatever, you were put there cause you were the only person who knew how to work it." Danny laughed. "What do you think about her?" I ask taking a sip of lemonade "I mean... she's cute I guess." He says as he takes a sip of lemonade. "You like heeerr!!" I say dragging on my sentence.

Danny glared at me and laughed. Danny was different outside of work, he was a lot more relaxed and funny. Not as aggressive and easily irritated. Perhaps because I, being his best friend I push his buttons on purpose, so as a defense mechanism he acts that way to defend himself.

"I don't. She's just very pretty." I snap out of my thoughts and look up at my friend. He was picking at the strings of his guitar. Danny was a natural born musician. He could play just about anything. Once he made a banjo out of an old tissue box, and two rubber bands. Doesn't sound like it would be very good but I've never heard a tissue box sound so amazing.

"Yeah she's pretty, but come on" I nudge him "are you gonna jump on it?" I wiggle my brows as he shakes his head and pushes his glasses up. He begins strumming away on his guitar to drown me out. I roll my eyes and lean back in my chair as I listen to the new melody he creates. I dread work tomorrow as I fear I've created Monica to be enemy number one in my head.

I look over at my friend as he's completely zoned into his guitar, his head nodding along to the notes, his feet tapping, he's completely done. Trying to get him out of that trance is gonna be difficult. So what do I do? I enjoy the music until he's all music-ed out.

I wish I had that. That thing. Everyone finds their thing in high school. The one thing that sets them apart from everyone else. The one thing you're really good at. The one thing people know you by. I know it sounds a bit shallow and cliché, but that's the thing that's gonna carry you out through life. That's the one thing that'll keep you from going completely mad when life gets you at your wits end.

That's when I hear the bike. I look up with my brows furrowed, I was angry because a little bicycle bell disturbed me from being entranced by Delilah (Danny's guitar.)

As I get up from my seat and look over the yard I see a familiar set of clothing. "Monica?" I say quietly, subsequently that was the only thing that snapped Danny out of his melody "what? where?" When he stopped he made his guitar make a heart wrenching noise of damaged notes. He set down Delilah and walked over to me.

"Look she's right there." I point as she comes to a stop in a driveway. "She moved back..." Danny whispered "what do you mean? Back?" He looked at me and began walking to the steps of the porch. "Danny?" I say hoping he'd stop, I saw his eyes dart to the house Monica was stopped at "Danny!" I yell. I look up to see Monica looking around, she heard me. "Fuck me." I say angrily as I begin running towards him.

"Danny!" I yell again, still no response from my friend who has now broke out into a full blown sprint. What the hell was wrong with him? I try to pick up the pace when I trip from a pothole. "Jesus! Why do these things exist?!" I yell as I see red coming from my knee and hands. Once I finally got my footing it was too late Danny was only a few feet away from her.

"Danny stop!" Monica turned around and made eye contact with Danny. He stopped just 3 feet away from her. They both froze, neither of their lips moving. Fuck.. I begin making my way there, lightly jogging as I feel my hands throb. Once I finally reach the driveway I see tears gather in Danny's eyes, Monica smiles.

"Monkey?" He says with a shaky voice "Daniel?" She replies as a tear streams down her cheek. "What?" I say to myself. They ran into each other's arms as Danny began to pick up Monica and spin her around. I hobble over to them as the pain from my knee began to catch up with me. I was just a little behind Danny at this point when he finally set her down.