Another short story piece of mine! Thank you for reading and don't forget to comment! This story needs work, but this is all there is to it.
Alex Caraway, in his childhood, had been best friends with Regan Finley.
They’d met when Regan was just four—Alex, six. It had been a day in late July when the Finleys had moved in the house next door to the Caraways. Alex had been watching the moving vans all day from his bedroom window, but when the small station wagon had pulled into the driveway, he’d been perched on the steps of the front porch.
Regan was small when she’d stepped out of the station wagon with her father’s help. She’d been wearing a little yellow sundress with red cherries on it, hair pulled into two small pig tails. She had looked quietly at Alex and then had scurried off after her mother. It was only until Mrs Caraway had introduced herself and her son that Regan had said a shy hello from behind her mother’s legs.
From then on, Alex and Regan would play together for hours outside. But then one day, when Alex was ten and Regan was eight, his friends Charlie and Michael had biked over and held their stomachs, laughing as they watched Alex run after Regan. “Hey, Alex, is that your girlfriend?”
Eventually, Alex got tired of being teased and stopped playing with Regan altogether. He’d gently edge the door shut when she asked him if he wanted to come outside and play, and soon, he ignored her whenever he stepped outside. Regan, though still sad at the loss of a friend, became friends with a girl at school named Lola Bentley. She was a pretty girl with copper hair and twinkling eyes, always wearing dresses or something pink. She carried handbags, wore heart-shaped sunglasses and snacked on lollipops or bubblegum or popsicles—cherry flavour only.
Alex, from a young age, had decided he did not like Lola Bentley. She only liked to play with girls and only liked to play games like hopscotch or jump rope or watch silly girly movies. He’d seen Lola and Regan play outside—never once did they play tag or jump in puddles or have snowball fights. He knew that Lola had changed Regan, and soon Regan stopped wearing jean shorts and baseball caps. She wore jeans with flowers on them or skirts—floppy hats and sunglasses and flip-flops instead of running shoes.
But sometimes, Alex would look outside and see Regan skip through a puddle—back and forth until Lola would come over.
In middle school, Alex had come home from school to hear Regan and Lola listening to girl bands and singing into hair brushes. She was never like that before, he’d think. And sometimes he’d feel a little pang of regret: that maybe he should have stayed friends with her, and she’d prefer going to hockey games than watching ballets.
When Alex was in the twelfth grade, he’d see Regan saunter down the halls in small skirts and low-cut tops, arms linked with Lola. Tagging along with them would be Tamara Lawless and Bridget Hodgkins and Mikey Curie, Lola’s football-playing boyfriend, and Steven Mallory. Regan’s boyfriend.
They were easily classified as the popular crowd in the tenth grade. But, of course, Alex was part of a handsome group of popular senior boys. Alex was the captain of the varsity soccer team, and his teammates were his best friends. Charlie was the keeper, but Michael had joined the lacrosse team.
But seeing Regan with Steven always made his stomach churn. Somehow, Steven wasn’t good for Regan—Alex just knew it.
But when Alex was a freshman in college, he’d heard from the local paper that Steven Mallory had been killed in a drunk driving accident. Steven had been drinking. He’d taken his own life in that accident, as well as a mother and two children’s.
