We Are Stars | OLD DRAFT

Chapter Twenty-Two: Gunshot

Two Years Ago...

It turns out my family took the news better than I expected. When I told Mom about Noah and I dating, she didn't seem that shocked. However, I'm pretty sure Dylan freaked the crap out of Noah when he gave him the big brother talk. That being said, I highly doubt that the two of them will ever be close.

At school today, Darian continued to give me odd looks. Ever since that night, he never once tried to contact me, or even talk to me. I didn't want to believe it at first, but now it's undoubtable that he only wanted me for my body. He never cared about me or my feelings. He only cared about how I kissed and how vulnerable I seemed to him. I can only imagine what he would do if he discovered that I was carrying his baby.

As I gather my textbooks for English class, I hear a friendly voice arise from behind me, following by two arms wrapping around my body. "Guess who," she says.

I giggle, turning to face my best friend. "You make it way to obvious."

Her smile soon decreases in length as she directly eyes me. "Have you gained weight?" Before I even get the chance to say something, she shakes it off and changes the topic. "Whatever. Moving on from my surprize attacks, you have some explaining to do?"

"What explaining is there to do?"

"Um, the fact that you're keeping secrets," she replies. I freeze. She knows. She must know about everything.

Trying to contain my fear, I mask it with a grin and a little smirk. "I don't know what you're talking about," I lie.

"Bullshit," she says. "I've known you for years Ro, and you think I don't know your giveaways?" She places her hands on her hips. "You paused before answering, you swallowed, and you put your hands into your pockets. Face it, I've caught you red-handed." She's always been good in the area of psychology, unfortunately for me.  Who knows? Maybe she doesn't know about what Darian and I did a few months ago. Just maybe. As I'm trying to steer my thoughts into the lighter side of the situation, she says, "Now when were you gonna tell me about you and Noah?"

Thank God.

Knowing that I can't give anymore clues as to the real secret I've been keeping, I go along with the Noah train. "Well I was going to tell you, but-"

No excuses. You were supposed to tell me the minute you two made it official!"

"I know, but I guess I just wanted to keep things under the radar," I say. At least it's the actual truth. "Wait, how did you even find out?"

"Caleb released the news to his basketball buddies, and of course that travelled to the football players and then the cheerleaders and then all over social media."

I dig my head into my palms as I grown in frustration. "I'm gonna kill him," I mutter into my hands. Caleb and Dylan are both officially dead. They better not sleep tonight - not tonight, or ever.

"You should be thanking them," she says. "Thanks to them, you and Noah are practically goals."

"Goals or not, Noah's gonna be so pissed about this. We both agreed that we wanted to keep things quiet for now."

She sighs. "None of that nonsense matters now, Ro. This is supposed to be a good thing! Now we can go on double dates or something!" In another realm, that would be an amazing idea. She and I have been talking about going on double dates with our boyfriends for a while, but the problem was that I didn't have a boyfriend at the time. Now that I do, she's bringing up the plans all over again. In another world, it would be a great idea. In reality, I'd rather go to Hell than face him. "Speaking of which, I have to go and greet my man. See you after class?"