Pushing myself off the bed, I yawned. Fighting was not my thing, I thought, looking in the mirror. My hair was a mess. My eyes were more red than blue, and my nose had swelled to the size of Pinocchio. Taking a brush off my dresser, I combed back my straightened blonde hair into a high pony tail since there was no way I could make the mess into anything else.
“Dude, you look fine. Let’s go,” Jason said in a bored voice, tapping away on his iPhone.
Turning in surprise, I raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when are we going anywhere?”
He frowned and asked a question of his own. “Your dad’s not coming home tonight, right?”
I shook my head. “He’s out of town for a couple days,” I said, thinking back to the text I had gotten just before I had gotten the call from Jason in the kitchen. ‘Sorry sweetie, have to go to Key West for a brief meeting. Be home in two days. I love you,’ it read. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t keep leaving, I thought with a snort of disgust.
“And DB’s not home either, is she?” he asked skeptically, his frown deepening.
“Nope, not yet anyways. I haven’t heard from her, but she comes home at night. She’s probably getting another facial or maybe a mani-pedi,” I muttered, my words laced in sarcasm.
“Exactly, so you’re coming to my house for dinner and staying until she gets back,” he said in a matter of fact tone.
“What? No,” I began to protest.
“Shut up, okay?” he advised sagely, stopping the game on his phone to look up at me. “You are coming with me. End of discussion. Mom’s making that alfredo pasta you love,” he added as though that settled everything.
“Oh my god, fettuccini alfredo?” I squealed in delight, dropping the bobby pin I had been holding. “I love her pasta and that’s my favorite!”
“I know,” he grumbled. “So hurry up, will you?”
“Coming,” I called, rushing into the bathroom. Slipping off my shorts and shirt, I striped out of the pretty swimsuit. Surprisingly, as feisty as our fight had been, it was just what I’d needed. I felt ten times better already. It was like a boulder had been lifted off my shoulders. Contemplating what to wear, I decided it could be anything. Being friends for ages, I knew Jason’s mom like she was my own. She was my mom, in a way. A much better mom than DB could have ever been. Humming, I slipped back on the black Nike shorts and T shirt, grabbing the black and white sequined swim sweatshirt from the doorknob where it had been hanging after a glance outside. The wind had definitely picked up, and as the sun set, clouds were beginning to form. We were in for a shower tonight.
Donning the sweatshirt, I snatched my sparkly black converse from the closet and slipped them on. With one final glance in the mirror, I turned back to Jason with a smile on my face. “Ready!” I trilled, grabbing my wallet and slipping my phone into it. “My car or yours?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“What do you think?” he smirked as I sighed and dropped my keys into my desk drawer.
“It was worth a shot,” I grumbled following a chuckling Jason down the stairs and out the door. “Wait!” I yelled out, dashing back into the house. Tearing off a sticky note, I pasted a neon paper onto the fridge. ‘DB, I’m at Jason’s. Coming back around 9. Don’t wait up,” it read. Scrawling my name, I recapped the pen and dropped it onto the countertop.
Running out the door, I double checked the lock before shutting the gate and getting into Jason’s car. He loved it more than anything in the world. Belle and I used to joke about how Jason would marry his car in a heartbeat. But it was a beauty so I couldn’t blame him. A silver Porsche Carrera GT, one of the most amazing sports cars that I’d ever seen stood parked in my driveway, its lustrous shine clearly visible even though the sun was already setting. It was Jason’s pride and joy, a gift from his parents given on his last birthday, and the only reason he hadn’t crashed it yet was because how much he adored the car.
