Loving You

I opened my eyes to bright light bouncing all around. My room was designed in such a way that the light streaming through the windows was reflected everywhere. There were colored glass chips glued to the walls like tile and the occasional mirror. It was about six in the morning, so I climbed out of my extraordinarily comfortable feather bed to get ready for school. After my shower, I went into my closet to pick something out. Naturally, I settled for a slouchy green t-shirt and dark jean shorts. I grabbed my worn black Converse and went downstairs for food. It was my last day of junior year, so my mom made me a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, and cinnamon covered French toast. I downed my milk, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and yelled bye to my dad. I ran out to my car because I had accidentally spent way too much time in the shower and was running late. My dark blue Mustang started up without a complaint, and I drove to my best friend’s house to pick him up. Chase was sitting on the curb when I got there and I grinned at him. He messed up my straightened chestnut colored hair when he sat down in the passenger seat. I glared at him playfully and he laughed at me.

“Those big brown eyes of yours don’t exactly work with the death glare thing. It just gives off an adorable effect,’ he teased. His longish dark brown hair was flipped to the left like usual, looking extremely hot. I’m totally in love with my best friend, which sucks. So bad. His gorgeous green eyes crinkled at the sides when he laughed and I mentally slapped myself for thinking about it. I stuck my tongue out at him and pulled into the school parking lot. I got out of the car and almost ran into a kid I’ve never seen before.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” I said, after we had both steadied ourselves.

“Oh, it’s fine. It was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going,” he explained. I smiled at him, as another apology. He shook his hair a little bit and I noticed how cute he was. His ice blue eyes contrasted brightly with his short black hair and tan skin in a very nice way. I looked over at Chase, who had an oddly dark look in his eyes, watching me.

“I’m Derek,” he introduced. “Your name’s Aubrey, right?”

“Yeah, actually,” I blushed. “I’ve never seen you around. You can’t be new… It’s the last day of school.”

“Oh, I moved here about two weeks ago. We’re not even in the same lunch, it’s no wonder you’ve never seen me.” He had slight stubble, and a rough, dark look that was really attractive.

“How do you know who I am?” I asked, curious.

“I saw you a few days ago and had to ask about your name. I thought you were really pretty,” he said, and looked down. I smiled widely at the compliment and grabbed a pen out of my bag. I did the most cliché thing possible and wrote my number on his hand. Chase was waiting patiently, looking kind of pissed, so I capped the pen and threw it back in my bag.

“I gotta go. Text me though.” I smiled again and went back to Chase.

“So, the new guy, huh?” Chase grinned and nudged me. The dark look was gone, and my heart dropped a little at his light attitude toward the situation. I shook it off and we both went into the school. We separated soon and went to our different homerooms. When I got to mine, I saw Derek in the seat next to mine. He saw me and his eyes lit up.

“Hi,” I said, getting another smile on my face. This kid is like a smile magnet for me.

“Hi! I switched homerooms for today because your Chase friend kinda flipped on me this morning,” he explained, all smiles.

“What?!?”

“I don’t’ even know. He was just really mad. Said something about not talking to you, and then the teacher just told me to come here. Is he your boyfriend or something?”

“Nah, he’s just my best friend,” I said, trying not to look sad.

“Okay, good, because I have a feeling that if he was he would’ve been even more angry.”

“He’s just… protective. We’ve been friends since second grade, so he’s like my brother.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“So where do you live?” I asked.

“Beau Drive, you?”

“Oh my God! I live on Beau too! You’re like two doors down from me! The really cool green house?”

“Yeah, that’s so cool!”

“It is!”

“Haha you should come over tonight. My parents are going out and they don’t care anyways,” he said. I was a little surprised as to how fast he was moving, but I was okay with it. I need some excitement in my life.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, still a little thrown off

“Cool,” he said, smiling. I couldn’t help but smile back and he gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher. It was like affection almost, and… lust? I’m not sure but it was odd. Nice almost, but weird. I shook it off and paid attention to the teacher. Kind of.  When the bell rang, Derek walked me to the door, and we found Chase there waiting.

“Um.” I was kind of confused, considering he never made it here that fast. I shook my head, and Chase smiled at me.

“Hey,” he said, and pulled me into a hug.

“Hi,” I said affectionately, but my sentence was cut off. Chase leaned in and pressed his lips against mine. I couldn’t help but kiss back, no matter how shocked I was or the fact that Derek was right there. His soft lips moved against mine as if they were created for each other. The feeling in my chest was so intensely warm that I was convinced I was going to explode. He pulled away and I kinda just stood there, extremely surprised. He gave me a look that said, ‘We’ll talk about it later’, and smirked at Derek like ‘Ha. Beat that, bitch.’ I blinked, not understanding at all. Derek looked at me questioningly, and I shook my head like ‘I dunno…” Chase had arm around my waist and we walked to our first period like that. He let go of me as soon as Derek was out of sight and I wasn’t happy.

“What was that?!?” I shrieked.

“Shhh...” he said and put a finger to my lips. “I needed to get him to think we have something going on. He said some things to me this morning that made me… worried. He isn’t a good guy, Aubrey.” His words hurt me, ‘I needed him to think we have something going on’. As if there wasn’t anything between us. I took it out in another way.

“What makes you think he’s not a good guy?” I asked, in a defensive tone.

“He came up to me and was ‘friendly’. He asked me about you, a lot. He made a comment about you being ‘easy’. I kind of got angry after that…” I looked at him, not comprehending.

“Bree, I’m serious. You know I’d never lie to you. You’re my best friend and I love you,” he said, looking sad. The use of my nickname and the ‘I love you’ just filled me with a lot of feelings that I wasn’t comfortable with. I fought back tears, even though there was nothing to cry about. Just the way he was looking at me, and his words, and our situation…