"Jamie!"
We turn around to see Mr.Benjamin Taylor himself walking towards us.
"Hey, dad. What's up?" Jamie greets his dad.
"I was just heading out. This meeting is very important. I'll try to be back home soon but you never know how long these meetings tend to proceed for, son. Are you both going to study upstairs?" He turns to me and I nod.
"Yeah, it's alright, dad." Jamie smiles at him.
"Mrs.Dunn will prepare whatever you want so just inform her what you guys want to eat ahead." He nods at the middle-aged, timid, woman standing behind him.
As much as we love Mrs. Dunn's cooking, I think we'll just order pizza tonight, Ben. I'm really craving pizza right now." I raise my eyebrows at Jamie and he nods vigorously.
Ben chuckles, "Alright, fine, then. I have to go, now. Be careful, kids. Make good choices and all that," he waves and hurries out of the room with Mr. Reed, his personal bodyguard, following behind him.
"We'll be upstairs, June," Jamie informs Mrs. Dunn as we make our way upstairs. Graceland is such a huge house that it a person could easily get lost in here. When we reach Jamie's room, I collapse on his king size bed like a starfish.
"Do you want to do homework?" He asks me as he strips to get ready for a bath.
"No. Why would you even ask that?" I turn around and lie on my belly as I surf through my phone.
Jamie chuckles, "Be right back, baby," he heads into his bigger-than-my-actual-bedroom of a bathroom.
Jamie is so insanely rich that if anyone from my school actually knew about his bank balance, they'd rue the day they didn't be nice to him or not call him names behind his back.
I scroll through Instagram and suddenly without thinking, my brain just automatically commands my fingers to type the name in the search bar: Harry Styles.
The last picture he posted was a picture of him and Gemma before they left for the party. I feel hot breath on my ear and jerk a little to see Jamie bending over me in nothing but a towel covering his lower body. His face is so close to mine, we make eye contact for a solid 4 seconds before he clears his throat and stands up straight.
"V, you gotta stop looking at her pictures." He grabs another towel and dries his hair.
"I know, I was just looking at Harry's profile and that was the last thing he posted." I sit up.
"Why were you looking at Harry's profile?"
"I don't know. I just did."
He starts to grab clothes from his incredibly huge walk-in closet and starts to remove the towel when I scream and cover my eyes. His deep laughs fill the room. There's a knock on the door and I open my eyes. Mrs. Dunn walks in with cookies in a tray. Seeing Jamie with his pants only halfway up, she shrieks and turns around.
"James Taylor! Do you have no shame at all. Changing your clothes, leaving the door unlocked. That too, in front of a girl." She scold him still facing the wall.
He grins ear to ear and replies, "Nothing you both haven't seen before. You can turn around now."
"Oh, James, you shouldn't do this. My poor eyes and my faint heart cannot handle the stress you put on me."
She sets the tray on the bed side table and I thank her.
"Oh, don't worry, June. Your heart still has a lot more handle." He winks at her and she shakes her head at him.
I grab a cookie and start munching when Mrs. Dunn asks me how I'm doing.
"I'm good," I reply. She smiles the pity smile I've seen almost 200 times in the last month itself.
"We'll call you if we need anything else, June," Jamie dismisses her. She nods with a smile and walks out.
Jamie asks me what I want to do and we decide on watching a movie on Netflix.
I try to concentrate on the film but I eventually give up. My mind seems to be preoccupied by something else. I ignore it and rest my head on Jamie's shoulder.
When we're hallway through the movie, there's a car chase scene. Gunshots are being fired and the cars are going at a greater speed. Suddenly, the bad guy shoots the tire of the car he's chasing and the car loses control, hits a nearby tree and the impact of it flips the car into the air and it lands with a huge thud and big screech follows.
I reach out and immediately close the laptop. Jamie turns to me and looks at me with so much concern that it doesn't take me long to realize that I'm sweating and breathing heavily.
He clears the hair from my face and holds my hand, "We should talk about this, V. Because sooner or later, this will eat you up piece by piece."
I clear my throat and look away, "There's nothing to talk about. We left the party. I lost control of the car, she died."
"V. You can't do that. Please. It's not only you that feels the pain, you know. She was my best friend, too."
"That's just it, Jamie. The pain. If I talk about it, then it might go away and I don't want the pain to go away because.. because it feels like the fact that she's gone will finally sink in if the pain is gone. I don't want to be okay and live my life like it never happened, like she never was a part of my life, because she was a huge part of it. She was my best friend, Jamie. And I don't want to lose her all over again by talking about it."
By this time, there are tears running down my cheeks and Jamie wipes them away.
"Okay. Okay, we won't talk about it until you want to. Okay?" He hugs me tightly and I know he's resisting every urge to cry right now. He kisses me on the forehead and we lie there in each other's arms, mourning the unreplaceable loss of a person who was the very life and soul of our friendship.
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