Goodnight Moon

15- I Thought You Were Different

“Okay, so it has been exactly one week since Ariel admitted to the possibility of liking Lake in a romantic kind of way,” Leda announces as we exit the movie theater on Friday night with Dana and Dana’s little brother, Artie, who is ten. We saw a cute chick flick movie and Artie hated the whole thing but Dana forced him to go because she had to babysit him.

“We don’t need to talk about that,” I groan at her bringing up the subject for the umpteenth time this week. I never even said that I like Lake in a special way, I just said that I don’t know if I could or not. I mean, he used to be a dick but now he’s all nice like, all of the time and it’s weird and confusing. I’m not going to just start to have a crush on the guy just because he’s nice though. There’s a lot of nice guys that I don’t have a crush on. I just like Lake as a friend but when Leda asked me if I liked him last week, I kind of panicked and told her that I didn’t know. I do know. And the answer is no. I do not like Lake like that. Probably. Okay, so I still don’t know but I won’t tell Leda that.

“Yes we do,” She insists. “I think you’d make a cute couple.”

“I think you’d make a cute couple too,” Dana adds, running her fingers through her pixie cut blonde hair.

“Well, we’re not a couple,” I inform both of them. “And we will never be a couple. Just because we stopped fighting doesn’t mean that we’re going to fall in love or anything.”

“I’m just saying that it’s something to consider,” Leda defends. “It’d be absolutely wonderful and perfect.”

We walk through the parking lot and get into my car since I drove us there and climb into the car. We went to eat before the movie so I’m just going to take them to Dana’s house now instead of going anywhere else. It’s late anyway, since we went to the latest showing of the movie.

“Okay, well hypothetically, if I wanted to start a relationship with Lake, it’d be so incredibly stupid. I’m going away for college, you know. Out of New Jersey and everything. How would that work exactly?” I counter, hoping that my mention of my college plans will be enough to convince Leda to drop the subject.

“Long distance relationships can work if you really want them to, it’s just hard work but it’ll be worth it,” She assures me with a grin. “And you’re not going that far away, are you? Just a few hours?”

I shrug as I pull onto the main road towards Dana’s house. “I haven’t decided yet but it wouldn’t be worth it. I want to experience college and stuff, I don’t want to have to worry about staying in touch with my boyfriend who is hours away. And this conversation is completely hypothetical. I don’t even like Lake like that. We’re kind of friends now but I promise you, Leda, that is it.”

“Okay, we will stop talking about it for now but I will never give up on this,” Leda informs me. “It’s just too cute, you and Lake.”

“I’m sure that if Ariel and Lake are like, meant to be or something, they’ll figure it out on their own,” Dana laughs from the backseat. “Babe, you just need to give them some space.”

“Thank you,” I grin at Dana kind of taking my side about this.

“Isn’t there something else you can talk about?” Artie whines, obviously not too keen on talking about dating and boys and such. Especially after watching the chick flick for two hours. Poor little kid.

“Shut up, this is important,” Dana hisses at her brother, poking his shoulder. He retaliates by softly hitting her arm and then they fall into a wrestling match in the back seat as I focus on the road ahead of us because it takes a lot of focus to drive in the dark.