How He Broke My Heart

Chapter 12

Lauren and I walk down the familiar street that leads to Jonas' house. My heart is light with excitement. Those days by the pool always cheered me up, and right now I could use just that. Music, talking, dancing, sunbathing, swimming, laughing, it was my summer dream. The memories float back to me as we near his place.

"He's waiting for us in the back," Lauren says, as enlivened as I am. We make our way up the stone driveway and enter through the back gate. The trickling sounds of the waterfall tickle my ears and I pick up my pace. Everything comes into view and for once this summer, I feel like myself again. My eyes wander to the pool, remembering it's cool hands all over my body.

"Jonas!" Lauren shouts, dragging me to him. My eyes snap in the direction of her tugging and I see Jonas walking out the back door, animated. He looks the same. The same dark curly hair, the same baby face, the same smell of that cologne he never puts down. I squeeze him hard, trying to squeeze all the goodness back into my head.

"I can't believe Lauren didn't tell me you were back," he says, letting me go only to look me over. "Did you get even more beautiful?"

I blush, needing his nurturing essence to bring me back to life. "Stop it," I joke, "I missed you like crazy." I even shove him a bit. "I can't believe I thought you were at writing school."

"Oh yeah, I remember when I said that." He smiles and leads us over to the lounge chairs. He always laid on the middle one, then Lauren to the left and me to the right. We claimed places, we always belonged there. I sit down on mine and fall back.

"I really need this," I murmur.

"Oh yeah," Lauren grabs Jonas, "I have to catch you up."

"Don't tell me—"

"Yup, there's a new guy that's stolen her heart. Will she give in? We have yet to find out."

I sit up, waving her off. "I don't wanna talk about that. Let's talk about happy things, things we used to talk about."

Lauren chuckles. "We used to talk about your relationship with Kaden, oh, and Jonas' newest ambition, oh, and Austin! Don't you guys remember when I liked Austin!"

"Oh God," Jonas exaggerates, "how could I forget. All the plans we used to make to get you two together... What a waste."

"No kidding. What a weird phase for me to have. It was so random and he was with someone at the time too."

"Don't you remember?" I bring up the story while holding back my laughs. "We tried to break them up. We devised that crazy plan to sabotage their relationship in the hot tub one night at like three in the morning."

"Oh, I remember that. We broke into my parent's liquor cabinet and drank all of the cherry vodka."

"Oh! Or when Lauren grabbed a bottle of cocktail flavoring and drank half of it going on about how good it tastes and that it doesn't even taste like alcohol!" We erupt in laughter and I fall on to my back, my stomach hurting, hardly able to breathe. "W-We didn't even know and you were acting all drunk," I shout and Lauren falls beside me, trying to cover my mouth while laughing herself.

We continue on with stories and laughter, eventually ending up in the pool, floating around and talking about things I never thought I would talk about again.

"The night I lost my virginity? It was with Milo."

"Oh, I always thought you lost it to Kaden," Lauren says.

"No. It was with Milo. I didn't really talk about our sex life much, huh?"

Jonas turns over on his raft. We each have our own. "No. You never wanted to talk about it, anything about you and Milo. I guess it didn't matter much because you were with Kaden at the time."