Stay With Me ✔

4.

I didn't reply to Rave's text and when I saw him walking to his car after school, I kept my eyes on the ground. I didn't think of Rave Matthews once as I drove the few short blocks to the radio station, and when I pulled into the parking lot, I was glad to see that Cade's car was there. 

Cade Gilbert graduated from my high school last year, and now he works at the radio station a few days a week as a board operator. Cade's dad is close friends with my uncle, and the two of them own the station - which is how both Cade and I landed jobs here. Cade gets a slightly more glamorous job because he grew up in the station and knows the equipment inside and out. 

When we were little, Cade and I used to put CD's in an old stereo in the back room of the station and pretend that we were DJ's, we would have our own little talk segment and everything. Eventually we grew up and Cade became more interested in baseball and girls, so our DJ days came to an end. We would always smile and say hello in the halls at school, but we weren't really friends, at least not the kind that talk and hang out. 

Over the summer though, Cade began working at the radio station and we fell back into our friendship easily. It's like this radio station is this magic place where things are just easy and happy - it reminds me of my dad, it's where Rave and I began to connect, it's where Cade and I became friends again. 

I make sure that my headphones are in my backpack before I lock my car and head towards the doors. As soon as I walk in, I can hear my uncle Van's booming laugh echo off the walls. It sounds so much like my dad's laugh that it always makes me smile to hear it, even if it makes me a little sad at the same time. 

When I enter the lounge area, I see that my uncle is sitting around the table with Cade and Cade's dad, Luke. When they see me enter, all three give me a smile and Cade scoots his chair over to make room for me.

"How was school, Kylie?" My uncle asks as he downs the last of his coffee. 

"It was good, it's only the second day so there's no homework or anything yet." 

"Enjoy it now, Ky. In college there's homework before classes even start." Cade throws his arm over the back of my chair and leans back. His fingers start to comb through the ends of my hair, I give him a small smile as the other two at the table start talking business before they refill their coffees and exit the room. 

"When do you start classes?" I turn towards him, causing his fingers to fall from my hair. 

"I still have a week, but I moved back into the dorms over the weekend." 

"Are you with Tanner again this year?" Tanner was Cade's roommate last year, and he drove Cade crazy. Tanner doesn't clean up after himself, he comes in at random hours of the night, and he snores. Despite all of that though, Cade and Tanner quickly became close friends. 

"Yep. He comes back tomorrow, so I made sure to buy new earplugs." He flashes one of his smiles that all of the girls love as he gets up from his seat and pushes the chair in. 

I do the same and follow him out of the room and down the hall, where we go our separate ways  at the two doors across the hall from one another. I don't have to do all my work in the small, abandoned room at the back of the station, but it's my favorite place in the whole building. It's the room where Cade and I used to play when we were little, it's away from all the noise and other workers, and it's full of old inventory and equipment. 

I wave goodbye to Cade as I push open the door and he does the same as he steps into the room where he works. 

On days when there's not any work for me to do, I make playlists to upload onto the stations site. That's what I had been doing for two hours, lost in thought as I had my headphones in I concentrated on making each song flow into the next. My thought process was interrupted though when Cade walked into the room and sat at the opposite end of the couch, lifting my legs so that they rested on his lap.