Finding Him

I.

F I N D I N G
H I M

"The worst pain in the world
goes beyond the physical.
Even further beyond any other
emotional pain one can feel.
It is the betrayal of a friend."

- Heather Brewer
-

Have you ever had that one friend you thought would have your back and be your friend forever? The friend you would start high school with? Discuss boy problems with? Rant to, about nothing and everything?

Well, I had.

Her name was Beatrice Smith. She had blond hair, blue eyes and a body to die for. We were best friends in middle school, but when we started high school she was suddenly "too good" for me. So, she left me.

Together with her little squad, she ruled the entire school.

Beatrice hadn't always been like this. She used to be the most humble and down to earth person I knew. In middle school, she wore jeans, baggy t-shirts, and vans. And she was obsessed with boy bands. Now she wore extremely short miniskirts with a top so short it only covered her breasts and high heels. Topping the look off with at least 10 pounds of makeup.

The week before we started high school she told me: "we can't be friends anymore. I have made new and prettier ones, bye Mackenzie". This, in fact, wasn't the last time she spoke to me. She reminded me daily how much of a loser I was and that nobody cared for me.

Soon after Beatrice ditched me I made friends with Nate Williams and his friends, Dakota Miller, Hunter Davis, Derek Allen, and Alec Sanders. The boys were all like brothers to me, and they always stood up for me, no matter what. You could say Nate was your typical high school bad boy with his motorcycle, leather jacket, tattoos, and piercings.  And even though he, nor the rest of the boys mentioned it while I was around, I knew that he had basically slept with every single girl at our school.

Dakota was the one who introduced me to the rest of the group. Our parents worked together. Dakota and I knew each other when we were kids but we, unfortunately, lost contact.

"Maya, are you listening to me?" Hunter's voice snapped me back to reality. "What?" I obviously hadn't been listening to him. Hunter rolled his eyes at me. "Do you know where Beatrice is?" He repeated, a smirk plastered to his face. "Why would I know where she is, it's not like we're friends," I said and looked at him with a bored expression. "He's kidding, why would we ask you about where Beatrice is," Dakota said looking at me like I was stupid for believing Hunter. So I did the only logical thing, I punched him 'hard' in the shoulder.

He cried out as a little girl as soon as my fist touched his shoulder. Then we started laughing. This was an inside joke between me and Dakota. The rest of the boys just gave us weird looks. The joke actually started the first day I met Dakota. We like to say it's the reason we now know each other.

I was in a bad mood after fighting with my older brother, probably over something stupid. After the fight, I ran to a park only a few minutes from my house. Then I ran into Dakota, literally ran into.  I was already in a crappy mood so after he had helped me up, I asked: "are you blind?" And he looked at me like I was crazy.

"You were the one who ran into me" he argued. Back then I wasn't as shy as I am now, actually, I was quite violent as well. "Don't you know you never blame a woman for anything?" I said. "Your not a woman" he started as a matter of fact. And so I punched him in the shoulder and he ran away from me crying.

Later that evening my family had invited Dakota's family over for dinner to discuss some issues at work. Not knowing that Dakota and I already had met. So you can guess how Dakota reacted when he saw me.

He started crying.

Eventually, we made up and became best friends.

I didn't understand how close we were until he started hanging out with different people and we lost contact completely. I still used the crying part of the story against him because he acted like this big scary guy. When in reality, he was actually really nice.

The boys all looked like they were taken out of some male modeling magazine. I'm not gonna lie Nate was one hot boy. Of course, I was never gonna admit that to him. His ego was big enough as it was.

So, guys, this was where my journey began.