Heartbeats (om hold)

Chapter One

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a single heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

~ Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

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Rebecca and I have been friends since birth. Literally. Our birthdays are two weeks apart. We were constantly with each other for the first few years of our lives. We went to preschool together, too.

            Then Lizzy came along

            In kindergarten I had a crush on Becca. And, well, you know how little kids. They chase their crushes around on the playground. That’s what I did . . . and I tried to kiss her.

            “Stop, Ty.” She’d giggle at me.

            But when Lizzy came, I thought (in my little kid mind) that she was the most beautiful thing in the whole world. With long brown hair and azure-blue colored eyes. Just, wow.

            Becca and I let Lizzy into our “group”. Her real name was Elizabeth, but everyone called her Lizzy. I called her Liz. I started liking her, rather than Becca, but Becca, Liz and I were always best friends. From then on out the three of us did everything together.

            And I mean everything.

            When middle school and junior high came along, we let a new guy into our group. His name was Gavin. His was a tall African-American who never really fit in with the rest of the kids’ “crowds”.  Oh, yeah, he was prefect for our group.

            At the time, I still had a major crush on Liz. Oh, dear God, she was beautiful. Since kindergarten, when I got older and started understanding things more, I learned that her family were big Christians. The “no-sex-before-marriage” was a really big rule to them. Not that we had sex. We were way too young to be doing things like that.

            But anyway, our 7th and 8th grade years were great! Liz and I started dating (Yes!). Gavin and Becca were kind of hesitant to that idea since they didn’t want to be “third wheels”, but that never happened. Liz and I didn’t let that happen. But things kind of went downhill when high school came along.

            Becca. Becca. Becca. She . . . changed. She was, and always would be one out of my three best friends. But she really changed. She started wearing all this makeup. I mean, sure, girls wear makeup. Liz, we were still dating, she usually wore a little bit of eye making, and sometimes lip-gloss. But Becca wore so much makeup that I didn’t even remember what her face looked like without it on. And her wardrobe changed, as well. Liz usually wore denim jeans or shorts and a T-shirt. Becca started wearing tight skirts with half her butt hanging out (not that I looked), and tight shirts that showed her . . . chest area.

            And not just her style changed. Her attitude changed, too.

            She started acting like all those popular girls at school (she looked like them, too). You know, the ones who always put people down and act like they rule the school and have a grade point average of .001. Yeah, those people.

            She even started hanging out with these girls. I mean, she still hung out with us, but she hung out with the populars, too. And she really started hating on Liz for some reason. Always putting her down, calling her names, etc. And by the time Liz started crying, Becca would smile at me as if nothing had happened, spin around on her five-inch heels, and march away to her clique, her red hair flying behind her. I always comforted Liz after that. It took a lot to make her cry. She was such a strong, independent person. But I think she was sadder to fact that she’d lost a friend more than anything.