The Time I Spent Loving You

Chapter 5

 My last class passed quickly surprisingly, considering it was one of the classes that were typically the most drawn out. I was finally on my way home. Grace was driving us home as per usual, she usually hung around my house for a bit after school. It's been our routine for the past few school years to come to my house right after school and do our homework. My parents get home around five, and we usually got to my house at three. My parents would typically come home to Grace and I sitting at the island in the kitchen with books sprawled out across it.

Grace stayed at my house for a while because her mom didn't get home until between nine pm or twelve am, she was a nurse and worked crazy shifts. It was just her and her mom, her dad has been out of the picture since she was three. She was over so much that my mom considered her to be her daughter too, and it's been this way since elementary school.

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A few hours later, grace and I were sitting on the pink fluffy rug that sat in the middle of my room. We sat with our books and binders between us in disarray, organizing our binders by class to prepare for the semester to come. We organized the majority of our binders together since we had almost all of the same classes, and around the time my parents came home we had finished. We hadn't had a lot of homework since it was just the first day, so that went by just as fast as organizing our binders went. Grace and I were sat on my bed watching friends on my wall mounted flat screen tv, when the episode was interrupted by my phone ringing.

My phone was by Grace, at the end of the bed charging. Grace picked up my phone and scoffed, rolling her eyes. She showed me the screen as the quiet ringing grew louder, insisting I answer. The screen was lit up and across the top there was the name "Jenna." I sighed and took my phone from her hand, immediately picking it up. I cleared my throat and prepared myself for whatever drama she had already gotten into on the first day. "Hey Jen, what's up?"

"Hey babes, how was your day," she asked, there was an edge to her voice letting me know she didn't call to talk about my day. She always called her "friends" babe, hun, or love. This was one of the many things that Grace would use to berate her. Whenever she said that, I could always hear Grace in the back of my head grumbling, I'm not her babe who does she think she is.

"It was good, how was yours," I said, wanting to get this conversation over with already. Her drama was always so draining. Entertaining, yet annoyingly exaggerated. She proceeded to tell me her boyfriend, Alex. Alex didn't go to our school, but she still saw him and I never knew if he was real or not. He could have been made up, but she had pictures of "him" all over her binder so I just never questioned it. She told me that they had just gone on a date this past weekend, they went to a roller rink.

I proceeded to "uh huh" and "oh cool" my way through her onslaught of words. Grace all the while, had put her earbuds in her ears, mumbling under her breath "stupid whiny bitch." Jenna told me about a boy in her JROTC class named Mark, and how she kissed him a few days ago. I rolled my eyes and internally cringed. She was hardly ever loyal and it really annoyed me sometimes. It made me want to warn the poor saps that fell for her while she was going behind their backs and kissing other boys, I felt sorry for them. I don't love Jenna but she and I were closer in middle school, she was what I considered to be my best friend, besides Grace of course. Once highschool came around she started hanging out more with guys, hardly talking to me unless it was to tell me about whatever gossip she had run into that day.

Minutes had passed, and she finished her story about some girl who got pregnant in her math class. Proceeding to say, "Oh! I almost forgot, y'know that new kid? Trevor?"

My heart clenched and I responded "Yeah he's in two of my classes."

"Well, he and I met over the summer. And I have him on Snapchat! We've been flirting for a while now, but I don't think I want to continue it, cause of Alex," I coughed and muttered a small Yeah. I don't know why but when she said his name my heart stopped for a second, sad that she had gotten to him before I had the chance to.

"Yeah, he's super cute. We've talked a little and I think I might like him," I chuckled nervously.

"Oh! Aww! Emma thats great," she sounded so insincere, like she was only half listening.

The rest of the conversation ended quickly, and when I hung up I ground my teeth. Looking up at Grace, I scowled. She was my friend but most of the time I felt as if I was only nice to her out of habit, never really wanting to hear about what went on in her life.

"I listen to her talk about cheating on her boyfriend, and meaningless gossip about Lisa. Yet she can't take a few seconds to listen to what I have to say," I grumbled. "She got to Trevor before school started, in her remedial summer school classes." I proceeded to complain to Grace about what I just heard. After I had mentioned Trevor, Jenna had said that she'd step back from him, for me. Somehow condescendingly implying that she was better than me. She had this arrogance that always irritated me, even when we were closer in middle school. She carried herself as if she was the queen of everything. It hadn't bothered me as much as it did now, I don't know why. But in that moment my blood boiled at the thought that she'd gotten to him first, and she was saying she would "let me have him." I started to see what Grace was going on about for these past few years. I started to dislike Jenna, and I often wore a fake smile around her.