Pepper never meant to lose her best friend. Lucas never meant to fall in love.
Yet the aftermath of broken hearts leads them to blur the lines of their friendship forever. When Pepper is dumped by her boyfriend and Lucas is led on by his crush, they...
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A FLUSTER OF UNDYING EMOTIONS move chaotically within me as I wait for Pepper's arrival. It's been three months since I've been able to spend quality time with her. Real quality time. It's not even the fact that I miss her affection and offering mine — though I do long for it terribly. I just miss her. Her happiness. Her existence. My ears long for the melody of her bubbly laugh, and my eyes are dying to witness the magic of her vibrant smile.
Everything turned to shit because of me and my parents. Now I just want life to go back to the way it was.
I reside in the school library an hour before classes start. Every note I could have ever written in the course of these past four months lay perfectly aligned across the roundtable. I sectioned them by subjects Pepper struggles with most to least.
My knee bounces under the table as I stare at the double doors leading inside. The fluorescent lights and neon exit sign are more than enough to tire my freshly woken eyes. Buzzes of electricity and low hums drifting from the computers drive anxiety through my veins. Will things be weird? Like nothing ever happened? Will she want to talk about him?
There's something dodgy about Pepper regarding her breakup with Lucas. Normally, I wouldn't want to pry because it'd be unnecessary. She's always been open and honest with me, but something about them has insistently bugged me ever since the dance. Besides the fact that Pepper seemed to force herself to go back to Lucas, the following week, he practically lost his head when I asked about her. He declared that she wasn'tokay before skipping the rest of his classes for the day. On top of that, she didn't show up to school for two weeks. I can't imagine our advisors being okay with letting her miss that much school over a simple breakup.
There has to be more.
The way she broke down on the phone last week like she was on the verge of losing her sanity, it sends imps of fear and curiosity straight into my bloodstream. Pepper is the worst at keeping things in. She usually ends up self-destructing if she carries her pain for too long. If I can help it, I want to stop her from reaching that point.
Creak. The library door cracks open. The sleeve of Pepper's favorite, furry, neon pink coat is the first thing to peek past the threshold. Then her curly head pops in and she immediately isolates me in the vacant vicinity.
I straighten my spine and shape my lips into a pathetic smile while my heart explodes in my chest. I want to cry for some damn reason. Cry because I miss her and because my stupid decision caused us infinite chaos. Cry and yell because my parents ruined something perfect.
The rays of sunlight that usually illuminate her presence are nowhere to be seen as she approaches. She's not smiling, but biting her lip and gripping a binder to her chest like a shield. Anxiety is coursing through her slight frame. She appears...terrified.
"Hey," I breathe when she's close enough and try to ignore the shadows under her makeup-less eyes.
"H-hi." She tries to sound bubbly, but it comes out flat and lifeless. "It's kind of creepy to be at school when hardly anyone is here."
