Good Enough

Julian - Sitting in a Tree, T-A-L-K-I-N-G

We've been walking for about thirty minutes when Mia stops for the tenth time.

"Are we almost there?"

I roll my eyes, but smile to myself. "We could've already been there had you not kept stopping like right now."

Mia rolls her eyes and starts walking again. "It feels like we've been walking too long. How do I know you're not just leading to an alley to kill me?"

I raise an eyebrow and gesture around us. "Does this look like a dark alley?" She glances at all the small businesses and rec. centers where they teach middle aged women how to Zumba.

"No I guess not."

We keep walking in silence until I say, "Also, if I wanted to kill you, I could've done it already."

"Well uh, thanks for you know not killing me then?"

I smile at her. "No problem. And see?" I point to the park, where you can see the jungle gym in view. "We made it."

Mia looks at where I'm pointing and finally cracks her small smile again. How does she only smile like that? Maybe she's not fond of faking smiles. I bet my smile would only be that big if I didn't fake it so much.

But I don't think I'm faking it right now.

"Race you there?"

I blink and look back down at Mia. "What?"

She raises her eyebrow. "Last one there is a rotten egg?"

"You're on."

She takes off running, and even though we didn't start at the same time, I easily pass her. I look back and smirk at her before running until I reach the fountain in the middle of the park. Luckily there's no one on it as I throw myself on to the edge of it and wait for Mia to appear only seconds later.

"Jeez that took you a while." I say with the same smirk on my face. Mia's fast. just not as fast as me.

Don't feel too proud of yourself.

"Hey I haven't been running as long as you, okay?" She says defensively.

"I know. Just messing with you." I get up off the fountain and make the decision to grab her hand and pull her towards the tree I used to climb.

"Wait, aren't you going to make a wish in the fountain?" Mia says, thankfully without acknowledging the fact that I'm holding her hand.

"What, like toss a coin in?"

She pulls out her wallet and pulls out two shiny pennies. "Yeah, what else? Here."

I take it from her and she pulls me closer to the fountain. She closes her eyes, her hands clutching the penny tightly before she opens them and tosses the penny in. She looked beautiful and...relaxed when she made her wish.

Stop thinking about her like that. She's not into guys like you.

I glance at Mia and find her looking at me expectantly. I don't close my eyes but I do hold the penny tightly. Maybe holding it tighter makes the wishes work more. Although I stopped wishing for that when I wished for Mama to come home and she never did.

I wish that one day everything would just stop being so god damn hard. I think before tossing the coin in. Mia smiles at me.

"Okay. Now to the tree?"

I smile back and take us to the tree. When I was younger it looked huge, but now it's just mediocre. I'm forced to let go of Mia's hand as I begin to climb it, using the same footholds and branches I used when I was younger. Mia follows after me, and soon we're up to the last branch . It's thick enough to support both our weights, although Mia is skinny so I think any of these branches could support her.

I pull myself up to the last one, the stretching motion making the cuts on my side ache. But I have to ignore it. I sit on it and extend a hand to Mia. Then we're both sitting and looking down at all the kids trying new trick on their boards or the younger ones riding bikes. It's a nice view, one I haven't seen in a while.

Mia turns to me. "Okay. So. Back to what we were doing in the coffee shop. Tell me more about yourself."

"What if we do questions instead? I can't really think of anything just on the spot."

Mia nods. "Okay. Tell me then...what's your most embarrassing story of all time?"

It's a funny one, isn't it Julian? Get this: your brother walked in on you trying to kill yourself and you screamed at him about wanting to die. Isn't that so embarrassing? I mean he had to clean up all the blood and nothing's been the same since. So mortifying.

I clear my throat. "Uh. I don't know."

"That's a lie. Come on."

I sigh. "Okay well... I made out with Foster once."

Mia statts laughing. "You what?"

I sigh loudly. It's true. It was stupid dare, but it was still embarrassing. "Okay well it was a dare. We were at 'Drea's house and she said we should play truth or dare. We took a few shots at first, and all of us being runners, we're total light weights. Foster is the worst at holding his alcohol. So he was really drunk and Lana dared him to make out with me. And he did it. And Lana recorded it."

Mia starts to laugh quietly before stopping  and tilting her head questioning at me. "Wait is Foster...?"

"Gay? Bi? We're not sure. He made us swear not to tell anyone about the kiss since he looked kind of into it. His parents aren't big on the whole LGBTQ community so..."

"But you told me."

"Yeah but you're one of us now. And I trust you."

Mia raises her eyebrow. "You trust me?"

"Yeah, of course." I say. And I do. Something about Mia makes it easy for me to want to trust her.

Mia's smile grows a little wider and I don't know if I imagine but it feels she moves a little closer to me on the branch. I move a fraction of an inch closer too.

"Okay now that you heard about my make out session." Mia giggles at my words. "You tell me something embarrassing. It has to be recent."

"Okay let me think." She pauses before sighing. "Got it. Okay. You have to swear not to tell anyone though."

"Promise."

"Um. God. Okay. So this one time, I was at some party my friends dragged me to. And there was this guy and-."

Mia's cut off by my phone ringing, and a part of me is almost glad. I'm scared of what she's going to say. What could you have done with that guy? Is she going to say someone walked in on them...having sex? God I don't want to hear about that.

Bet you won't live to ever do that with anyone.

"Sorry I have to take this!" I say quickly, answering the phone before Mia can continue her maybe sex story.

"Hello?" I ask.

"Get your fucking ass home. Now."

I KNOW I SUCK AT WRITING IM SORRY IF ANYONE EVEN CARES AT THIS POINT. I'd give up on this story if I didn't have the ending figured out already. Anyways. Stay tuned :) - MM