If you're going to love

Chapter One

The day I spoke to every girls dream began tardily. I woke up fifteen minutes late, my hair decided it didn't want to be straightened, and I decided I didn't like how I looked in any outfit that I put together. After deciding on an outfit I could honestly care less about I went off into the kitchen where my aunt Jesse was sitting at the table with her head in her hands, and a phone pressed to her ear.

"Josh it isn't like that! No, I know that..I know! No..I do trust you. I swear! Okay..okay..I'm sorry. I love you." She looked guilty and desperate.

I shook my head and sat at the table while stuffing cinnemon toast into my mouth. "What happened?" Crumbs fell from the side of my mouth, causing Jesse to make a face.

She hung up and shrugged her shoulders. She looked tired, bags hung beneath her eyes and confusion hung on her lips. "Josh had sex with some girl he met at the bar last night.."

I wasn't surprised. "And you were apologizing?"

"I don't know..it got him to stay with me though." She frowned, shaking her head.

"And you want a guy who cheats then turns it around on you because..?" I asked, making a sour face.

"It's better than nothing, Bianca." She said coldly, getting up.

I only nodded and finished my toast, tossing the paper plate into the trash and grabbed my bag before trudging off out the door and towards the bus stop. I wasn't at all surprised by what I'd heard from my aunt. She was a very..different type of lover. She never wanted to fight, she clung so tightly it nearly suffocated you, and the second you did something wrong she apologized for driving you to it. I am the exact opposite of my aunt.

Growing up I always swore I'd never become anything like my aunt; the needy woman. I saw how others spit on her name. I have seen how she would give a man everything she had and he would shove it back down her throat until she choked on it, until she came back crawling and her palms and knees were scraped just for a want of just a little affection. I told myself to never be like this woman. Why? It's because people think she's a joke and the joke is that she dared to have more emotion than everyone else did. The truth is, I've noticed, the one who cares less in a relationship is the one, in the end, who wins; because lately it seems that love is just a competition to see who can care less.

This is exactly why I didn't want to believe in love. It's a false sense of security. The form of love I have seen happen time and time again isn't the kind of love that is the beginning of something beautiful, something that breathes life. I've witnessed a much darker, sadder kind of love. It's the love one feels when they love someone they will never truly have. It's the type that doesn't signal the beginning of something beautiful, but actually the end of something that might have been beautiful. It will never actually amount to anything more than it already is. Love rarely ends happily, the joining of two people, the fusing of two lives into one. It actually more often results in the wedging apart of two who love each other the most. You can love someone with all your soul and never get the chance to be with them. Some people cannot and will not ever end up together, even if there is a mutual love being shared. It's sad, but true nonetheless.

It started off with my parents. My dad swore that he loved my mom and I, he swore. He hit my mom more than boxers during round three of the final fight of the year. He was a drunk. He was no good. But he said he did it with love. If that's love, I want no part in it.

When my parents died, I moved in with my aunt Jesse. Needy, clingy, desperate. Taken advantage of. I never want to be the girl who lets love change who she is. My aunt used to be wild, free, driven. Just like me. Except, unlike her, I won't resort to becoming a woman in her thirties terrified of dying alone just because I've been divorced four times and no relationship seems to last with me. No, that would never be me; and if you are going to love, please make sure that will never be you either.

The bus ride, as always, was long and terrible as ever. The younger students forced to sit up front were disgustingly loud, while the older students who took over the back were absolutely obscene. There was no in between with the disaster of taking a school bus. Especially as a high school senior.

Luckily, in my case, it was half way through my final year of schooling. College was iffy but all I knew for certain was that come June 12th, I would snatch up my diploma, get in my car, and be gone before wind could blow through the first summer storm. New classes for the new semester, once again, I was lucky; I knew where all of the classes were. I mean, I should have, I'd only been there for three and a half years already. First off was my anatomy class, with Mr. Shane.

Mr. Shane was a rather scronny man of average height , the light brown hair on the top of his head was thinning and he had a lazy eye that dared to glaze over every time he seemed to be staring at one of his students. But, he was the nicest man you would ever have the pleasure of meeting. He was my science teacher for all three years of high school, he knew my life like the back of his slightly hairy hand, and he was one of the few teachers in Brookesby High who actually meant it when he asked how your morning was.

Needless to say, I was more than happy about having him first period every day.

The bus screeched to a stop, we were five minutes late as always, and students poured out of the twinky shaped vehicle quickly, I'm surprised more of them didn't trip on the way out. Once it was my turn, I thanked the bus driver before tiredly making my way to my locker, smiling slightly as I saw who was there, Kelsea Wade.

Kelsea Wade was a girl on the taller and thicker side. She wasn't obese, but she wasn't overly-skinny. Kelsea had curves and dips to her body I could only dream of having, her brown hair waved in random places and she had hazel eyes that could put you in a trance the second they crinkled when she smiled at you. She was my best, most precious friend. My beautiful best friend. I had basically lived at her house all of Christmas Break, except for of course, Christmas.

She waved to me and I returned with a small smile on my full lips. Personally I felt that they were always a bit too big for my face, but of course Kelsea begged to differ. I ran over the combination of my locker in my mind, four, thirty, nineteen, before stuffing in my backpack and grabbing out my purse, Anatomy, Caluculas, French, and British Literature text books. The up side to my second semester of classes, besides having Mr. Shane first, was that I only had four classes, the last four were nothing but study halls.

I wished her a good day before wandering off into my class, smiling brightly at the teacher before sitting in the seat that I was directed to. A few nasty looks were given to me, and I was confused, until I saw who it was I was seated next to.

Casey Renolds?