Close As Strangers // c.h.

7

*Ren's POV*

On the drive back to my house, it was like old times.

When I turned 16 and finally got a car, I got this old crappy thing this is so old you can't play CD's, you have to play tapes. So when I found this out, Lizzie told me that she had a ton of blank tapes sitting at her house. We then decided to make a couple mixtapes of our favorite bands. We had one obviously of 5 Seconds of Summer, but then we made a Blink-182 one, an All Time Low one, a Mayday Parade one, and a Green Day one, plus one with a mix of all of our favorite songs.

When we got in the car she opened up the glove compartment and took out the mixtape with our favorite songs.

"Do you remember when we made all of these?" Signaling to the small stack of mixtapes in the glove compartment.

"Yeah that was a great day, it took us an entire day but we did it," I let out a happy sigh remembering that day. We spent the entire day selecting songs and putting them onto the empty tapes.

The first song to come on is "I Feel Like Dancin'" by All Time Low, which we totally jammed out to. Next was "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day and we sang this one with all of our heart. Then finally "Gotta Get Out" came on and Lizzie and I made eye contact.

"We can change it if we would like to," she stated, reaching for the dial in my ancient car.

"No, I want to listen to it, plus we can't break our old rule!" I gave her a small smirk knowing that we were both reminiscing about all the little things in our relationship that made it so special.

We used to have an old rule in my car that when we are listening to our mixtapes, there is shuffling through songs, we listen to each and every one, because at one point in our lives, that song meant something to us, and we had to remember that.

The first verse was kind of awkward because we didn't know how to react, but by the chorus we are singing so loud I'm pretty sure that all of West Sydney could hear us.

We arrived at my house just as we are singing the last lines of the song. We both crack up laughing as we exit the car and practically skip up the front steps to my house. When we walk in my Aunt is sitting at the counter reading the newspaper, she looks up at me with disappointment in her eyes.

Aunt Kelly hates when I skip school, but I figured that I could get away with this one because I haven't done this since the boys were in Sydney last, which is now nearing closer to 6 months.

It will actually be 6 months this weekend.

"Ren, why aren't you at school? You too Lizzie? I have been worried sick, the school called and said you didn't show up, so I called Lizzie's mum and she said she received the same phone call, and you know I hate when you just leave and don't tell me where you're going!"

"I am so sorry, Kelly," I started, "I just really needed to get some time to myself up in the treehouse. Then my great friend was worried about me so she scoped out all of the places I could have been in Sydney and eventually found me there. We then decided that we really need time to bond again, so we're just going to go and hang out like we used to." I let that hang there for a moment before adding more: "Please I haven't skipped since the boys were still in town, can you please let this go?"

She sat there contemplating for a moment, but I knew what she was going to say. She is going to agree for the soul reason of that she knows that I need this day today.

"On one condition, we have one of our movie nights like old times tonight, deal?" I don't want to admit this but I have actually been craving one of those lately, I really miss how close I was to my aunt, and I desperately want that back.