11 - Bored and Broken

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The summer weeks weren't going by fast enough. Aside from her summer job, Keilani didn't really have much else to do throughout the day. Occasionally she'd hang out with Marisol and their friend group, but most days she was bored. Bored and broken. She would be moving to South Bend in less than a month, and she still didn't know where Carter was or why he had stopped responding. She thought back to where she was the last time she'd gotten a text from him. She knew exactly where she was. It was two weeks after graduation and she was at her friend Lucia's going away party. Lucia was a foreign exchange student and was going back to Costa Rica the next day. Keilani had been helping her pack.

"Are you ready to go back?" Keilani asked Lucia.

"Very much." Lucia beamed. She still spoke with an accent, but it wasn't as strong as the first day they'd met. "You have to come visit San Jose."

"One day, when I can pay for it myself. I doubt my dad will pay for me to go there on my own." Keilani said. Her dad wouldn't even let her take a roadtrip with Marisol to San Antonio for the day. There was no way he'd pay for a solo roundtrip flight to San Jose.

"They can come too." Lucia laughed as she folded a t-shirt and placed it in her suitcase. Keilani's family had become Lucia's second host family. Lucia had even celebrated her birthday with them instead of her actual host family.

"Thanks. I'll be sure to relay the message and..." Keilani began, but didn't finish the sentence when she felt her phone vibrate. Carter had texted her back. She smiled at her phone.

"Carter?" Lucia guessed.

"Mhmm." Keilani nodded, still focused on her phone.

"Did he ask you on another date?"

"No." Keilani pouted. "Hopefully this summer he and I can do something." She said as she responded to Carter's text.

Carter hadn't asked Keilani on a date since the week of his birthday a few months ago. They'd gotten into an argument earlier in the week before the date and by the time they'd made up, he'd already made birthday plans with his dad. Carter took a raincheck, but hadn't cashed it in yet.

"Can I tell you something? Like advice?" Lucia took a seat next to Keilani on the bed.

"Of course." Keilani put her phone facedown to show Lucia that she had her full attention.

"Sometimes..." Lucia paused and fiddled with a loose strand of her chestnut brown hair before continuing. "Well... I think that sometimes you are like a mom to Carter."

Keilani tilted her head to one side. She could usually decode Lucia's English but she didn't understand.

"Like... You act like a mom; more like a mom than a girlfriend," Lucia explained, picking up on Keilani's confusion. "This happens sometimes when you try to help him with things. Like when he didn't know if he wanted to apply to college and you bought him all of those college books. If you want to be more of a girlfriend then you cannot try to fix all of his problems. That's kind of like what a mom does. You have to support him, even if you don't always agree, and hope he figures it out himself."


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