Page 13 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

“Tell me about you. How was your first day?” Lucky said. “Not too awful, I hope.”

That stabbed me straight through the heart. I couldn’t rightfully tell him that I’d had an amazing first day when he’d had such a terrible one. “You know… school is school.”

Lucky looked up from his food and locked eyes with me. “Why are you lying?” I tilted my head and he gave me a hooded gaze. “Aria. I know you better than anyone on this planet. I can see that you’re lying to me. Was it terrible?”

“N-no…” I said. “It was good.”

He recoiled a bit. “Good?”

“Yeah… I know, it’s shocking.”

“Well then tell me,” Lucky said. “Tell me about your first day.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, frankly, it was incredible. The school, first of all, is super technologically advanced. Like… my locker opens via an app on my phone, and all the classes, they don’t demand that you don’t even use your phone, they have chargers and special holders for them. All the desks have screens.”

Lucky’s eyes widened. “Wow. How the other half lives.”

“No kidding. Their debate club, it’s an actual club room. With podiums and a judge’s table and all this fancy stuff, and I made a new friend there, Arden. She’s awesome. We have a few classes together, so I don’t feel so alone,” I said. “And… I met someone… Well, I re-met someone.”

There was a clatter as the fork Lucky was holding hit the plate. “You met someone? Like a guy?”

“Yeah. I had this friend back in elementary school before I met you: Tristan. He was lanky and awkward and kids picked on him for… reasons. Anyway, I kind of stood up for him like I do, and we were close, but then his dad got remarried and they moved and I thought I’d never see him again. He goes to this school, and honestly, we kind of hit it off. Exchanged numbers, he asked me out… I turned him down because I already made plans with you, but I’m… excited.”

“Wow,” Lucky said. “Uh, that’s great, I guess?”

I crossed my arms. “What’s with that reception? You were the one who wanted me to tell you.”

“Who knew that while I was doing so shittily, you were doing so great,” Lucky spat, popping a fry into his mouth. He’d never acted like that before.

“What’s your deal all of a sudden? Misery loves company? You would have preferred me to have a shitty day just like you?”

He must have been able to sense something in my tone, because he looked up and his demeanor changed instantly. “What? No! Obviously I’m happy you had such a good first day. That’s awesome. I just… I missed you so much. I guess it would have been nice to know you missed me too.”

I reached across the table and gave the top of his head a little smack. “What are you talking about? Of course I missed you. I wish you could have been there with me. I couldn’t wait to get to dinner and catch up with you.”

That seemed to calm Lucky, who smiled at me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, you dope. Who do you think is my best friend? No school, or debate club, or Arden, or Tristan could replace you.”

Lucky’s smile turned blinding. “Oh. Good.”

I shook my head at him. “Honestly. Don’t get so jealous.”

He rubbed the back of his head, a coy expression on his face. “Heh, yeah. I’ll work on that.”

5

Tristan

As I drove home, I couldn’t get the last thing Hannah had said to me out of my head.

“You’re only goingto create problems for both of you,”she said.“It’s not just you that you have to think about, but it’s her too. If it weren’t for you, she could probably just ease into life here and Ceradi would get bored and go back to her regular victims, but if she thinks she could get a two for one deal, she’ll do it without a second thought.”

I hadn’t consideredthe fact that I might be making things difficult for Aria. Yeah, Ceradi and some of our other friends liked to look for people to gossip about, but was my simple involvement with Aria going to put an unintentional target on her back? The very last thing I wanted to do was cause Aria any stress or pain, but if I liked her and she liked me, what business was that of anyone else’s?

What if there was a possibility of showing my friends how awesome Aria was by involving myself with her further? That had certainly happened in our friend group before when one of us started dating someone and they worked their way further in. Hell, that was halfway what happened with Hannah, and now she was closer with all of us than anyone any of us had dated in the past. When I started dating Hannah, it gave her that in to work her way further into our group and eventually Ceradi and the others accepted her too. Long after we stopped dating, they were all still friends with her.

Now, the fact that she blossomed over the summer helped. She finally got her braces removed and grew into her lithe but curvaceous form, so she was more the norm for our group, but Aria was just as beautiful.

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