“Okay, sure. I know the perfect pizzeria we can go to. Have you guys ever heard of Lottie’s Pizza? It’s the best pizza in town.”
“If your taste in pizza is as good as your songwriting, then I need to get there pronto,” Leo says.
“Heck, yeah!” Jasper cheers. “What are we waiting for? Let’s gooooo.”
“Let me text my friends,” I say as I grab my phone. “Hopefully they can make it.”
Sophie and Damian were just about to go out to eat, so they’re very excited to join us. The rest of my friends and their boyfriends tell me they’d love to go for pizza with Kylen and his friends. Since we’re a big group, Beck calls Lottie’s to make surethey have a table that can fit all of us. They assure us that they do.
“Now we just have to figure out the carpooling,” Jasper says as we leave the boys’ dorm and wait for my friends outside. Once they arrive and we exchange hellos with each other, we discuss how we’re going to get there.
“We’re eleven people,” Ryder says. “Three cars are enough.”
“We’re going to ride on my bike,” Damian says, sliding his hand into Sophie’s.
“Of course you will,” Carly teases.
“So that leaves nine,” Leo says.
“Dibs on Rave,” Jasper jokes.
I shrug. “We can ride in the same car.”
“My car,” Kylen says. “It’s not as smelly as your cars,” he shoots at his friends before they can object.
“Well, you’re right about that,” Beck mutters.
In the end, we decide to go with three cars, plus the motorcycle. Kylen, Jasper, and I will ride in Kylen’s car while Leo and Beck will ride in Leo’s car. Addie, Caleb, Carly, and Ryder will ride in Caleb’s car.
“Now that was more difficult than my trig homework,” Kylen jokes.
“We good?” Jasper asks. “Now can we go? My stomach is going to eat itself if I don’t feed it soon.”
We separate to our cars, which are parked in various spaces in the student parking lot. Kylen’s car is a navy color, and the interior shows that he takes really good care of it.
“It’s nice in here,” I tell him as I take shotgun. Jasper didn’t even try to fight me for it.
“My grandparents put money aside to buy it for me. They could have given me their old car, but they wanted me to have my own.”
“They really do sound like amazing people.”
“They sure are,” Jasper tells me. “You’ll see for yourself on Sunday. I bet they’ll love Rave, won’t they, Ky?”
He grins at me. “For sure.”
I sink a little in my seat. Why does that make me nervous? I guess because I want them to like me. I’m pretty sure they know what happened between Kylen and me. Did they have ill thoughts of me? Will I have to work hard to prove I’m not a monster?
After I punch in the address to Lottie’s Pizza in Kylen’s GPS, we are on our way. Kylen turns on some music and he and Jasper sing throughout the entire ride. Hearing the way they bounce off each other is so awesome. They totally fit the message I was conveying in my song. True friends are really hard to come by, and if you’re lucky enough to have them, you should never take them for granted.
“Now a song dedicated to Rave,” Jasper says when we’re five minutes away from the pizzeria. “To show her how awesome she is.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“We don’thaveto,” he says. “But I want to.”
Kylen finds a station that just plays instrumental music, and then they compose a song about me right on the spot.
“We know an awesome girl named Rave,” Jasper starts. “She’s so awesome that her songs are what I always crave.”
