I don’t smile much, but I find myself grinning from ear to ear whenever they’re around. They help me forget, and for a short period of time, I can just be myself without the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I’m in a bubble when I’m with them.
“I already ordered for us at the counter,” Claire tells me, “they’ll bring it over when it’s ready.”
“Orange slushies?” I ask.
Steph chuckles, “I don’t think Claire knows there’s anything else on the menu.”
For a while, I blamed Claire for what happened, but I slowly realized that it’s not her fault. She’s with Lucas, so insanely in love with him that I can’t imagine she has any feelings for Johnny, that she views him as anything more than just friends.
She isn’t the one who asked him to go find her that night. Lucas called in a panic, and Johnny ran out the door without question.
“It’s the only thingworthordering!” Claire protests.
Steph rolls her eyes, but reaches across the table to grab my hands. It’s like a switch flips every time she looks at me, she becomes softer, she looks at me like a child looks at their favourite toy. “How have you been, Sash? Ready for finals?”
How have I been doing?Not great.
We both know she isn’t asking about life though, she’s trying to ask about how I’ve been doing since the break-upwithout directly asking how I’ve been doing since the break-up.
On the school side of things… also not great.
There’s still a couple weeks before we finish off for the year, and in turn finish off our lives at Livler. It’s weird to think that in a few short weeks, I’ll be a college graduate… with no idea what I’m going to do.
Okay, so maybe that’s not completely true. I know I want to go into game design, but actually going out and making that happen feels a little daunting.
The internship I applied for last year would have been a great way to get my foot in the door, but now I have nothing.
No experience.
No connections.
“I’m okay,” I tell her honestly. “Still trying to figure everything out, and slowly melting my brain with all the studying, but it’s not that bad.”
She smiles at that.
The older waitress drops off our drinks, but before I have a chance to take a sip, the question that’s been burning my lips finally breaks free.
“How’s Johnny?”
Claire chokes on her slushy.
Steph’s eyes grow wide.
They both look at each other for a second, probably trying to figure out how to answer that question. I haven’t so much as spoken his name to them since everything happened, so I can imagine that this feels a little out of left field to them.
This whole thing could have meant less to him than I thought, so maybe things aren’t so bad for him and he’s out there having the time of his life.
But…
Claire stirs her straw slowly, staring at it so she doesn’t have to look at me. “He’s keeping himself distracted, championships are coming up.”
“That’s good,” I tell her half-heartedly.
Is it bad that I wanted to hear how horribly he’s doing?
If things are bad for him, much like they’re bad for me, then it means that what we had was real, that it wasn’t all in my head or just another fling to him.
