“What are you thinkin’ about over there?” Stacey rasped against my neck with her hand moving to my cock. We were sitting on the bed of my truck at a party in the woods. Anyone who was anyone was there, including the boys. Alex never came to these things even though the boys begged her to tag along. She would reply with “Nah, that’s not really my thing.”

She was a good girl, always had been. I prayed she always would be.

That was one of the things I loved most about her.

I pulled away from Stacey, needing some space from the daunting thoughts that plagued my mind.

“What? Am I not good enough for you? Huh? Now that you have half the school fawning over you?” she spewed.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I don’t have time for this shit.” I jumped off the bed of my truck.

“Lucas! What the fuck?”

I stepped toward her, my mouth close to hers. “Don’t,” I warned.

She spitefully narrowed her eyes at me. “Going to see, Half-Pint?” she mocked in a condescending tone. “Oh yeah, she has better things to do now and they don’t include you. Why would they? When she has someone who looks like Cole by her side.” Her eyebrow arched when she realized her words were getting to me, even though I tried to hide it. I couldn’t, I never could when it came to Alex.

“Maybe I should go play with Cole. If he’s good enough for her, then he damn well would be good enough for me.”

I maliciously smiled. “Well God knows if I had to choose between you and Alex, there wouldn’t be a choice.”

She laughed viscously, a cackling sound I felt deep in my bones. Nothing could have prepared me for her next words.

“You’re a fucking idiot. What do you think you’ve been doing all these years,” she paused to let her words linger, “Bo?”

I jerked back like she had just punched me. The truth of her words just about knocked the wind right out of me.

“What? You think you haven’t? You’re a fucking fool. Sorry to break it to you, but, Lucas, you have been choosing me over Alex for years. Fuck,” she sneered. “And this last year, you’ve been choosing every other girl, but her. So get off your high horse, suga’, the only one that’s been hurting her is you.”

I stood there in a trance-like state. “That’s not true,” I muttered through my teeth, barely believing it myself.

She let out a loud laugh with her head falling back. She laughed at me because she knew as much as I did that my words were nothing but lies.

“I’m not the villain in this story, Lucas. You are.”

I instinctively stepped back to catch my bearings, but it was too late. The quicksand of her words took me under. I gripped the side of my truck to steady my composure. It didn’t help. Stacey’s words caused a domino effect of memories and mistakes hitting me like a thunderbolt.

Every time I left with her.

Every time she saw me with her.

Every time I told her she was just a girl.

Every excuse. Every explanation. Every lie.

It engulfed me, hurting me in ways that I assumed I hurt her.  I found it hard to move.

For the first time…

I was slapped in the face with my own hurricane. The winds turned against me and I didn’t even fight it. I let it take hold. I deserved it all.

“She’d be stupid to choose you over Cole.”

I peered up at her through my lashes. “Get the fuck away from me,” I ordered with my head cocked and heated eyes.

She smiled, big and high. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it?” And with that she turned and left.

I don’t know how long I stood there replaying everything she said. All of it just sort of mixed together, causing a typhoon of regret. Before I knew it I was at our abandoned house, staring at the hole in the wall that I had caused. I hadn’t been back there since that night. I pushed her away like I did my feelings.

At the end of the day, I was left infinitely and utterly alone and I had no one to blame but myself.

Summer was in full swing. I couldn’t believe we were already halfway through it. It seemed like it was just yesterday that we walked out the doors of school and into summer break. As always, the restaurant was packed and I worked all the time. There were only two months out of the year that Oak Island had a high season for tourism. Cole spent most of the time surfing while I worked, along with the boys. Lucas also hung around a lot more than he used to.

It was like having the old Bo again. I got so used to seeing him surf with the boys that I started putting in his order for lunch without him having to ask me. He always met my eyes when he came in.  Lucas tried to talk to me at least a few times a day, asking me how I was, how my day went if I needed anything. I don’t know what caused the 180-degree change in his attitude toward me, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Girls still flocked to him, he was a magnet to the opposite sex, but he didn’t pay them any mind. I hadn’t seen him hanging out with anyone other than the boys. Sometimes I would catch him talking to Aubrey, it always seemed as if they were in some deep conversation, but never around the boys. It only happened when it was just the two of them. There were several times that I wanted to ask Aubrey about it, but I decided against it at the last second. I didn’t want to rock the boat.

We weren’t Half-Pint and Bo anymore, but at least he was cordial now.

“Hey,” Lucas greeted, nudging me with his shoulder and pulling me away from my thoughts.

I nudged him back. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

We stood in the sand where I watched them surf all the time. Cole wasn’t as good as Lucas, but he wasn’t that far behind either. Lucas was always the best surfer among the boys, and they knew it too.

“Do you have time to sit for a bit?”

I glanced over at him, smiling. “I do.”

He returned my smile and nodded toward the sand before sitting down. I followed suit. We both sat with our knees up and our arms lying across them, side-by-side. Our shoulders touched and I immediately felt his warmth roll down my body.

“How’s your day going?” he asked, looking at the ocean. I wondered if he watched Cole.

“Good. Busy.”

“You like busy, though.”

I softly chuckled, “I do. How’s your summer going?”

“Nothing too exciting going on.”

“I know, you’re here every day,” I blurted, my cheeks reddening the second the last word came out of my mouth.

Looking at me with a fascinated regard, he grinned and nodded. “That I am,” he simply stated.

“So, are you excited about turning eighteen soon?” I questioned, changing the subject.

“I guess. You excited about turning sixteen soon?” he answered, throwing my question back at me.

“I’m excited to drive. It would be nice not to rely on someone to get everywhere. I’m kinda over my bike.”

“I could… I mean… I… umm…” he mumbled.

“You could what?” I was never one for patience.

“I could drive you to and from work? You know, the way I used to.”

“Why? Why now?”

He sighed, defeated. “And we’re back to this again.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. “What do you expect from me? I wish I could just let things go and we could magically go back to what we used to be, but I’m not made like that, Lucas. You know that. I need to know why now? I don’t understand how you can go from ignoring my existence, to offering me rides, and not expect me to question your timing.”

He kicked the sand around below his feet. He did this when he was nervous. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Alexandra. I really don’t.”

I ignored how normal my full name sounded from his lips. I ignored the way it made me feel because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to go on with this conversation. It would end how they always had. Bad.

“Tell me the truth,” was all I replied.

He gazed out at the ocean again, as if it pained him to look at me and tell me what he had been trying to hide for so long.