June 13, 2021

I spent all day yesterday and half the day before finishing the cake with Gran. It was a three-layered red velvet cake covered with white fondant and pink swirled icing on the edges. On the very top, I wrote "Happy Birthday Naomi" in gold icing like the customer asked, while Gran put cute pink flowers all over it. We were so proud of how it turned out. The little girl who it was for loved it too.

It made me even more excited because my birthday was tomorrow which meant Jake would be coming to California. I was a little nervous for him and Benny to meet, given what happened the other day at the pool, but Jake promised no fights while he was here.

The boys were set on making this the best birthday ever. Every time I asked what they were planning they didn't tell me. I even tried to get it out of Tommy because he was terrible at keeping secrets, but Squints and Yeah Yeah kept him in place.

I had plans to hang out with just Benny today. I'm guessing the rest of the guys were trying to be slick and all backed out on playing baseball at the sandlot on the same day, which just so happened to be the day before my birthday.

Someone knocked out the door. I looked out of the window in my room to see Benny standing on the porch, so I quickly ran downstairs and opened the door.

"Hey girl hey!" he said like a girl as I opened the door.

"Hi Benny." I said laughing.

Since we were home alone at my house, we stayed downstairs and decided to watch a movie.

Benny was sitting criss-cross on the floor against Gran's favorite chair and I was sitting on the couch.

"I'll get the snacks, you pick the movie." I said setting the remote down on the coffee table.

I ran to the kitchen and got out a bag of popcorn and put it in the microwave, then grabbed sour patch kids, M&M's, and animal crackers from the pantry. As soon as the popcorn was done, I poured it into a big plastic bowl then dumped all of the candy into it, then dumped the animal crackers into a different bowl.

"What do you want to drink?"

"Water is fine." Benny replied scrolling through all the movies on Netflix. "Oh! What about The Bee Movie?"

"Um, no." I said while standing on my tiptoes to reach a cup from the top cabinet.

"Fine." He said with a disappointed face.

I was filling the cup with water when Benny asked "hey, what do you like to do, you know, when you're not putting up with all of us sandlot boys."

I finished filling up the water and walked over to the couch and sat down.

"You're gonna laugh at me."

"I'm not gonna laugh at you!" Benny said taking the water from my hands.

"Fine... I like to draw. And I'm pretty good at it too." I said with a smile.

"Really? Can I see?"

"I would show you, but I left my sketch book in Texas." I said standing back up to go get the rest of the snacks.

"Damn. Well I bet your drawings are amazing." He said turning back towards the tv.

After scrolling through all the movies and shows on Netflix, we decided to watch Stranger Things since Benny had never seen the series before.

Sooner or later we were both sitting cross-legged on the couch facing each other and just talking while the show played in the background.

"No you didn't!" Benny said wide-eyed with a smile.

"I did!" I said laughing so hard tears were forming in my eyes.

"I can't believe that!" He said eating a piece of popcorn.

"What? She had it coming!"

"So you cut a chunk of her hair off?" He said throwing a piece of popcorn at me.

"She took my goldfish!" I said throwing a piece back at him.

We were both laughing so hard I could've sworn I saw a tear fall from his eye.

"Remind me to never take your food." He said when we both finally calmed down.

"You'll be fine as long as I don't have scissors anywhere near me." I said looking down at the popcorn between us and picking out a sour patch kid.

I could feel him staring at me, but I just looked down at the popcorn with a smile until my phone started to buzz on the coffee table.

I picked the phone up and looked at Benny.

"It's Jake isn't it?" He said rolling his eyes.

"Yeah..." I said looking back down at the phone. "I'm not gonna answer."

"No it's fine. It will be like I'm not even here." He said turning his body to face the TV.

I clicked the green answer button as Benny took the popcorn and set it in his lap.

"Hey, I'm still eating that too idiot. Don't make me get the scissors." I said laughing and reaching over to grab a piece of popcorn from the bowl in his lap.

Benny started laughing again.

"Ella? Who are you talking to." Jake said in a protective tone.

"Oh, just Benny." I said laughing as Benny threw more popcorn at me again. "Hey, you're cleaning that up."

"Is anyone else there?" He said.

"Uh, no..."

"So you two are watching Netflix alone?"

"Oh my gosh. We're literally just hanging out. You know me better than that."

"You're right, I'm sorry. I just miss you." He said, his voice softening.

"I miss you too."

Benny pointed at his mouth and pretended to throw up as he reached for his water in front of him on the coffee table. I hit his arm with the back of my hand and tried to contain my laughter, but I just ended up snorting which made both Benny and I die laughing.

"It seems like you two get along pretty well." Jake said.

"No I really hate her, I'm just hanging out with her because she's the new girl in town and I felt bad." Benny joked.

My jaw dropped as I said "I'm offended." and put my hand on my chest.

"I can't wait to see you tomorrow." Said Jake

"Yeah, I can't wait to see you too." I said smiling.

Benny didn't say anything.

"What time will you get to the hotel?" I asked.

"About like eight in the morning. I was thinking we could go to the beach and then go back to where my parents and I are staying and watch your favorite movie."

"The pitch-perfect movies?" I said excitedly.

"Oh, no I thought it was the notebook..." Jake said with a nervous laugh.

"Since when did I ever like the notebook?" I said confused.

Benny laughed "come on man, even I know she hates sad movies."

"The notebook isn't sad." Jake snapped.

"Dude, even I cried. She literally doesn't remember him until right before they both died together." Benny said still eating popcorn.

"You watched the notebook?" I said looking at Benny surprised.

"Well... yeah... it was on when the boys and I went to the drive-in movies..." he said stretching his arms then putting them behind his head, trying to act masculine.

I stared at him with a blank expression on my face then said "You're a terrible liar, I hope you know that."

He sighed then said "fine, I watched it with my mom okay?"

I started dying laughing once again. He joined in after being embarrassed for five seconds.

For a moment I had completely forgotten that I was on the phone with Jake. This was the most I've laughed since before my mom passed. Benny was just really fun to be around.

"Fine, we'll watch Pitch Perfect then." Jake said annoyed.

"Yay! You're coming to the party the boys are throwing too right?" I asked

Benny slowly turned his head away from the TV and towards me.

"What party?" Jake asked.

"Right, the boys are throwing me a surprise party." I said making air quotes around surprise as if he could see it.

"What?" Benny said in a high pitched voice "what surprise party?" He scratched his neck.

"Benny, I'm not stupid." I said looking at him with one eyebrow slightly raised.

"Ugh. Who told you? Was it Tommy?" He said annoyed.

"No one told me idiot." I said laughing "it's just very obvious. Y'all aren't very good at surprises."

"Damn, okay, well... just act surprised because we worked really hard." Benny said.

"Alright, I'll try." I said with a smile.

"Hey Jake, can I call you back later?"

"Sure. Whatever." He said then hung up before I could say anything else.

"Is he on his man period or something?" Benny said after a few moments of awkward silence.

I picked up the pillow that was sitting behind me and threw it at him.

"Oh that was a mistake." Benny said standing up.

I quickly got up to run to the kitchen, but before I could, he ran after me and grabbed my waist from behind to pick me up. Before he could get me off the ground, I grabbed the corner of the wall and held onto it as tight as I could. As he was still trying to pull me back, my hands slipped which made Benny and I fall backward onto the ground. We had both landed on our sides, I was facing away from him but his arms were still wrapped around my waist and he was facing me. I laughed as I flipped over to face him and he let go of me. He was laughing as well, but not as hard as I was. When I realized how close our faces were to each other I rolled onto my back and shot up as fast as I could, Benny doing the same.

Both our faces were red and we were out of breath from laughing. He stood up first, then helped me up. We walked back over to the couch and sat cross-legged and facing each other like we were before Jake called me.

I grabbed the popcorn and put it in between us again then picked out another sour patch kid from the mix.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Benny said staring at me with a weird look on his face.

"Uh... sure." I said confusedly.

Right before Benny could ask his question, my dad kicked the front door open.

"A little help?" He said with four plastic bags on each of his arms and a jug of orange juice in his right hand.

"Yeah, one sec Dad." I said standing up and setting the popcorn back on the table. "What was the question?"

"Oh, um... never mind. It was stupid anyway" Benny said scratching his neck.

"Are you sure? You scratch your neck when you lie." I said trying to get the question out of him.

"Yeah it's fine. I'll ask another time." He said standing up as well.

We both helped my dad bring in all the groceries from his car which took like five minutes because he tends to get carried away when he goes shopping by himself.

As I was putting everything where it needed to go, Benny got a text from someone.

He looked down at his screen and suddenly got all nervous.

"Who is it?" I said standing on my tippy toes to put the cereal at the top of the pantry.

"Oh, it's just my mom. I gotta go." He said standing up from his seat on the chair by the island.

"Okay. See you tomorrow!" I said turning around to wave at him with a smile, but he was already out the door.

Benny quickly popped his head back in the door and said "thanks for having me. It was fun." Then ran back to his house.

My dad and I just stared at the door for a moment.

"That was weird." Dad said shaking his head and reaching down to get another bag of groceries.

"Yeah..." I said still looking at the door.

After we put all the groceries away I went up to my room to lay down. I'm sure Benny suddenly leaving was probably nothing, but I was still worried. I got anxiety about stuff like that. I didn't like not knowing what was going on, especially when it had to do with one of my friends.

Pretty soon I decided to just take a shower and go to bed so I could be up early for when Jake got here the next day.

After showering, I put on a black Nike sports bra and some grey shorts then got in bed and went on my phone to check if I missed any texts while I was showering.

*one photo*

Until tomorrow... love you.

It was a picture of him smiling and holding a blue and pink gift bag with white tissue paper in it with a sticker that said "to Ella" with a heart.

Until tomorrow... love you too ❤️

And with that, I plugged my phone in, set it on my nightstand, then went to bed.