The ride back home was partially quiet due to the fact that Oliver wasn't one for much dialogue and I respected that. There were a few conversations here and there that had no real meaning and eventually we drifted off somewhere. He had a bruise under his eye, I dismissed it thinking it was just something left from the black eye he'd previously had.

I'd noticed he was staring at my hands when I changed the radio station but I thought nothing of it as we said our goodbyes resulting in Oliver chuckling quietly and my eyes rolling multiple times as I made my way to the door.

Apparently Sidney decided to make my life harder and showed up at my bedroom door sometime around eleven that night in her sweats, a hoodie that looked oddly like it was made for a guy and her overnight bag thrown over her shoulder.

She smiled, walking past me and into my room, tossing her bag in the corner of my room and launching herself onto my bed. I heard her chuckle, "I'm spending the night, babe so what do you want to watch, I have Zack and Cody reruns or Now You See Me, the one with Dave Franco."

My eyebrows furrowed, she was insanely happy this late at night, "Why are you here?"

She pulled my blanket down and wiggled her way under, sighing in content as she laid in the middle of my bed spread out like Patrick Star, "Well, truth be told, I planned on staying over at Kat's but when I got there I might've seen a condom wrapper sitting on the floor of her living room. Girl, I fled like January at a boob convention, let's just say, babygirl isn't a virgin anymore and I was not going to sleep in their bodily fluids."

I groaned at the thought of my best friend getting it on, "Ugh, Sid I was sleep," my hair was thrown up in a careless bun and sometime throughout the night is throw on an old sweater because the weather in my house was being extremely bipolar.

Cuddling further into my black cocoon of a blanket, I narrowed my eyes at the intruder.

"I can tell from the drool on your face."

Flicking my gaze up to the lids of my eyes, I let out an inhuman sound of distress, my voice coming out as a groan, "Who even let you in?"

I heard a jingle as she tossed keys on my floor next to her bag, "Your mom gave me a spare key."

My eyes were threatening to close as I let out yawn that could pull a bear from hibernation, "Since when are you so close to my mom?"

Sid was laughing at the frigidness of my tone and the scowl on my face as she responded, rubbing her hand down her face before groaning and throwing a caramel arm over her eyes, "Since I stopped you from drowning last summer. I fucking hate mother nature; who the fuck thought it would be okay for teenage girls to break out this bad?"

I had to admit, Sidney's skin wasn't flawless but it had been clearing up and I made a mental note to steal some of her face cream when I could.

Laying across her stomach, I sighed as she pulled her hair over to the side, "I never asked, what happened with Luca?"

And Sid's body went rigid as she sat up, I didn't know whether to take that as a good sign or a bad one, "You mean what happened after you abandoned me with Luca?"

"Same thing..."

Sidney was blushing, her hands coming up to cover her face, a frown set in place. She calmed herself before sliding under my covers head first like a scared kitten. Her body laid in a lump on my bed as she died of embarrassment, "I blew it."

And I thought of all the ways she could've screwed up so bad he was literally running away from her.

One thing came to mind, "No way!"

Her voice was cracked and almost silent as she whispered out a "what?"

"He kissed you didn't he?"

"No."

I gave a flat look to the bundle of blankets on my bed before tugging them off of her, sending a glare to the crimson faced anti-social butterfly.

She sighed before reluctantly pushing the blankets down so they were at her waist and twisting her hair into a bun at the base of her neck, "Maybe but it wasn't even a kiss," I motioned for her to elaborate, "We were talking and I was making him uncomfortable with little jokes here and there-"

"Were they sexual?"

She slapped my thigh, my eyebrows wiggling and a loud laugh escaping as she attempted to push me off the bed, "listen! So I made a joke about him being a lip virgin and he blushed like crazy before denying it... we made it to my porch and I leaned in to kiss his cheek but he turned at the last moment. It was really awkward so I was like 'fuck a duck' and grabbed his collar. And I kissed him."

And as my best friend caught her breath, a teasing grin settled on my face as I thought through a list of embarrassing ship names, none of them sounding right.

Nothing would ever sound as good as Jackuary, "Ooooooo, I'm telling Jan-"

And that was when her eyes went wide as saucers, her mouth falling open as she muttered a series of disagreements, "No, no, no... It was embarrassing! He just stood there, staring in shock," and then she started cursing herself in Punjabi, falling back on my bed as I caught a few words I'd learned over the years of knowing her family, "he was worse than Jan when Henry outed himself..."

Oh that was a trying time for all of us. Sid had invited us over for a family gathering and January had this insane crush on her smoking hot, related my marriage, cousin.

Even thinking about the guy made my mouth water, "I'd be shocked too, Henry's a reincarnate of Zayn Malik-"

Shutting her eyes tightly, I watched as Sid dramatically sighed, punching me in the same spot on my thigh. I was worried I would bruise again, "Don't mention my baby, it's still kind of depressing."

"Wha-oh yeah, he left that band, right?" stifling my laughter, I ran a hand down my best friend's head of hair, "He took the album name Four seriously, huh?" I yelped when her snake of an arm slipped out, pushing me hard enough that I fell to the wood floor on top of her duffle. Groaning in mock pain, I couldn't stop the laugh spewing from my lips, "It's a shame, he was the hot one, I bet the fanbase is slowly deteriorating."

And that was when she kicked lightly at my ribs on her way standing up and pulling the hoodie over her head. The black cropped owl tee she wore, clung to her toned body as she threw it across the room. Pulling her hair into a ponytail, she grabbed a few things out of her bag before going to brush her teeth and do her nightly routine, "Oh, shut it, we don't just like them for their looks..."

I gave her a dirty look as she headed to my bathroom, my eyebrows narrowed.

Rolling her eyes, she sighed exaggeratedly, "Okay, fine but that's not all, they have the voices of angels and the bodies of Gods-"

"La, la, la, I can't hear you," I yelled, a slap at my wall and an 'em, shut up!' causing my voice to lower, "Please don't think dirty thoughts while in my house."

But Sid being Sid, she didn't stop and her words just became more vulgar as she mockingly whined, "Now who am I supposed to listen to while I imagine him naked? Or when I'm looking at pics of his glistening body-"

And throwing a pillow at her, I watched as she opened the door and ran out, laughing quietly at my distress. Regardless of the fact that my parents saw her as another child, she had the upmost respect for them and she showed it with the little things, "Goodnight!"

⌄⌃⌄⌃⌄⌃⌄

"So, I think Luca's boyfriend material."

We'd been walking to school that next day, it was getting colder, October being close to it's end and the wind was nipping at my face. I was never a fan of cold weather and neither was Sid as she wrapped herself in two jackets. Her feet were in step with mine until I'd brought up her boyfriend-wanna-be and that was when she started to lag behind.

"He's been avoiding me... What if he didn't like it?"

And I saw how scared she really was, watching out the corner of my eye as her fingers played with the tips of her hair. I tried to console my best friend even though I was positive he was even more scared. Luca liked Sidney, you could tell that in only a week when you sat next to the kid everyday, "What if he's just embarrassed? That could've been his first kiss."

And Sidney didn't believe that, her feet were pounding the pavement and she looked ready to run away from the conversation, "But what if he-"

Hugging my jacket closer, I found myself staring at Luca's hoodie that had made itself home on Sid's body. The wind was picking up and what she intended on doing was bringing it back to him but after freezing her ass off, she'd pulled it on, "Kiss him again."

My best friend pushed her hair back and out of her face, eyes bulging out at me. Her feet had stopped moving and her hand shot out to grip my wrist, "What?"

Stifling my laughter when she'd almost tripped, I shook her hand off, "Scared?"

And for the first time, Sid stayed quiet in the face of a challenge. She settled to picking at her nails and walking a bit faster, ignoring my shock.

Trailing behind, I threw my head back as Sidney's hair blew threw the wind, we were half a block away from school and at this speed we'd make it in record time, "The only way to know if he likes you is to kiss Luca again..."

"I don't want to!"

"You do!"

I watched as her finger pointed behind her at me without looking back, her tone had me giggling, "Shut up."

"You still owe me five bucks," I stated and in all honesty, I'd forgotten completely about it. I wasn't even thinking about the bet around him, in all honesty, it wasn't anything of importance. I liked spending time with him and so I did but the only way to keep the conversation alive was to talk about something she'd find interest in.

But she mustn't have found it interesting enough because Sid only sent me a small smile. And muttering something under her breath, Sid spun around to face me as we turned into the school student-parking lot; she surprisingly didn't talk much after that.

⌄⌃⌄⌃⌄⌃⌄

I was in the middle of fixing my messy bun in the cracked mirror of the girl's restroom when Katalina had stopped me later that day, right before lunch, Sidney in tow. For some reason, the strands that I'd recently dyed blonde wouldn't show through and I'd been having to perfect the perfect mess on my head in between every class period. It'd taken me fifteen minutes that morning to actually get the correct placement and even after that, I had to dodge physical contact with Sidney's long limbs.

I'd lost sense in my surroundings so when Kat spoke, a shiver crawled up my spine, me nearly jumping out of my skin as I spun around to face the attacker, "So... Halloween is in two days..."

We'd both ignored the way Sidney threw her head back and groaned, "Kaaaaat."

But my mouth was dropped open as I looked around the bathroom, flyers for a freshman dance suddenly making themselves visible and the little things like the tiny jack-o-lantern that sat on the corner of the sink, "Are you fucking serious?"

And Kat had looked at me as if I were sniffing smarties at the back of a school bus, her eyebrows most likely furrowed underneath her fringe. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail so I could clearly see when she tucked a loose strand behind her ear, the shift, moving her bangs which Sidney fixed absentmindedly, "Uh duh... Why else do you think the flyers are black and orange?"

And I myself was questioning how I hadn't noticed that it was so close to Jackson's favorite day of the year, a day he'd most-likely miss out on due to the fact that walking was a struggle for him, "I don't know? I wasn't paying attention..."

And steering clear of my mental crutches, Kat changed the subject, her lips pulling into her perfect pout and her eyes resembling a sad puppy, "Anyways... Ceaser Finnigan is having a party this weekend."

That was how Kat had gotten her car, that was how she'd gotten Jeremy to tutor her in Trig and that was how she'd gotten Phoenix to fall in love with her. Kat was privileged but she wasn't spoiled, she just knew exactly how to get what she wanted.

And she wanted me to go to that party.

"No. I can already tell where this is going and I'm putting my foot down."

Sid snorted, whispering under her breath, "Those Jurassic things?"

"Come again?"

Sending me a smirk, her eyes drifted to the intercom above her that would chime soon, signaling the beginning of our lunch, "Oh nothing... But seriously, stop being. Such a loser, it'll be fun.... And we can bring Jackson, he's really upset about football."

Rolling my eyes, I attempted to make it out of the bathroom without giving in, my feet all too eager to make it to Oliver's table. I dismissed at as just wanting to escape the dwindling conversation, "Sid, he's injured..."

And Sid being Sid just had to pull the guilt card, "He wouldn't be injured if it weren't for you. I saw that tackle, it was pretty nasty."

I know.

It was my promise that I'd broken and it was him who ended up injured so obviously, I felt guilty. Biting my lip, I walked through the cafeteria doors, eyes scanning the perimeter and locking onto the glass window-wall above where Oliver was supposed to be, "Are you siding with my brother?"

I found myself panicking for a second as I noticed Oliver wasn't there.

What if he'd gotten into another fight? What if he were getting arrested?

I basically heard the defensiveness in m best friend's tone, "Not siding, merely suggesting that he's right and you're wrong."

I didn't realize I wasn't breathing until I'd seen Oliver walking from the lunch line and towards his table, the stares following and I was able to breathe easier. I turned back to my friends as Kat shook her head, smiling slightly as she looked over at Sid out the corner of her eye, "Sometimes I think you like him."

And I was convinced she was talking about me and Oliver until Sid waved her off, "Me? Like Jackson? First, Jackson's fifteen. Second, he's annoying, and third, I have my eye on a cute little French boy."

Katalina laughed at that, making her way to our table as she turned to wink, "Well, as the French say, embrasser."

"Ooo, I love it when you talk foreign to me."

And then a clang rang through the cafeteria, what happened not registering until the cafeteria went dead silent. The main attraction was clear when I'd seen Oliver on the floor, hair in his eyes and food on his clothes in the middle of the cafeteria, Sid's little French boy above him looking terrified for his life.

He seemed to be speaking in French, no one understanding his fit of words with the way his fright rolled off of him in waves. When he'd realized this, his English came out choppy as he tried to apologize frantically, "I-I-I- I am so s-sorry."

But Oliver was too far gone.