You know that game, Fallout 3? Well, we ended up dressing up as Vault Dwellers this week. It was the first time we had... I suppose the word is "performed" for him since April Fools. He had left us alone, but then he came back and... Everything hurts.
So we did something stupid, I believe it is not a first there. We have done so many stupid things. Back when I was having dreams of the Slenderman, he made up so many crackpot ideas for "cures." We tried the ones short of surgery, hypnotism, electroshock therapy... The only one that worked was dancing around in rediculous looking outfits.
I suppose we are like cancer patients, we will keep fighting it, but we know that eventually we are going to give in, we are going to fail to confuse this thing and it will make us something we never wish to become.
But until then, we have memories, we have happiness. Isn't that the American dream? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?
Anyway, Autumn and I stayed pretty good friends since we met.
We went to the same Elementary School, then got separated when Dad sent me to this crappy Catholic School. The girls there were horrible and I don't mind saying that. I hated the time I spent there. Girls are harsh bullies...
He would have sent me elsewhere but I managed to convince him that High School was where I needed to be I really did not need to be some private schooled kid with no social skills. Anyway, we were somehow in the same homeroom. One of the few people who knew each other in there.
I can't remember which one of us decided that we should just let them believe that we were siblings, despite the different surnames. The great deception. We'd joke about it, how funny it was. How people just assumed. He'd be the older brother who'd make sure I was safe... I am pretty sure he did the whole "you break her heart, I shove your head so far up your ass that you'll be speaking through your bellybutton" thing on the guy who took me to Junior Prom. (Much to my chagrin.) Only a couple of friends knew about it, said they thought he liked me.
When his parents moved in next door, they thought it was a happy coincidence. Summer and Autumn. Sometimes I even wonder if it was fate.
I was seventeen, throwing stones into that lake that held such fond memories instead of working on that project that had a couple of days to go and we hadn't started. I remember the spring air. The smell of trees and flowers, the way the sun glittered on the water. It was a day unlike any other.
There was a smile on his face as he spoke up finally. There had been a lull in conversation "Let's run away."
"What?"
"Into the forest. You and me. We can survive off of fish and wild berries and when we fail we can go to that grocery store and steal from them."
I laughed at him. "You really think we could do that?"
"Of course. I also think that if you get a big enough slingshot and were on the moon, you could send a golf ball into orbit. Although only one of those might happen for me." He grinned.
"Make that none of those, there's not a chance I'm going to do that." I was still chuckling.
"You just don't want to leave your warm bed, don't you?"
I huffed and walked back toward the car, an old rusting, dark red, 80's Ford pick up. August loved it so much, I think he'd have driven it until either the axel broke or it would have killed us.
He put his hand on my shoulder. "Summer, wait."
I turned around. And he kissed me and I kissed him back and all those feelings welled up inside me and they felt real, physical for the first time. Those butterflies in my chest were flapping around like headless chickens! I read about it, Love.
I was jaded enough to think it would never happen to me.
We drove home in silence, a pleasant one, the sun was setting. We said our goodbyes.
The next morning, at school. I had stayed up all night, trying to work out some speech or other to tell him that what happened... That I wanted us to be friends. But he acted like it had never happened, he cracked a couple of jokes and I just forgot about what I was supposed to say.
I suppose I was too selfish realise that I'd hurt him, but I guess that's a different story, isn't it?
I never forgot about the kiss though. It was just that I was happy, and that this was something I have never regretted.
