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It was a still day, a kind of day that even though I hated it, I embraced the break. I had a lot to think about. I was becoming too attached to my life in Outer Banks. I was starting to love the connections I was making and that wasn't something I was comfortable with. I never really talked about why, the subject was just too hard to think of.
I was laying on the bed, it was a bit after John B left. I couldn't tell how many hours had passed, if any at all. Nothing was making sense to me and all I wanted to do was run for the hills. Running away seemed to be what I was good at.
I wondered if my life would be different if a week ago I ran somewhere other than the island. If in some way my life would have changed in a different way. Would I have been happier?
I loved my brother, and that was a love I could count on. An attachment that didn't scare me but my brother's neighbor was the problem. The neighbor and his friends.
My world came crashing down the months before coming to the island, and I always told myself that was a story for another day. The one that seemed to be more interesting, the one that was playing over and over in my head was the one I was stuck on. The one that caused me to experience my first true heartbreak.
It wasn't the day Sam left, and all of my parent's anger landed solely on me, no, it was a very different day. That day had started out quite normal. Maybe that was the problem.
I had a best friend growing up, before Sam left, before my parent's anger was directed solely at me, before then. I had grown up with her, and made blanket forts with her, against my mother's objections. She was the closest thing to me in the whole world. Nothing could have prepared me for what eventually happened.
She had gotten me through everything, when Sam left she was there, when my parent's anger became directed solely at me she gave me a place to sleep. She was my safe place, the most important person in my life.
When I got my first boyfriend, she was there. She got her ready for my first date. Even the second and third. She started going on double dates with Mason, my boyfriend and his best friend Connor. We did everything together, so when I found out Mason was cheating on me the first thing I did was run to her.
I know most people assumed his cheating was my first heartbreak but they were wrong. He wasn't. She was.
Connor and her didn't last long, most of their relationship revolved around the double dates they would go on with Mason and me. She was sad, sure, but she had me and I had her. We were the closest friends most of our classmates had probably ever met. Neither of us really hung out with anyone else. We had a group of friends but none of them were as close as me and her.
We took the same classes, and when one of us wasn't in the other, we'd switch. We made sure we were always together. We saw each other at least once a day, and when we began to work at a coffee shop by my house, we applied together.
