Viral Summer

19 Invincible

She sees them walking in a straight line,
That's not really her style
And they all got the same heartbeat
But hers is falling behind.
Nothing in this world could
Ever bring them down
Yeah, they're invincible, and she's just in the background
Cool Kids- Echosmith

Hey, I know this is totally random, but do you have some time to talk?

"I bet she wants a shout out or something," Heather tells me as she reads Kelly's message. "A million people that I hardly knew in high school are always reaching out with stuff like that."

"Tell her to drop dead," Indie suggests.

"I'm going to call Beckett," I decide as I exit out of Instagram to pull up Beckett's phone number. Harris, Indie, and Heather are sitting in the living room with me as we speculate about Kelly's text, so they all start listening in as I make the call. They're all so invested now that I feel like I don't need to leave the room to talk to him.

"Hey, Jen," he answers quickly.

"Hey," I respond. "Have you talked to Kelly Blake lately?"

"What?" he seems completely thrown off by my question. "Why?"

"She messaged me in Instagram saying she wants to talk. You don't know what she might want to talk about?"

"No, I haven't talked to her in a while," he tells me. "Maybe to apologize?"

"It's just so random," I mumble, leaning back into the couch. "She probably just wants something, like how those kids at our school wanted me to go to their party."

"I don't think she's that kind of person," Beckett tells me and I can't help but roll my eyes at him as I'm reminded that he still thinks so fondly of these people that tormented me in high school. Maybe he has to forgive them in order to forgive himself.

"Yeah, she's a real stand up lady," I mutter sarcastically. "She's always cared so much about my feelings."

"She's not a social climber, I mean," he corrects himself. "I don't think she'd be that interested in reaching out for something like that. Do you want me to reach out to her and ask? She goes to the same school as Kevin so maybe they're still close, I could ask him."

"No," I say quickly. Still, just hearing that man's name makes my body frigid and stiff. Not even Harris's warm thigh against mine could melt that fear out of me. "Don't do that. I'll deal with it."

"Okay. Sorry," he apologizes, but I don't know why. Is it for not being very helpful, or because he brought up Kevin when there really was no reason to do so? "You probably just shouldn't answer her, it's not worth stressing over."

"Send me her number," I decide. "I probably won't use it, but I don't know. Did she ever talk about me last year? Do you think she just wants to harass me some more?"

"In front of Bethany, she'd talk shit about you but when it was just us, she never really mentioned you," he answers me. "I don't really think she hated you, she just went along with it because of Bethany, so it's probably nothing malicious, but I don't know."

"When it was just you two," I repeat and then laugh and say, "Right. I forgot that you two were together."

"Not together," he corrects me and then adds, "Just together. It wasn't a real thing, I never really liked her in that way."

"Romantic," I say sarcastically.

"The girl I really wanted to be with couldn't even look at me, so I settled. And she was in love with Kevin all throughout high school, so she settled too," he tells me in a soft voice and I suddenly regret taking this call in front of my friends. Even though they can't hear what he's saying, I'm sure they can see the blush that starts heating up my face.