Sometimes

How the Cookie Crumbles

Rain

I hear the timer go off, and it rings throughout my house, filling the quiet building with a piercing sound. I hurry to the oven and pull the oven mitts I left by it. I carefully open the oven and feel the heat hit my face like a heavy wall. I reach through it, pull the cookies tray out, and leave it on a cooling rack. The smell of the cookies wafts through the air and I take it in, a smile briefly crossing my lips. "Dad, you want some cookies?" I shout, my voice replacing the sound of the timer. "They're fresh out of the oven!"

The grown man comes tearing through the house like a dog who has heard someone knocking on the door and I practically have to jump out of the way to avoid being tackled by him. He grabs a couple of them, looks at me, and takes a bite. His eyes close for a moment, and then he nods. "They're good," he says, patting me on the back with his free hand and making his way back into his study. 

"Oh, you don't mind if Brayden comes over for a bit, right?" I ask nervously.

"Not at all," he shouts from behind his door, and I breathe a sigh of relief. After all, he's already on his way, and if my dad were caught off guard by him, he would probably murder me, so his response really calms me down. I sit on the couch and pull a warm blanket over me, before turning the TV on and trying to focus on whatever show was on.

But I can't.

My mind is flying at millions of miles a minute, and I can't seem to get it to stop. I've thought it over a million times, but, of course, I'm having second thoughts now. It doesn't matter what Bianca had told me, I worry that maybe she isn't right. After all, I don't think she knows Brayden as well as I think she does.

But what if she does?

Every single time that I look at him, I see it. I see his distant eyes, and I see the way that his smile never seems to be directed toward me. I see him smile with his friends, I see him smile when he's done sprinting around the track after school, and I even see him smile around Bianca now. It's really weird, and so I begin to think that she's right.

I lose myself in my thoughts, staring blankly at the TV. I don't know how long I sit there, it's either a few minutes or a few hours, but eventually, the doorbell rings. I jump up out of the chair and practically run over to the door. And then I stop, my handing resting on the doorknob. I just stare at the door until the bell rings again, and I nervously pull it open.

"Hey there, Rain," Brayden says. "What's up?"

"I- I need you to come in and sit on the couch," I say, gesturing toward the couch before running over to the stove to grab three cookies, two for him, one for me, and shoving his into a Ziploc bag. "I made you some cookies." I give them to him and give him a sad smile.

"Okay, Rain. Something is going on here," he says,  putting an arm around me. "You can tell me."

"That's why I called you here. There's some... stuff I need to talk to you about," I say, shoving him away. I don't want to make this any harder than it already is.

"Rain-"

"No. I need to say this. I don't know the words I need to say, but I'll figure them out as I go." I take a deep breath, shake my head, and look at Brayden in the eyes. "Look, my dad got this new job up in New York, and we've been looking at new houses for a while now."

"Oh?" He says. "That's awesome for him, but what about us?" He asks before taking a bite of his cookie.

I wipe my eyes, which are beginning to fill with tears. I can't let him know that I'm going to be hurt by all this.

Who am I kidding?

He knows.

"This is really difficult for me to say, but there's no way we'll be able to see each other, and-" I can't finish the sentence. I want to, but my tongue is tied. Brayden puts down the other cookie and takes my hands.