After All, I'm Your Secret Admirer~!!

Ch46 - Tripping

When Paige wakes up in the morning, OJ is nowhere to be found. He's a little sad at the idea of it honestly, but he lifts up and rubs the sleep out of his eyes anyways.

Today was Thanksgiving.

Paige smiles a bit as he thinks about the activities the Squeezes must have lined up for the day. OJ always had such fun stories to tell after the fact the last two years.

And his excitement is not misplaced! Once he gets up, does his morning routine and goes downstairs, the festivities are seemingly already underway.

"Turtle dove!" Sam greets, causing the other two to turn around and greet him as well.

"Kid! Nice to see you up!" Dani smiles.

"Good afternoon, Paige!" OJ waves, a dart in his hand.

Paige blinks as he walks over. "Afternoon?"

"Oh, just barely," Sam laughs, patting OJ on the head. "He's just a stickler for terms. It just hardly turned 12. Heck, we only got up about an hour ago ourselves!"

"Oh, okay!" Paige smiles, happy he hadn't missed much. He looks over at OJ. "What's with the dart?"

"Oh, we play a special game every holiday. Look." OJ points to a circular board a little bit away that Paige had not noticed until just now. It's spinning slowly. "This is our Random Choice board. One of us throws a dart at the board to pick an activity to do for the moment." He places the dart down and moves to the board. "We have about three or four different things for different activities, but this is the one we use the most."

Dani follows OJ with a grin. "Orv!" she shouts.

OJ gives a stiff salute before going, "Yes!" He points at one piece of the cardboard that covers the board. It's divided evenly into a couple of categories. "For this one we have Trouble!" He moves his finger down. "Sorry!" And again. "The Game of Life!" And again. "Clue!" And once more. "And the classic, ChessCheck!"

Sam giggles. "They love doing this little bit of theirs." They pick up the dart OJ left and hands it to Paige. "Orville normally goes first, but I think you should get the first shot, Snowy!"

"Are you sure?" Paige blinks. "I dunno how good a shot I am..."

"That's alright! Neither are me and Dani!" Sam laughs. "C'mon you two, step out of the way. Let Snowy take a shot!"

The two other Squeezes diligently take a step away from the board, and then seem to rethink it and come back over towards Sam and Paige. No one to hit means no one gets hurt, after all.

"Okay... here goes!" Paige aims...

"Oh, wait!" Sam gasps, walking over to the board and spinning it seemingly as hard as they can. "Okay, now you can throw!" they nod, walking back over.

The board moving now kind of intimidates Paige, but he goes for it anyways. He throws...

"Aw right!" Dani cheers. "I was so close to beating y'all in Sorry yesterday! It's time for my comeback!"

The others laugh and Paige smiles wide, feeling fully apart of the moment.

It's nice.

+++

As it turned out, the other activities that could be put on the boards were actually movie genres and Wii games. Everyone got to throw a dart at the board game ome, then they played rock paper scissors to see who threw for the game and the movie.

All in all, Thanksgiving this year turns out to be really, really good. Even though Paige missed his mother, this was a great alternative. He's so happy he was able to come, even with the hitch they had.

It's much later, everyone's played their hearts out and eaten, watched the movie that OJ got to pick, and are all ready for bed.

"So," OJ asks, the two of them sitting on his bed, "How did you like your Squeeze Thanksgiving?"

"I loved it!" Paige cheers. "It was so much fun! Thank you for inviting me over!"

"Of course," OJ smiles. "I'm glad to hear you had fun."

"I really did! I wish I could stay longer!"

"And why can't you?" OJ chuckles. "If it's a matter of having a change of clothes or something, we can always drive you home to get whatever you need."

"Really?" Paige gasps. "That'd be great!"

OJ simply smiles.

The two of them share the bed again that night, and this time Paige doesn't have a heart attack trying to get to sleep.

+++

Paige looks out of the window of the RV the next day as they approach his house. He's humming along to the radio while Sam and Dani talk animatedly.

Paige really likes these guys.

He's so distracted by them, he almost, almost misses Carmen and Brandon climbing out of their car as they pass the Aguja household.

Paige gasps hard. "Brandon!?"

"Oh?" OJ blinks. "Did you see him?"

"Yes!" Paige rocks. "Oh my gosh. Can we stop? I need to talk to him!"

Sam blinks, but does as requested. Paige climbs out the second the doors are unlocked. "I'll be right back!" he shouts back, running towards Brandon's house.

He knocks on the door as soon as he gets there, bouncing from one leg to the next. Oh, please open the door. Please, please, please—

The door creaks open easily, showing Brandon's face. It blanches the moment he recognizes Paige.

"Um." he says.

"Brandon!" Paige despairs, "Why didn't you tell me you were going on a trip?"

"Um." Brandon says again.

"Brandon?"

"I..." Brandon sighs. "Look, we just got home. Can we, I don't know, talk about this later?"

"Later?" Paige frowns. "Brandon, you told your mom you asked me about coming when you didn't! You lied just so you could go without me!" Paige feels like crying. "We're best friends. Why would you—"

"Because of Leaf, okay!?" Brandon snaps. "That little... He claims he knows me but, then what, tries to guilt me into telling him something and ruining something that's so important to you? Using your dad of all things to try and goad me into spilling?" Brandon laughs humorlessly. "You know he still thinks I'm Bad Brandon? Even though you know I'm not, he still sees me as something I'm not."

"Brandon..." Paige breathes.

Brandon crosses his arms angrily. "So yeah. Maybe I didn't want to spend my Thanksgiving with someone I'd never be thankful for." He sighs. "Look, I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire, alright? But it's already happened. I can't change it." He frowns sadly. "Sorry."

"So—so you're just gonna avoid me because of Leaf from now on?" Paige asks, eyes watering.

"No!" Brandon gasps, putting his hands on Paige's shoulder. "Paige, you're my best friend. You might as well be my brother. I could never leave you for long."

"But you did," Paige bites back. "And you left for such a shallow reason..." Paige breaks away from Brandon's grip. "I never would've thought you would be like that."

"It wasn't shallow!" Brandon shouts. "It—it wasn't—" His eyes are watery now too. "Paige, we will talk about this later, okay?" He begins to walk back into his house.

"No!" Paige shouts back, stomping his foot. "Now!"

"Later." Brandon says, finality in his voice.

He closes the door in Paige's face, leaving a stunned teen in tears to deal with what he just heard.