Y/N POV: I looked beside me to see my best friend, and honorary date for the night, Jack Barakat, making a heavy sigh then looking at his phone for the hundredth time tonight. Him and I were invited to to my friend, Isabelle's indie film feature night which was a showing of hers along with about 50 other people's own films. Well actually it was only me who got invited to this at first, but the invitation said that I could bring a guest if I chose to and Jack was bored tonight. So here we are...in a theatre with about 500 other people...bored to death. Isabelle's film showed about 40 minutes ago, but I felt weird about leaving since she sat at the end of our row and I'd have to pass her to get out of the building.
At least I have popcorn...
My attention started drifting farther and farther away from the current film showing as I began to play with my popcorn pieces. I started noticing that the way they popped open they almost looked like jellyfish, so I made up a scenario in my head for the jellyfish and played with 2 in my hands. I know I looked like a child at the moment, but I was so not into this movie.As I played with my popcorn jellyfish I heard a chuckle from Jack. I looked over to him and gave him a face, mentally asking him what? It was a quiet scene in the movie so instead of him actually talking to me, he typed me a message on his phone.A second later my phone lit up on my lap.
Jack: What the hell are you doing?!
I simply typed back: my popcorn are jellyfish, isn't that obvious?
Jack: You're strange. I'm bored, can we leave now?
I looked over to my friend Isabelle seeing her talking to her film-making friends. Maybe she won't see me and Jack leaving.
I replied to Jack: Isabelle's occupied. Follow me and walk casually. Oh, and don't make eye contact with her.
I waited until he read the text and then nodded at me. We both got up and casually walked past the people in our row, including Isabelle who was so engrossed in her conversation, didn't see us leave. Thank gosh.
"Ugh, I regret saying that I was bored. That was too long a time of seeing indie films. Half of them were so bad!" Jack complained as we walked out of the theatre and into the main lobby of the building.
"I know I wish we could've left after Isabelle's movie but I felt bad cause she was so happy that I came." I replied back feeling equally relieved to be out of there.
We exited the building and Jack stopped both of us as soon as we stepped on the dirty sidewalks of the city we resided in, New York."What?" I questioned.
"It's a Thursday night. You don't have work tomorrow. I don't have band practice. And it's only 7:00." I gave him a weird look trying to see where he was going with all of this. He was just listing things off, and it looked like he noticed that I wasn't following his train of thought, "Let's do something!" He finally said.
"Okay but what do we do in this part of town? Most of these stores are closing for the night soon, and they're all run down building." I questioned him as we started walking down the sidewalk slowly, no destination set yet.
"How about we drive back to our apartment and then just hang out at that park a block away from it?" He suggested, and I nodded in response.With a quick turn on our heels, we started walking the other way to Jack's car and began our drive home.
"You know, we can try skinny dipping in the river this time! Huh? Huh???" Jack said slightly chuckling at his own suggestion to me while he nudged my shoulder with his arm. I just laughed at his silly thought as we continued the ride home, arriving there only 20 minutes later.
Once we got back home, we ran upstairs to our apartment and grabbed our park bag which contained a big blanket for the both of us to fit on, a couple of Jack's sweaters, and my digital camera. There are times where we saw some cool wildlife in that park, so we made sure to keep a camera on hand when we would visit there.
It was a peaceful silence between Jack and I on our short walk to the park. Him and I had been friends for 8 years and have lived together for the past 5 years, so we had an extremely comfortable friendship.
Once we arrived at the park I took a deep breath in through my nose smelling the mixture of the greenery, flowers, and whatever could be smelt from the small river. I always felt so comfortable here. With all the noise and pollution deep in the city, it was nice to have a little sanctuary like this.
"So when I suggested skinny dipping, I wasn't lying, ya know" Jack brought me out of my thoughts when he nudged me again.
"Jack! Come on why not just enjoy the park like everyone else does!"
"Thats the thing! Nobody else is here so we could totally do it right now! And who would come to the park on a Thursday night?! You gotta admit, its a good night for a dip!" once he stopped, he started taking his shirt off then threw it to me.
"Fine, Jack. I'll do it." I said giving into his idea. We set up our blanket beside the river, stripped our clothes, and enjoyed the feeling of the cool water on our skin.
You may be thinking if Jack and I have "a thing" since we're swimming together naked. Actually, we did have "a thing" before...6 years ago, but we realized that us dating and sleeping together just wasn't as good as our friendship was. And since the man-child and I still live together to this day, you can probably tell that it was a mutual feeling to end a romantic relationship between the two of us.
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After our swimming adventure, we were clothed and dried up and laying down on our blanket together. It was now 9:30pm and the sun had set, leaving us looking at a sky filled with stars.
"You know, if Alex were here he'd be babbling on and on about space and planets and stuff" Jack said to me. I barely heard though. I was caught up in the beautiful scene in the sky, so i just let out a short breathy laugh.
"Hey, anyone in there?" Jack said pushing a finger to my head.
I just stood up from my spot, still fixated on the sky. Here there were no buildings blocking the view so it was kind of magical seeing the sky so filled with stars along with the moon. "Look Jack, don't you love the stars?" I turned to him while pointing to the sky.
He stood up from his spot and place an arm around my shoulders, "yeah they're pretty that's for sure."
"I wish I could just touch them" I said standing on my tip-toes reaching my arm out as far as I could towards the sky.Suddenly I felt my feet lift off the ground and a pair of arms just under my butt. I looked down to see that Jack had lifted me up from behind, laughing as he held me up. "What are you doing?" I asked him while giggling.
"I'm helping you so you can touch the stars!" he said matter-of-factly.I played along and continued to reach out my arms towards the sky. Moments like this make me really appreciate mine and Jack's friendship. He's my rock. Always there for me, and always goofing off with me.
"Uh oh" I heard Jack say lightly, and before I knew it he had lost his footing and sent both him and I crashing down onto our blanket, me falling right on top of him.
"Good thing I caught you or you could've been hurt" he said to me.I laughed at his remark, dusted the clump of dirt off his face and returned to my spot beside him, continuing to reach for the stars with my best friend.
