My Best Friend, The Bad Boy

25 | Pasts, Feelings & Picking the Perfect Gift

Kaillie's POV (not edited)

It's just about that time of year again. That time when you should have already started your Christmas shopping, and when the Christmas spirit is happily in the air. Christmas movies play on a regular basis, and school is winding down for the season. You know, that amazing yet extremely stressful time of year.

With all my feelings for Carter colouring the air around me, this year I was having an especially hard time figuring out a gift for him. What do you get for the person you are best friends with but you like in a definitely more than friendly way? Exactly. I don't know either.

As my mind is stuck in park, I'm aimlessly strolling through facebook looking at cute animal videos when a 'memory' pops up on my screen. It's a picture from a couple years ago. Carter is wearing this cute, coloured bowtie in a picture with Abby and I in our semi-formal dresses of that year. The picture brings back the memory of the first time I saw Carter as a grown up guy, not my foolish best friend who happened to be a guy.

Thinking about it now, I guess that day was turning point. I recognized the fact that Carter had grown up, and actually found him attractive for the first time.

An idea sparks in my head, and I'm immediately opening a new tab to google. Why if I got Carter a bowtie for Christmas? As if almost a reference to that time, at least for me. It could also be to remind the both of us that even though we are technically becoming adults soon, it doesn't mean we have to become serious people who forget how to have silly, childish fun, or find amusement in the  small things.

My mind couldn't seem to figure out what this supposed tie should look like though. How do you make it fun, yet something he can still use? I was still trying to figure it out as my sister walked in.

Rachel Adams walked into my room in all her sisterly glory, with a teasing smile on her lips. I must have been so absorbed in my own thoughts I didn't hear her come up, or in the house at all. She hasn't been home for a while, as she's now living with her boyfriend. Her light brown hair was down and framing her face as she perched herself on my bed, to my left side. "Hey sis, what's up?" she asked me.

Putting down my phone, I tell her, "Nothing much, I was just scrolling through my phone. How about you?" I'm currently hoping she can't tell how distracted I am-

"I can tell you all about that later, what's got you so perplexed?" Damn, she noticed. That sisterly intuition must have told her.

"Nothing," I say meekly, "I'm just looking at possible Christmas presents." That was part of the truth, anyway. She's kind of missed a lot since she last came by.

The teasing smile on her increased to a full blown smirk, before she asked, "Are you sure you're not secretly admitting your love for Carter?" That sentence had my mind go into overdrive. How could she possibly know?! I haven't said anything to her about him. She just got in the room!

I'm sure my face reddened after that as I responded with silence. Do secrets not exist or something?

Her facial expression changed from teasing to serious very quickly after that. "Wait, hold on, are you and Carter a thing now?" she asked with curiosity.

"Close the door please?" I ask quietly, and she does that before turning back to me with an expectant look. Putting my arms behind me, I lifted myself up to get a better look at her. "I've realized that I like him but we're not a thing and I don't even know." It all comes out as one big mouthful, sounding like one long word but I know Rachel understood what I said. A long sigh came afterward as I flopped my body back onto my bed from the small amount I had risen up.

"Okay, but what happened to Zach?" she asks me, and I knew that question was going to come up eventually. She hadn't really been informed about that. I suppose one could say Rachel has missed some things.