Sweet Like Honey

28.

It's been ten days since Lennen and Jonas agreed to go on a break. Lennen found the separation to be theraputic, giving her time to think and do some inner discovery. The only awkward part was when they would run into each other at school. During these ten days, the former group of ten had separated back into two groups, allowing Lennen and Jonas to have their time apart. Lennen had a hard time adjusting from going back to her normal group of four after spending so much time with Jonas' friends. She enjoyed laughing with Dorian and Cruz, as they continuously tried to impress her with their humor. Miles and Holden were just as humorous, but they perfered to be subtle with their humor.

But now it was Wednesday night and Lennen was back to packing her suitcase, getting ready for their trip to the Bahamas with the Petty's. They weren't going to be gone long, only four days, but a vacation was exactly what Lennen needed right now. It was nearing 10:00pm, which meant they would be leaving in a few minutes to drive to LAX to catch their 12:40am flight. Lennen loved overnight flights, watching the sunrise, or looking down at the lit up citites that glowed from down below. Everything about it captivated her, making her fall in love each time. 

"You're backpack looks ridiculously heavy," Duke comments as they trudge through the terminal toward their gate. 

"I'm missing two days of school for this, so all the homework I'll have to do is in there. Which means a government book, calculus book, and the book we're reading in AP English," Lennen responds. She wasn't all that thrilled to be stuck doing two days worth of homework while on vacation, but there was no way she was going to have time do it all when she got back home. 

"Well we have a five hour flight to Charlotte, then a two hour layover." Duke felt sympathetic knowing how much work Lennen has been putting into her final year of high school. Whenever he saw her, she always looked exhausted, not getting enough sleep from staying up late finishing all her homework.

"I'll probably spend half the flight sleeping," Lennen laughs, knowing that what she should really be doing is her homework. They had about forty five minutes before boarding, so she opened up her backpack, taking out her government book and homework. She knew she would be able to finish the two days worth of homework in that amount of time since it wasn't very hard and there wasn't much to do. 

As Lennen predicted, she spent half the flight sleeping and the rest of the flight working on her AP Calculus homework. She had been lucky to be gifted with understanding and being good at math, so she was able to finish it, leaving her with reading, which she would do during the layover. 

"How much longer until you're done? I'm so bored," Duke complains. Kiana and Oliver had ended up sleeping the entire flight and were still half asleep as the families waited to depart from Charlotte and head to the Bahamas. 

"You just asked me that question ten minutes ago," Lennen responds, taking a pause from her reading. "I have to read ten chapters and the more you interrupt me the longer I take, so stop interrupting me. I only have five more chapters left." She picks up where she left off, wanting to get all of her homework done, so she could spend her four days in the Bahamas with no worries. Duke took out his phone, hoping it would provide some entertainment, but it was 9:45 and all of his friends were at school. He decided to dig through his backpack and take out the little homework he was supposed to do over the two days of school he was missing. He had four chapters to read for English and half a worksheet for Physics. 

"Okay, you have to be close to done because I just read four chapters and finished my worksheet for Physics," Duke says, interrupting Lennen yet again. She puts a finger up, hushing him so she could finish the last paragraph of the last chapter. 

"I'm now done, Duke. You're really annoying, you know that, right?" She tells him, rolling her eyes. He interrupted her reading six times in forty five minutes, always asking the same question.    

"I've been going crazy. Those two are basically dead," Duke tells her, ushering toward their siblings. "Our dads have been talking about business for the past hour and I think our moms left to get coffee."

"Well I'm sorry that you couldn't find something to entertain you while I was actually trying to do something important." As much as she loved Duke, he really knew how to get on her nerves sometimes, making her wonder how she's put up with him for so long. 

***

The four days in the Bahamas was everything Lennen could ask for. While the dads were in meetings, and the moms were relaxing by the pool, the kids spent the majority of their time in the ocean. They found themselves snorkeling for hours on end everyday, never getting enough the sea creatures they came in contact with. Lennen had downloaded all the pictures and videos from her GoPro onto her phone, smiling at all the memories they had created during this short trip. 

"Send me those," Duke says, as he went through the pictures with Lennen while they were waiting to catch their plane from Charlotte back to Los Angeles. "You should post one." 

Lennen decided take Duke's advice and post her favorite picture from the trip, which was the four kids underwater during one of their snorkeling advenutres, with the caption 'memories for a lifetime'. Every trip Lennen embarked on was something she would remember for the rest of her life, incredibly grateful that she got to do things like this so often and with the some of the best people she's ever met.