California Kisses

Chapter Five

The first time I got a cell phone, my excitement could not be contained. Seriously. I was menace. I felt on top of the world and cool and like I could do anything. Other kids already started to enter into the fancy technological age of their lives and I was ready to be part of that crowd. I added in several contacts, my mom, my aunts, and my school. After some mental back and forth, I added in the police department. You know, just to be on the safe side.

However, very quickly, I realized the reasons my phone always seemed to be in use and the reason others phones were in use were very different reasons.

Other kids were texting friends, scrolling through social media pages, and tweeting. My phone found it's usefulness in reading books, researching, and watching online videos.

At first, I felt a little bothered. It very nearly made me reach out and make a friend, if only to have that extra contact in my phone, just one more person I'd be able to text during the day. But, as I watched my classmates, it seemed their moods rose and fell with the tide. The groups sitting together would change. Friends who shared phones were suddenly several tables apart and didn't look each other in the eye.

It made me kind of glad that the base use for my phone came with the territory of being a bit of a nerd.

But now? Now it changed.

I still read on my phone, no doubt about it. The app always stayed in the background, ready to pull to the forefront at a moments notice. However, a portion of my time went to Bennett. I definitely surprised myself; having another person to talk to felt amazing.

Every time my phone buzzed, butterflies erupted in my stomach and knots formed. A tinge of anxiety appeared, wondering if I would say the right things or if this would be the conversation where Bennett decided this just wasn't working out.

But that time never came. Instead, when I so elegantly shoved my foot in my mouth, Bennett just waved it off, helping me pull it back out and then ignoring it happened altogether.

He had his fair share of foot-in-mouth disease as well. Over the next few weeks, we managed to gain a small amount of ground with each other. I still held onto secrets, naturally. Complete openness came with time and I couldn't imagine just dumping my issues on Bennett randomly. But . . . I don't know, it was the weirdest feeling.

It felt . . . I felt, just . . . Alive. Like, for years, I'd been swimming alone in the ocean, limbs sagging, vision blurry, and exhausted. And I was okay with it. That life was something I found myself used to and it didn't bother me.

But then someone, Bennett, came along. Totally by accident. And he stopped and threw me some sort of lifeline and I realized, wow. What had I been doing all those years? I could breathe. My vision cleared. I didn't feel so tired. Realistically, we should never have even met. He lived thousands of miles away. But suddenly, there he was.

In some corner of my brain, there were flashing red signs, warnings that I was getting too deep too fast. I elected to ignore those feelings though. We were friends. I think.

dorkyandartsy435: Are we friends?

Moments passed after I sent the message, stretching into minutes. Wednesday morning, I had a free period, so I made my way into the library for some quiet time. Biology had been kicking my butt as of late, so I wanted to catch up on the next few chapters, try and make sense of things or at least get them sorted into the correct columns before I actually covered the material in class.

Musing about my current social standings never proved to be a strong urge, but at the moment? I really couldn't help myself. Friendships were weird. Were we supposed to come out and say it? Was it like a knighting? I now dub thee my best friend? Or did everyone just sort of end up on the same page? Was it an accident?