boyfriend | t.h.

part nine - free bird

For the next few days, you felt like a new person but still in the same body. Although you appeared normal on the outside with the same hair, nails, skin and smile, your inside hid a completely different girl. One who was less naive, more scared of what people's intentions were and on a higher alert. You didn't know you would change like this in a matter of hours and it's not like you wanted to, but the stress drilled its way into your brain daily and the image of taking that first sip from the cup Bradley gave you repeated.

As much as you wanted to keep to yourself the days leading up to graduation, you were invited to an engagement party from one of your closest highschool friends, Courtney. You'd label her as your almost best friend but you'd gone to different colleges so you didn't hang out except if you were both in town. The last time you saw her, before all of fake dating happened, she took you out to lunch and told you she was marrying the guy she's been dating for four years. Apparently he went to your school, but you'd yet to bump into him.

Maybe seeing all of your friends would be nice, reminiscing on the early and stupid days of highschool. A time when you didn't think you would fake date someone in order to get someone else's attention, someone truly horrendous and awful.

You lived about an hour and a half away from campus, still close to your family but not meant for every weekend. The drive was kind of beautiful every time you decided to go, rain or shine. The highway was newly paved over the summer with fresh yellow lines, the trees were big and their leaves colors perfectly from season to season and the little, quaint town you lived in still looked the same as it did when you were growing up there.

When you drove 15 minutes out and made sure your mental checklist was completed, you put your phone into the aux once you got to the first red light. "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" began to play and it reminded you of Tom. The funny thing was that it wasn't even a song you two listened to together, but pretty much any song reminded you of him in some way. You half-smiled, but sealing your lips after to conceal the fact that you were close to smiling more.

The day after the party, Tom stuck around the rest of it. Not only did he make breakfast for the three of you, but he wanted to comfort you in your most vulnerable state. He knew after he heard you whisper "I love you, Tommy." he was in it for everything and anything with you. Most of the day, you guys watched TV and bad movies on the couch, letting you recover and try to get your mind off your stress.

The great thing about Haley and Tom was that they made sure to know how you felt and if you wanted to cry, you cried, if you didn't want to talk, they understood and if you wanted to do something about it, they let you decide. But, once you got to think about it alone, you told them that you wanted to report it to the campus police. They were both proud of you, supporting you through it because it was difficult to speak about as if the words were sandpaper and your throat was already dry. But it was somewhat comforting the whole time while Haley held your hand, squeezing it tight and Tom stood behind you, making sure you were okay.

After those long three days, Tom stopped by and made sure you were okay. You knew he was busy with baseball and preparing to move away to California, but he also wanted to give you space. It was hard to imagine him being a phone call away, not able to have your coffees and slushies together, but this was his dream since the first game with his grandpa and you wanted Tom to hold onto it and never let it go.

But, he told you since finals were over that he was going home for a little bit then some big party, assuming it was something for his frat. You didn't mind that either, it just felt weird not doing things together, and Tom felt the same way about it whenever you told him about the engagement party you were going to. It was hard not "dating", but at least you were still really close friends and that's more than you both could ask for.