"What's that look on your face, Tash?" Lena asked, coming up behind me and wrapping an arm around my shoulder. "You getting all morose about the future again?"
Ha. My friends knew me too well. "Yeah," I confessed. "A little, I guess. You promise to call me and message me all the time, right? We all promise to do that?"
"Yes!" She reassured me, squeezing me tight. "We have all promised. It's happening. And we'll come back to Little Falls all the time - we have family here. So Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer - we'll see each other a lot."
I forced a little smile. She was trying to make me feel better but all I could think was that a few times a year, during holidays, was in no way the same things as having your friends there all the time, living similar lives and knowing the same people.
"Where is that sexy boyfriend of yours, anyway?" Lena demanded. "I bet he'll cheer you up. Let's go find him!"
Where was Kaden? It had definitely been more than an hour - it felt more like two hours, actually - since I'd seen him last. I let my best friend lead me out of the gym. "Don't worry," she said. "We'll find him - he's off with the jocks doing beer bongs or whatever it is they get up to when there aren't any girls or teachers around."
The school seemed to be mostly deserted. It was a strange feeling being in those hallways, usually packed with loud, boisterous students but empty now, and silent.
"This feels weird," I said. "It almost feels like a haunted house or something - it's so eerie being here with no one else around."
"Yeah, totally," Lena agreed. "It's really freaky all empty like this. Did Kaden say he was leaving? He didn't, did he?"
"No," I shook my head. "He was definitely staying here - he said he was going to meet me in the gym but that should have been, like, an hour ago."
So we set off to find my errant boyfriend. I remember how happy I was that day, I remember the relief I felt in my finally trusting Kaden, how sweet and careful he'd been with me. I'd even managed to block out all thoughts of his coming departure from Little Falls and, for once, convinced myself to live in - and enjoy - the moment.
Soon enough, down one of the side hallways on the second floor of Reinhardt High, we heard the sounds of people having fun coming from a classroom with the door closed. A little light was escaping under the door and Lena turned to me, grinning.
"I bet that's them. And I bet someone smuggled in a ton of alcohol."
As we walked towards the door it opened suddenly and a couple of football players I recognized stumbled out into the hall. One of them was having a serious amount of difficulty walking and his friend was supporting him. I don't think they even noticed us.
Then we got to the door and peeked inside. I spotted Kaden immediately because he was taller than most of his teammates. He was standing about halfway across the classroom with his back to me. What happened next was unequivocal. There was a girl, a blonde, and she was hanging onto him from behind. It was Kelsey, the girl from the football game. At first, I tried to tell myself that it was a friendly gesture but then Kaden reached down behind her and grabbed her ass. Not a pat, a grab. A big handful of Kelsey's ass.
Beside me, I heard Lena gasp softly. She grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me away, but I seemed to be frozen to the spot. I could not take my eyes off what I was seeing, even as my stomach dropped into my feet and a feeling of mounting horror came over me. I watched Kaden turn around and start kissing Kelsey. Again, not a peck on the cheek. A deep, slow, full-on kiss. The kind he'd given me mere hours before. His hands were all over her.
The next thing I knew, Lena was dragging me down the hall, swearing. "That piece of shit. That motherfucker! Fuck him. Fuck him, Tasha! You're way too good for him!"
Everything was a blur. I nearly tripped a few times - not because I was drunk but because my limbs didn't seem to be working properly. It was like too much of my brain was occupied with processing what I'd just seen. I hung back, silent and stiff, as Lena explained to the rest of the group what we'd just seen.
"We're leaving," she announced as my friends all crowded around me with gentle hugs and support. It was probably only their presence that meant I was able to hold it together long enough to make it out to the limo we'd rented for the night. Once we were in the limo, however, I immediately yelled at the driver to pull over and leaped out onto the edge of the road, bent over double, to violently throw-up. Andrea and Lena stood on either side of me, stroking my hair.
"It's OK, Tash," Andrea said. "Just let it out, it's OK. We're here."
As soon as I was finished puking I sank to my knees in the gravel as the reality of what I'd seen in that classroom sunk in. It was Kaden. I wasn't mistaking him for someone else. It was Kaden with his hands casually all over Kelsey, as if the afternoon we'd just spent together hadn't meant a thing.