Always and Forever

“In in in in in in in” Brendon smiled tapping on the roof of his car where we had met up, mid way through first period.

“Wait, we’re leaving...now?”

“No, we’re leaving at three thirty, I just bought you out here to waste your time” Brendon rolled his sarcastically.

“We’re wagging?” I whispered, hoping that a teacher wasn’t going to catch us.

“Yeah, you did it for like a week a while back, and then like another three weeks before that” Brendon joked.

I rolled my eyes “So where are we going?”

“You’ll see”

The four hour drive down to LA was silent for no real particular reason. The landscape was beautiful and on more than one occasion I begged Brendon to pull over so I could take some photos. After a four and a half drive we pulled into a narrow street not too far from Sunset Boulovard. Brendon parked outside the front of one of the many apartments.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Umm...it’s nice Brendon, why?”

Brendon smiled “Because its ours.”

“What!” I squealed practically jumping out of the car and running up to the apartment, “You can’t be serious, open it up!”

We walked around the apartment, it was small but nice. It had one average sized bedroom, a bathroom and an open planned living/kitchen area. It was way out of our price range.
Brendon smiled wrapping an arm around my waist “What do you think?” he whispered into my neck.

“It’s nice” I said simply.

“That’s it?”

“Brendon” I sighed “How did you pay for this?”

“What do you mean babe” Brendon laughed lightly.

“Brendon, you and I both know we can’t afford a house like this, who paid for it?”

Brendon let go of me and walked to the other side of the room “Umm... okay babe, please don’t get angry okay? Umm...you remember Ryan right?”

Oh shit, please don’t tell me he’s done what I think he’s done.

“Yeah well...he’s like, one of those overly rich kids and he just lent me so-”

“Brendon” I yelled “No, no way, we can’t do that!”

“Why not, he offered.”

“But still, it’s living off his money, no! It’s wrong” I cried.

“Why? We’ll pay it back when we’ve got the money, he doesn’t mind. Plus, William lives like, down the road, we won’t have to drive around as much.”

“I don’t know Brendon” I sighed.

“Well it’s a done deal, this is ours.”

The drive home was silent, it wasn’t tense but I just didn’t want to talk to Brendon right now. He had gone behind my back and bought a house. He bought a fucking house without even telling me and worse was that now we owed Ryan a ton of money. I guess we were just going have to use the money we had to by the furniture and pay back Ryan.

******
The year ended all too quickly and before I knew it, it was graduation. Brendon’s mom had finally accepted the fact that he was moving out and had become so supportive that she actually let us take some of her unwanted furniture.

As for my family well, I don’t really know what happened to them. They hadn’t bothered to make any contact with me or with Carla. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt me because I had grown up in such a family orientated home and now my family consists of only three people.

I stood atop the school podium and looked out into the crowd. There was Brendon’s mom, sitting with Carla and Frank. I received my certificate and shook hands with the principal. I looked up and took one last look out at the crowd. There I saw my father, he smiled and gave two thumbs up, well it’s good to know he still cares.