One of the Boys...Right?

After stopping so Dico could get his damn ice cream, We hung around town until 5. Then we continued on to our houses.

"Wanna come over?" Kelsey asked me. We were the only two left.

"Nah. I'm gonna head home." I yawned.

"We survived junior year." she said to herself.

"By a miracle." I agreed.

"And soon we'll be seniors." she grinned.

"Easy, girl. Take off your thinking cap and put on your party hat." I made the motions of switching one hat for another.

"I know. But then we're free." she said before we said goodbye and separated.

-Later-

My damp hair hung down my back and spilled onto my shoulders. I stepped out onto the back and into the garden by the pool. The lights from the sides shone through the still water and reflected onto the surfaces and trees around me as I sat down on a stone bench. The only thing I could smell was the flowers. Orchids, lillies, cherry blossoms, violets, and hibiscuses. The stars twinkled in the sky, like small diamonds. Music drifted lazily through the air from next door, but everything else was silent.

It was then that I recognized the music. It was a piano cover, and the person playing sounded like an expert. The song was from my favorite musical of all time.

Wicked.

"Jess?" I heard a voice call.

"Out here!" I called back, hoping the person next door would continue. Bam came out to sit beside me.

"Like a comet pulled from orbit, as it passes a sun. Like stream the meets a boulder halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you...I have been changed for good." I sang along.

"Your aunt said you would be out here. What are you doing?" he smiled.

"Singing to the music." I smiled back.

"Crazy year, huh?" he said after a moment of comfortable silence.

"It was different." I looked up at the stars.

"It well may be. That we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part. So much of me is made of what I learned from you, you'll be with me like a handprint on my heart." I continued singing softly.

"Nah, we'll be with each other for a long time. I can tell." Bam shook his head.

"It's part of the song, Bam Bam." I rolled my eyes and smiled.

"I know. But I just feel like I need to tell you that." he shrugged.

"The song is true though. About all of us. I think that if I never met you guys, I would still be scared to let myself be happy, scared of the unknown. I would still be trying to be one of the boys. You guys...and you...have changed me in so many different ways." I confessed. The song ended, and the person repeated it.

"That's good." he moved closer.

"You really think we'll all be together forever?" I asked, looking back up at the sky.

"I dont know. Even if we part someday, we wont forget each other. Like you said, we've changed each other in different ways." he said.

"Am I making you think more?" I grinned.

"You make me think a lot. About things I never even knew about myself." he admitted.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like about how much I cared about you." he looked up at the sky as well.

"Sometimes I think about that, too." I sighed.

"Are we talking about a brother-sister way, or something more?" he bit his lip.

"Both, I think." I blushed.

"Jess, sometimes I think I like you more than a brother-sister way." he was blushing, too.

"Thank god you said that. I thought something was wrong with me." I sighed.

"But Bam...if we were to...be together...do you think it would work? And if it didnt...would we still be friends?" I found the words to speak as I faced him. He moved even closer and leaned his head down.

"We can try. And I guess that's just the thrill of the unknown." he whispered. Our lips connected in a moment of pure bliss as the notes on the piano came to a close and faded in the night, only to be replaced by crickets.

And in that moment, as electricity coursed through my veins, I knew that I would never really be 'one of the boys'.

But you know what?

I could care less.