Deceived

Someone to waste the day with, to get through all the mess with.
You’re the one I’ll always laugh with.
-Friends Theme Song

“JESS!”

I ran to my best friend, upon seeing her black hair and tanned complexion.

“TIFF!” she yelled back at me before making her way towards me.

We shoved our way thorough the crowd of people in the LAX airport to get to each other. It may have seemed like we were away from each other for much longer than we actually were but, we were best friends, and no matter how much time you spent away from the other, it felt like a decade. Even when it was only 3 days.

And as always, being the best friends that we were, we knew what was going to happen. We would get close enough to wrap each other in a hug and then, she would fall into me, knocking me to the ground. Sometimes taking an innocent bystander with us.

She tripped over her own two feet and fell, bringing me down onto my back while her face rested on my stomach, both of us laughing loudly while people rolled their eyes and walked by. They were only jealous because they didn’t have a friendship like ours.

For as long as I could remember, well, Freshman year to be exact, we had been Best Friends. She was a new student, having moved from Tennessee to Wisconsin, my home state, and starting out the next four years of her life with us. She had guys falling all over her because of her accent and how tan she was. It’s not warm all the time in Wisconsin, let alone warm enough to be outside and tan. But she also, even 7 years ago, had a killer body. A body most models would be envious for. She had the right size everything along with her long black hair and fierce green eyes. I had tried talking her to audition for America’s Next Top Model since she turned 18, but she always waved it off. She wanted to be a business owner of her own boutique. Not a bulimic model.

We’d been through everything together, break ups, hook ups, Homecomings and Proms. It was like we were a well known couple in school, as weird as that sounds. You wouldn’t see one without the other. And our names were often said as one word. Either JessandTiff or TiffandJess. Never Jess and Tiff, or the way around. But we were ok with that. We somehow, from how completely different we were physically wise since I had brown hair that I was lucky if it would grow 3 inches in 4 months and a stick straight body, became best friends. Aside from our obvious physical differences, our personalities were just as different as well.

She was always finding ways to make money like, selling candy or putting up a kissing booth at carnivals, often dragging me along with her to do it. I was always finding a way to conserve money and planning on spending it on one thing that I wanted badly. Like film or a new camera. I always was into Photography ever since I turned 8. I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life the second I held up my mom’s Polaroid camera and snapped some pictures of her and my father during a family party one time.

Jess was often the loud, slightly obnoxious and clumsy girl while I was the quiet, reserved and perfectly capable to walk in a straight line girl. She was always so messy and carefree. I was borderline OCD with some things and always thinking about the consequences to my actions. But somehow, we made our friendship work. I was always thinking to the future while she was always living in the moment and it worked for us.

Even though we moved out to California together after we graduated, it was still classic JessandTiff all the way. I had always wanted to live in Cali. When I told Jess that I was going to move there after I graduated from high school, she simply said, “Cool. I’ll do that too.” And she did. We found an amazing apartment together and lived with each other for about a year and half before she moved out with Brad. Again, an impulsive thing she did.

She had been dating him practically since we walked off the plane with our luggage. And after a year and a half of dating, he asked her to move in and she simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “Sure. Why not?” Again, there I was though, thinking about the consequences. “What if they broke up? What if they couldn’t afford their rent? What if it was too soon?” Those were my thoughts about the situation. But not what you think they might have been. Those were my thoughts of why I should keep the apartment her and I lived in. I couldn’t afford it at the time with just myself paying, so I knew I had to get rid of it, but I was thinking of those questions, justifying why I should keep it.

But it turned out that I didn’t have to think about it after all. He cheated on her with one of his close friends, so she kicked him out of their apartment, throwing all of his stuff out the window and wrote, “I’m a Cheater so don’t get involved.” in big bold letters across all of his clothes. I have to admit, that I partook in some of that, ‘damaging clothes’ fest. But she stayed in the apartment and I stayed in my own one bedroom. We both liked the independence of living on our own and it was only a 10 minute drive to each of our places so we weren’t that far apart to begin with.

“I’m so glad you’re back! David has been non stop bothering to hang out with me and calling me and texting me for the last three days. I basically just stayed cooped up in my apartment, afraid that if I left, he’d ambush me and make me hang out with him.” she explained really fast while getting up off of me.

I simply laughed at her statement and brushed myself off as I stood up and lead the way towards baggage claim while she rattled on about watching, ‘The Best CSI : New York’ Ever!

That was another difference between her and I. She could talk and babble for hours on end about things and when she was extremely excited about something, she’d talk so fast that most people couldn’t understand her. Me on the other hand, I was careful with what I had to say and would always think first before I said it. Again with the consequences.
I did however, like to randomly blurt out tidbits of information. Like how airplanes came into being or something. Yeah, that was one of the few times I ever ‘lived in the moment’.

“And did you know that a starfish has two stomachs?” she asked me after we found my bag and made our way out into the cool LA air since it was March, her leading towards her car.

“What? That’s disgusting.” I laughed out, shoving my baggage into her trunk before getting into the car with her, her starting it up and backing out of the parking spot.

“I know. That’s what I thought. But CSI teaches me something yet again. Gah! I love that show!” she exclaimed with a little giggle before turning the radio on and both of us were bopping along to the song on the station.

It got quiet for us, maybe a little too quiet since my mind started to wander back to the weekend. It was fun, overall. But the initial reason I went back home to Wisconsin wasn’t the greatest. My Grandpa was in the hospital for the longest time with having blood clots and arthritis and just being old in general. But this last time, he moved into a nursing home.

My Grandpa was easily my most favorite person in the whole world. He taught he how to ride a bike, after buying me my first one. He taught me how to fish and then unfortunately, tried to teach me how to gut it. I ended up passing out when he first cut into it. Every time I’d go up to visit him, we’d always sit and watch Wheel of Fortune, it was our show and no one would dare to interrupt us. He’d always have a stash of all the Pickles comics from the newspaper next to his chair so when I came up, we’d read them and laugh together. Like I said, he was my favorite person in the world, and now that he was no longer in the home that I did everything with him, it was a very emotional time for me to say the least. All the those good memories, were going to stop. And I wasn’t quite sure how I could deal with it, if I was even ready to deal with it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jess asked me softly, obviously knowing what I was thinking about during our lull of communication.

I wiped my eyes, feeling them getting teary and shook my head.

“No.”

She seemed to take offense to that, by the look on her face, so I did some damage control.

“At least, not right now anyways. Maybe when it’s not so…fresh. Ya know?” I asked her.

She sent me a small smile before nodding her head and grabbing my hand, giving it a squeeze before turning the radio up and singing obnoxiously off key to the end of the song.

It seemed to be a re-cap weekend, so they were playing the best of the best of the last couple of years.

In the middle of “This Is Why I’m Hot” by Mims, my phone started ringing and she turned the radio down so I could take the call. But when I saw ‘Alex’ flashing across my screen, I rolled my eyes and stuffed it in my pocket.

I swear, the guy didn’t understand the concept of a one night stand. Well, he wasn’t completely a one night stand. He was my high school sweetheart and we dated for about 2 years in high school; breaking up after graduation because of my moving to California. Neither of us were ready to have a long distance relationship, and it would‘ve been too much of a commitment for the both of us. But that didn’t stop him from thinking there was something going on with us whenever I showed up back in town and him and I would have too much to drink and then end up spending the night at his place.

“Who is it?” Jess asked while managing to steer the car and reach over and trying to get my phone out of my pocket.

“Drive Woman!” I yelled upon laughing, seeing as how the car swerved towards the right, earning us a honk from the person behind us.

“Well then tell me who it is. You know I’ll pull this car over right now-”

“You didn’t even give me a chance to tell you for crying out loud!” I yelled at her while abstracting my phone from my pocket and holding it out the window so she couldn’t reach it.

“Oh don’t think that that’s going to stop me.” she stated while looking back and forth between the road and my ringing phone out the window. “Who is it?” she asked again.

“It’s umm….” I stuttered. I didn’t want to tell her it was Alex. It would only lead to more questions that would ultimately be the same ones that Alex would be asking me.

When it came to him, I never really thought twice about consequences. Most of the time. He was the only guy I knew that would get me to not think about the future and just make me live in the moment. That is until the hazy fog he’d cast upon my head disappeared, but it was already too late to take everything back. Thus the constant hook ups whenever I was back home. I always knew that he’d call me for about a week afterwards, but his charm always swept me off my feet and made me not think about it until the next morning. And I hated him for it.

“Alex?” I heard her ask me with an incredulous tone before giving me the look. I hated the look. It was like she knew something happened and trying to pry it out of me, just to hear me say it. And then came the all knowing smirk before looking at the road.

“What happened?” she asked me with a cheeky grin and a wiggle of her shoulder. I simply rolled my eyes and let my head rest in my hand that was leaning on the windowsill.

“Nothing. Ok?” I snapped at her but that only brought the look towards me again.

“Come on Tiff. You’re killing me here. What happened?” she whined towards me when a few minutes went by and I wasn’t telling her anything.

I scoffed before running my hands over my face and into my hair.

“We went out after my Grandpa was moved into the nursing home, I had a little bit too much to drink and then I woke up in his bed. Good enough for you?”

She gave me a look, not the look, but a somewhat satisfied look as she nodded her head, my phone now giving me a beep to tell me that I had a missed call.

“For now.”

“Good…now let’s…holy crap this is old!” I laughed out while listening to the song that was currently playing.

“Oh my gosh, yeah this is. Who is this again? I can’t remember.”

“All I know is that I loved this song. Gahh….” I laughed out and then waited for the chorus to start up again.

Jess turned it up right as the chorus started and her and I sang along loudly to it, me doing slightly better than her. Word wise anywise, pitch wise, we were the same. Crappy.

The song ended and we both were waiting impatiently for the radio announcer to state who it was, both of us on the verge of killing ourselves with not knowing who sang it.

“And that was number 37. ‘Burnin’ Up.’ by the Jonas Brothers. Here comes Rihanna with ‘Shut Up and Drive.’”

“Jonas Brothers….” Jess trailed off with slight confusion on her face and in her voice. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Maybe because that girl, Stacy, from school had like…everything that their faces were on. I swear she was the most obsessed fan of theirs ever!” I laughed out while Jess took a left onto the road that led to my apartment.

“Don’t make fun! Those boys were hot!”

“I’m not making fun of them. And yes, they were hot and probably still are.”

“Well, it sucks if they are.” she stated with an eye roll and then bopped along to Rihanna.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because, they wore purity rings. You know how much that sucks? They were so bangable and yet, no girl would ever be able to find out first hand unless they were married to them. Totally a waste of time if you ask me.” she stated and then nodded her head once to confirm what she said.

“Well, those boys still had a few good songs, including that one.” I stated as she pulled into my parking structure and finding a vacant spot.

“Yeah, didn’t you use to have that one for Alex’s ring tone way back in the day?” she laughed out upon seeing my face turn sour when she mentioned his name.

“Yeah, can we not talk about him please? He’s ancient history, just like those boys.”

“Yeah, until you sleep with him again.” Jess laughed out while I glared at her. Her laughing came to stop after a few seconds and that’s when I told her, “The day that Alex and I get back together, for good, is the day that those Jonas Boys will give it up without being married to the girl.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” she said with a laugh as we both exited her car and made our way to my apartment.