Casualties

Kennedy woke up with a bare arm around her naked body. It took a few minutes for everything to sink in from the night before. She moved her head over-so-slightly so that she wouldn’t wake Alex up to look at the clock. It read 4:56 am. She let out a sigh and went to move Alex’s arm from around her waist, hoping that when she did he would remain asleep because she never pegged him as a very light sleeper, but the minute she even tried to raise his arm in the air, his eyes fluttered open – his long, girly, dark eyelashes brushing his cheek lightly.
He had ‘morning face’ on. Kennedy called it that because whenever you wake up in the morning, your face gets all scrunchy and whenever anybody says anything to you, even the simplest thing, you look extremely confused. Most people don’t catch ‘morning face’ because of course they never see it on themselves and usually they don’t examine people’s faces when they first wake up and morning face tends to go away within 15 seconds.
She was hoping that he would go back to sleep because she still had to shower, do her hair, her makeup, eat breakfast, and do yoga. “Hey,” he said after a minute and all her hopes fell of getting anything accomplished this morning.
“Hi,” she said, sweetly and continued to lie besides him. He lifted up his arm and waved her in to come snuggle up to his chest. At first she was a little apprehensive because that’s what couples do and they most definitely were not a couple. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings though, so she scooted down and closer to him and snuggled next to his chest.
It had been the first time she’d ever done that with a guy before because usually she left first thing in the morning or (this being most of the time) she never spent the night with any of them to have to worry about the cuddling process in the morning.
“What time is it?” he asked her and rubbed the crusties out of his eyes with the fist of his hand.
“Almost 5,” she told him.
“In the morning?” he exclaimed and sounded completely perplexed.
“Yep,” she sat for a moment feeling extremely uncomfortable, “well I should probably get up and start getting ready,” she told him and started to push herself up.
“But its 5, I think we should go back to bed,” he said as he flopped over onto his back and put his forearms over his eyes.
“That’s fine, you can go back to bed if you want, but I’m a girl – I have things I have to do before I go to school,” she told him and swung her leg over him so that she was straddling him. Just as she was about to get off he grabbed her by the outsides of her thighs.
“What about a morning hello?” he asked her.
It completely confounded her that guys found the energy to be horny and ready to have sex so early in the morning. Usually, in the morning Kennedy didn’t want anybody going near her, let alone touching her.
She slapped his hands away, “You wish,” she whispered then sauntered to the middle of the room to put a new pair of undies on and her black tank top and red pajama bottoms. She walked downstairs and set up a morning yoga video in her living room and set up the yoga mat in the middle of the floor.
Some people made fun of her for being so young and doing yoga every morning, but they were always just jealous girls. Her usual response was something like, ‘that’s why your boyfriend would rather sleep with me’ or ‘the boys aren’t complaining’ or something to that effect. It always seemed to piss girls off and/or just giggle/disgust them that someone would be willing to actually talk about sex in the presence of other people. And she definitely talked about it. Loud.
The yoga only took a half an hour and when she was done with it she moved into the kitchen and grabbed a peach fat free yogurt and made herself a lunch of half an apple, sliced, with a few slices of cheese.
She finally walked back upstairs and into the bathroom and turned on the shower to scolding. Most people say that when they take hot showers in the morning it makes them just fall asleep. Kennedy had never gotten that. She had to take hot showers in the morning and it got her keyed up and ready to pretty much do anything, but still act chill on the outside.
She tried to stay in the shower for as long as possible because the shower was really the only place she could find refuge. It was the only place she could find peace, solitary peace. Even when she was home by herself in her room she still felt like people could see her and she tended to not do anything weird or let herself break down in her room, only in the shower. Every time she felt a break down coming on she’d hop in the shower, turn it to just a little hotter than scolding and sit on the floor of the tub and curl her knees into her chest and just cry or do whatever it was she wanted to do. If she ever did anything like that in her room, she felt too vulnerable.
She got out of the shower 40 minutes later smelling like burned brown sugar and vanilla. She decided to brush her teeth while she was in there because she didn’t want to have to worry about going back into the bathroom to brush her teeth after getting ready.
She walked across the hall in her towel and back into her room. Alex was lying there, propped up on his elbow waiting for her to come in. “You look squeaky clean,” he told her with one of his famous crooked smiles.
“I try,” she said with a blush. “You can use the shower if you want. There should still be some hot water,” she informed him and he just nodded.
“I think I’ll take you up on that,” he told her and got out of her bed, wearing his boxers. “Where can I get a towel?” he turned and asked her with her back turned toward him.
“There’s a cabinet in the bathroom, there’s a bunch of towels in there,” she told him and when she felt him leave and shut the door behind him she let out a breath that she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding.
She walked over to her radio and turned it on because she loved getting ready to music in the morning. Depending on what music was on in the morning, it greatly influenced what type of makeup she wore and what clothes she picked out. There was some grunge on today.
She sat on her vanity table and blew her hair dry and made it look like beachy waves and she did a deep part down the right side of her head. She put full on black eye shadow and kind of smudged it to look a little grungy then got up to flip through her closet. She decided on a black pair of skinny jeans with studs going down the sides, a red tank top, and a black, leather vintage motorcycle jacket. She picked out a pair of black peep toe booties that laced up the front and had a buckle at the bottom.
She was done getting dressed when Alex came back into the room and he stopped dead and center when he saw her. “You look gorgeous,” he told her then proceeded into her bedroom. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of boxers?”
She laughed, “I have a pair of neon pink tidy whities,” she told him with a smile playing on her lips.
“That’ll work,” he said and moved over to where she pointed him to where they were. He pulled them out of her ‘guest’ drawer and put them on. He also grabbed another band t-shirt, this one being hers, and the same pair of skinny jeans he’d worn the day before. “Thanks for the clothes,” he told her and slid an arm around her shoulder to pull her into a hug. “I had fun last night,” he whispered in her ear and she could feel the smirk on her face.
She patted his chest then pulled away, “We should probably get going to go get Jack,” she informed him.
“Yeah, we probably should,” he agreed and she grabbed her bag and he grabbed his and they were out the door.
The ride over to Jack’s was filled full of awkward silence and Kennedy wasn’t use to having there be any silence between she and Alex, let alone an awkward one. They sat there and when she finally pulled up in front of Jack’s house, she was surprised to see that he was already sitting on his front porch, waiting patiently. He saw them and sprinted over to the car.
It was a colder day today so she had the hood of her car up, which made Alex have to get out of the car and pull the passenger side seat forward so that Jack could slide in back. “I want to ride in front today,” Jack said, before getting in the back.
Alex pushed him in, “I ride in front on mornings, you ride in front on the way home,” he told him then slammed the seat down and got in and also slammed his door shut. Kennedy could tell that he was irritated or frustrated with something; she just didn’t know what it could possibly be. There weren’t many things to be irritated for that early in the morning, but if she had to guess, she’d have to say that it was something she did, she just didn’t know what.
Once again the majority of the car ride was silent expect for an occasional observation from Jack.
She pulled into the parking lot, let everybody out then locked her door, “I guess I’ll see you guys later,” she said with a little wave and walked off to the opposite side of the building seeing as that’s where her class was.

[.x.][.x.][.x.]

“What did you do to her?” Jack demanded as he and Alex walked away from Kennedy into the one of many doors into their high school.
Alex looked up at him, “What do you mean?” he said, trying to play dumb.
“I mean, you guys are acting totally weird. You didn’t talk at all and you’ve been acting kind of like an ass,” Jack said, “You only get this way when… Oh my god, you didn’t!”
“Didn’t what?” Alex said, still trying to keep a calm face. He and Kennedy hadn’t actually discussed whether or not they were going to tell anyone (anyone being Jack) because there had been so much… passion. Was it passion? Or was it just both of them wanting to get laid and each of them having each other’s back? Well, whatever it had been it had gone on for 2 hours and 43 minutes, four times, in an uncountable amount of positions.
“You fucked her!” Jack exclaimed.
“I did not,” Alex denied.
“Yes you did. You only get this way when you’ve had sex with a girl and you don’t know what to do about it. You get frustrated and you’re trying to push her away,” Jack kept going and going but eventually Alex just tuned him out because he couldn’t stop thinking about Kennedy.
“I did not have sex with her. She is too good of a friend that I could do that,” Alex said calmly and he said it so surely that he would believe himself if he didn’t keep having flashes of images in his head of certain things they had done.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m 100% positive,”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to,” Jack admitted.
“What?”
“I’m just saying that she’s not the most unattractive person I’ve ever seen,” Jack said and Alex could tell that that was the end of that.

[.x.][.x.][.x.]

Kennedy’s day went by rather smoothly. You would think that since her, Alex, and Jack are all juniors that they’d have some of the same classes, therefore having to run into Alex, but no. Kennedy was an ‘advanced’ student so she took 4 AP classes (including history, math, english, and science) and the others were definitely not what one would call ‘electives’. She took a finance class and a marketing class so that she could learn more about different industries before she decided what colleges she wanted to go to.
Kennedy didn’t even have the same lunch with them because she had lunch with the seniors since her finance class was a senior class and it was the period that happened to base what lunch you get.
All the girls gave her looks and every time one of them whispered to another it got her paranoid that everybody knew what she and Alex had done. She didn’t understand why she cared so much. She never cared if someone found out that she slept with their boyfriend or anything else like that, so why did she care so much that girls were talking about her and Alex? It’s not like she had feelings for him or anything.
Each time she got paranoid she reminded herself that there was no way that any of them could have found out because Alex wouldn’t tell anybody because she, unlike many of the other girls he had slept with, he respected. He was one of her best friends and vice versa.
She made it out to the car before they did and she had time to unlock all the doors and get the heat running so that the car would be nice and toasty.
Alex, as promised, sat in the back of the car and Jack in the front. “How were your classes?” Jack asked.
“Fine. I have a few tests this week that I should probably study for, but other than that everything looks pretty clear,” she told him as she started to drive home.
“Hey, Kenne?” Alex asked her.
“Yeah?” she asked, surprised to hear his voice the first time that day since he told her that he had enjoyed their night together.
“Can I come over?” he asked it simply and directly. Kennedy wondered if this was a thing that Alex wanted her and him to do alone or if Jack would invite himself along.
“Sure, I don’t see why not,” she told him then turned to Jack, “you coming over, too?”
He shook his head, “No, I got to get home and actually do some homework. My grades are starting to slip,” he told her. A few minutes later she dropped Jack off and then she and Alex began driving to her house. He placed his hand on her inner thigh and just left it there like that’s where it was meant to be; like it was being magnetized.
They pulled up in front of her house and he was the first one to get out and he beat her to her front door. She let them inside and the minute she shut the door and set her bag on the floor, he placed his hands on her hips, moved them closer together and dropped his head so that their foreheads were touching. He was looking directly into her eyes and her heart was beating so fast that she swore he could hear it. “Can we go to your room?” he asked in a soft, gentle voice that she had never heard him use.
It made her panic.
She couldn’t find words to speak so she only nodded and then he nodded once and led the way up the stairs, her following shortly behind him.
He shut the door and didn’t bother to turn on the lights. He bent down to her again but this time instead of just placing his hands on her hips, he wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her so that they were only an inch or so apart.
“I have to tell you something,” Alex told her after a moment.
“Okay,”
“Can I tell you?”
“Of course you can,” she told him and brought her head up to look at him in the eye. He kissed her on the lips and she let her eyes flutter close. This was a different kind of kiss, even different from the one she’d experienced last night with him. She didn’t understand what he was doing. It was far, far better than the one of the previous night and it almost swept her off her feet. Yet again she understood how easily girls could fall in love with him.
He pulled away before she was ready, but she didn’t want to convey that to him. “I’ve been thinking about you all day long,” he finally told her.
“Okay…” she said and realized where this was going. It was as obvious as big, red, flashing words in front of his face. RELATIONSHIP. COMMITMENT. LOVE. And it immediately repelled her. She was disgusted.
“I was thinking that we could try… being together,” he told her.
“What do you mean?” she asked, wanting to be sure that she understood before jumping to any conclusions so that she wouldn’t have to jump down his throat.
“Just us having sex, spending the night with one another and things of that nature, but kind of keeping it a secret,” he told her.
“Why a secret?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want people to make a big deal about the two best players finally ‘getting together’, so to speak,” he said.
“So you don’t want a… relationship?” she asked, saying the word like it was a little kid saying a swear word that they knew they shouldn’t be saying.
“No,” he exclaimed, “of course not. Just plain, old, sex. Us. Without any weirdness,” he said and gave the mischievous smile that she knew she’d see some time that night. “So what do you think?” he asked, giving a playful shrug of hopefulness.
“I think you’re on,” she told him.