Casualties

Just over a month had passed and it was at the begging of May. Kennedy and Alex hadn’t had any issues and they’d continue to do things the way that they’d intended them to be done. Kennedy hadn’t done anything with anybody else and she felt bad when she told Alex that, even though he had told her he hadn’t done anything with anybody either. She felt like she was in a relationship and that was the farthest thing from what she’d wanted.
Jack hadn’t suspected a thing, as far as they knew, and they tried to act as though everything was normal when they were in public and weren’t alone. Kennedy had gotten all of her grades up to high A’s and she had finally learned how to balance Alex, sex, school, homework, friends, and her mother. Lorelei, her mother, was still in a state of depression over the guy she’d met, Rob.
Kennedy never understood how her mother could give herself completely to somebody just to have them break her heart. That’s probably where she’d gotten her cold heartedness from – watching her mother fall in love, but never really falling out of it with anybody she’d even looked at.
“What do you say that I just take you out to a movie tonight? With no funny business,” Alex asked her while they were lying next to each other in her bed, fully clothed.
“But the funny business is more than half the fun,” she told him with a giggle because she knew just how true that statement was.
“I know, but I actually want to take you out somewhere and maybe even go to dinner with you,” he told her wrapping his arm around her waist.
“You really want to?” she asked, looking up into his dark brown eyes.
“I really do,” he told her again.
“Alright, but not this weekend. Maybe next weekend,” she told him.
“Why not this weekend?” he asked her.
“Because there’s a party on Saturday and tomorrow I want to get some homework done and I promised my mom I would have a day with her,” she said rolling her eyes. She really didn’t like the thought of having him take her out on a date even though she knew if she called him out on it that he would deny it was a date.
“Alright, sounds good. Next weekend it is then,” he agreed then flopped over onto his back. “By the way did ever you call those people back?” he asked her, turning his head to look at her side profile.
“Which people?” she asked, not sure who he was talking about.
“That guy named Dan or Don or something like that and the representative from Harvard,” he reminded her. It had been so long ago that she’d almost entirely forgotten about both of them.
“Well, I talked to the representative from Harvard and told her that I was not interested because I want to finish my last year of high school actually in high school and she totally understood. As for Don, he never gave me a number and when I looked for it on my phone it was a blocked number so I couldn’t get a hold of him. Obviously if it had been important enough for me to talk to him he would have left a number,” she said completely dismissing him. She had thought it was a joke from the beginning and didn’t really care to know who Don was or what he had wanted.
“You sure you don’t want to look into it further? I’m sure I could find out who it really was if you wanted me to,” Alex told her. He didn’t believe her that she didn’t care who it was or what he had wanted. He thought that she had been dying to know and that she would jump at any opportunity to find out what he wanted.
“I’m positive. I’ve told you that before. I don’t really care enough to know and it doesn’t mean that much to me,” she told him and then he phone started vibrating underneath her pillow. She pulled it out and flipped it open. “Hello?” she asked.
“Hey Kennedy, its Jack. Are you and Alex hanging out?” he asked her.
“Yeah we’re hanging out. Why?” she asked him.
“Because I thought that we could all get together tonight and just hang out like we used to,” Jack told her. When he said ‘used to’ he was referring to before she had let her grades slip. After that she had had so much homework to catch up on and tests to re-do that she had barely had time to hang out with him and Alex, but Alex had managed to find the time (3 am) to come over to her house and hang out with her.
“I would love to, give me a second, alright?” she asked then put the phone to her shoulder so she could talk to Alex without having Jack hear their conversation.
“It’s Jack. He wants to know if we all want to hang out tonight,” she told him. She wasn’t entirely sure how he’d react because a few times this had happened and he hadn’t wanted Jack to come over because he wanted Kennedy all to himself, but a few other times he said he’d rather just hang out with Jack alone at his house and then he’d leave and tell Jack to come over.
“Sure, tell him to come over,” he told her and cuddled into her other shoulder and wrapped himself around her.
She moved the phone from her shoulder back up to her mouth, “Come over, Jack. My mom’s working tonight so we have the night to ourselves,” she told him.
“Alright, I’ll be over in a few minutes,” he told her then hung up without saying goodbye. She was going to offer to give him a ride over there, but he’d hung up before she’d been able to.
“He’ll be over here soon,” she told Alex and he just nodded and continued to hold her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed his head. She knew that it was an extremely affectionate move to make, but she couldn’t help herself. Nevertheless he didn’t think anything of it so they just laid there for a minute before her phone rang again.
She grabbed it, “Hello?” she asked again.
“Hey, it’s me,” her mother said from the other line.
“Hey, what’s up?” she asked, praying that her mom wasn’t calling to ask if she could ‘spend the night at a co-workers’ so that she could work late.
“I’m stopping by the store tonight on my way home. Is there anything you want?” she asked. Kennedy was taken aback. Usually she did the grocery shopping, never her mom. Kennedy couldn’t even remember the last time Lorelei had remembered to go grocery shopping.
“Um, bagels, cream cheese, chicken, pudding, yogurt, crystal light, special k crackers and cereal and some grapes and strawberries,” she told her mom. It was all the things she’d had on her list to go grocery shopping for that weekend anyway. It was one last thing she wouldn’t have to worry about doing.
“Alright, you’ll have them in the morning when you wake up,” her mother told her.
“Thank you, mom,” she said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said those words and actually meant them.
“You’re welcome, sweetie, see you tomorrow, bye,” she said.
“Bye,” and then both of them hung up.
“Was that your mom?” Alex asked her, uncurling himself from her chest and wrapping his arms around her.
“Yeah, it was,” she told him as she lay on his warm chest.
“How’s she been doing?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I don’t really see her that often but every time I see her she seems to be getting a little better,” she told him and then shrugged. Truth of the matter was, was that she was not getting better. She still moped about the house and ate a bunch of junk food and cried her eyes out to depressing movies, but her mother had always been that way whenever she’d had her heart broken. She would bake things like cookies and cakes and then eat the majority of it to herself and she wouldn’t go to the gym to exercise and she would actually start to go grocery shopping and want to spend ‘quality time’ with her daughter, which was what tomorrow would be for.
“You’re such a liar,” Alex said and she could feel him smile.
“Shut up. I like to believe she’s getting better, but she’s just so predictable that it makes it kind of hard for me to feel sorry for her,” Kennedy felt awful admitting that aloud, but it was true. It was her mother’s own fault for falling in love as easily as she did and as often as she did it that it made it really hard for Kennedy to feel bad for her when she could only feel bad for her so many times before getting sick of it.
He chuckled, “I understand,” he told her.
“No you don’t,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow, “your parents are happily married and you don’t have to worry about them dating people and falling in love and having to pick up the pieces,” she told him.
“True, but I’ve been through it enough with your mother to know the linguistics if it all,” he told her. That was another thing she loved about Alex – he had just as big of a vocabulary as she did and so she didn’t have to dumb herself down to actually have a conversation with him like she did the majority of people her age.
“You’ve only seen this happen like four or five times,” she told him.
“In only the two years that I’ve known you, I’d say that that’s pretty good,” he pointed out.
“I’ve gone through it at least thirty times since I’ve been alive,” she told him, still feeling compelled to tell him that he didn’t really understand what she’d been through with her mother and her constantly falling in love phases.
“Blah blah blah,” he made fun of her.
She laughed at this and just then her bell rang downstairs. She and Alex jumped off the bed and she ran downstairs and threw open to the door to see Jack, “Jack!” she yelled enthusiastically and gave him a big hug. He and Alex always made her feel small because she came up just to their chest and they always made fun of her for it.
“Hey, cutie,” he greeted her, squeezing her tightly.
They pulled away from the hug and Kennedy looked back at Alex and she could tell that he had a wave of jealousy come over him, but she decided to ignore it.
“Hey man,” Alex greeted Jack.
“Hey,” Jack said back as he walked into Kennedy’s house. “I’m starving, can we eat something, please?” he asked her and took of his jacket. She had no idea why he was even wearing a jacket in the first place since it was almost the middle of May.
“So you just come over to my house to eat food?” she asked him, putting her hands on her hips and giving him a faux irritated look.
“No…” he said, looking sheepish.
She gasped and threw her hands out to the side.
“What?” Jack and Alex asked her at the same time.
“We should go ice skating!” she exclaimed. She loved ice skating but she hadn’t been in a really long time because she just got out of the habit of going.
“What? No.” Alex said and shook his head.
“Pretty, pretty please?” she asked the both of them.
“No, I am not going ice skating,” Alex said again. Kennedy remembered one time when she had talked them into going ice skating with her and Alex had been fine with it because at the time he thought he was good at everything but he quickly came to the conclusion that he was not good at everything seeing at her fell every two seconds when he was on the ice. He had never gone with her since.
“You’re a butt face,” she told him, and stuck her tongue out at him.
“Oh, you’re so mature,” he told her and then stuck his tongue out at her.
“Of course I am, I’m a girl. Girls mature faster than boys,” she told him and put her arms across her chest in a matter-of-fact kind of way.
“Oh shut up they most definitely do not,” he told her.
“Do, too,” she told him.
“Do not,”
“Do too,”
“Do not,”
“Do too,”
“Oh my god, you guys are seriously acting like four year olds,” Jack said, but he was smiling and glad to back in that type of environment with his friends.
They all started laughing and Kennedy realized that it had been definitely like an argument a pair of four year olds would have.
“But seriously can we eat something?” Jack asked and it made Kennedy laugh even harder.
“You guys sit down and I’ll make us something,” she told them and they did as they were told and she walked into the kitchen and started making some plain old pasta and it was done in less than 15 minutes. She decided not to take any because the thought of having any type of food made her nauseous.
They had decided to watch a movie and they all just sat there, completely enthralled in the plot of it even though it wasn’t that good.
“I’ll be right back, guys,” she told them then got up from the couch and went up to her room and started looking for her slippers because her feet were cold. She heard her door shut behind her and she turned around to see Alex standing there and he was just eyeing her up and down. “Can I help you?” she asked putting her slippers on.
He didn’t say a word, just walked up to her, put his hands on the side of her face and kissed her passionately. He eventually moved his hands off her face, down her sides, and onto her back. He let her hands roam his body and for an entire five minutes or so she completely forgot that Jack was still downstairs waiting for them.
A knock on her door sent her flying back and she caught her breath before yelling, “Come in!” and then Jack swung open her door.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked them and eyed them suspiciously.
“He was helping me look for my slippers,” she told him then held up her slippered foot as proof, “we just found them,” she said and heard Alex tried to repress a laugh. “Just give me one more minute then I’ll be downstairs,” she told him and then he just nodded and headed back down and Alex immediately started cracking up.
“That was so not okay,” she told him, pointing towards her door to indicate where Jack had been standing.
“Oh come on, it’s only Jack,” he told her.
“No, it’s not only Jack. We can’t do that again when we have friends over,” she told him and shook her head violently wondering how Jack could even have fallen for such a lie.
“But you have to admit that it was kind of exhilarating,” he said, walking towards her, “almost getting caught,” he said and placed his hands back on her hips.
“No, we are not doing this again,” she told him and tried to push him away, but he was so much stronger than she was. “Come on,” she laughed, “we have to get back downstairs,” she told him then moved past him and walked out of her room and back into the living room where Jack continued watching the movie, still enthralled.
Alex plopped down next to her and she reached forward and threw a blanket over the three of them and Alex put his hand on her thigh and she put her hand on Alex’s package and she felt how hard he was through his tight jeans and she started to laugh. Jack looked at her, “What’s so funny?” he asked, being 100% serious.
“Nothing, just thinking back on a memory of Alex ice skating,” she told them and then Jack started laughing, too because he had been there to witness that event.
“That was really funny,” he agreed with her, but quickly turned his attention back to the movie. Alex glared at her and then gave her one of his sexy half smiles and moved his hand up her thigh to the zipper of her jeans and she gently pushed his hand down but she recognized that it was her fault because she’d touched him first.
Her phone started beeping and she grabbed it. She had a text message that read: I want to fuck you so badly right now. From Alex. She smirked and she could see him do the same out of the corner of her eye.