Take Me to Infinity

“Hey Brad, how have you been?” Autum asked, leaning back across the couch and propping her feet up on the back.

Brad had been Autum’s boyfriend back home, but they broke up when the girls made their cross-country move. Autum hadn’t been big on the whole long-distance relationship deal, and she knew that the move would be a big change for her. She just couldn’t commit her time to long phone calls and Facebook chats. Plus, Autum wanted to keep an open mind about her change of setting, and she knew that’d be more difficult if she had Brad tying her back to South Carolina.

All that aside, Autum had to admit that she missed him and that the phone call was a pleasant surprise.

They talked and caught up with each other for around an hour until Kandi and Logan came in, toting bags of groceries.

“You could help, we have more bags in Logan’s car,” Kandi chirped as she placed a gallon of milk in the refrigerator.

“Sorry, I have to go. It was nice talking to you though. Bye,” Autum said before flipping her phone closed.

“Who was that?” Kandi asked, continuing to put away groceries.

“Brad,” Autum smiled as she passed them in the kitchen.

“I thought you got rid of him,” Kandi replied as Autum walked through the door. Kandi thought that Autum deserved someone better than Brad, but Kandi was so superficial that it was hard to tell when she was focusing on the substance or on the looks.

The sun was still shining brightly over the parking lot when Autum made her way down.

She spotted Logan’s big black S.U.V. at the edge of the parking lot and sighed. Of course she would have to walk across the entire parking lot, the hot asphalt burning the bottoms of her feet in her flimsy black flip flops. The trunk was open, so she grabbed the remaining two bags and slammed it back down.

When she got back upstairs, Kandi and Logan were sprawled out on the couch, watching The Hills.

“Okay, so what’s the deal with those two girls?” Logan asked, running his hand through his hair.

“That’s Kristen, she’s a total bitch,” Kandi replied, pointing at the screen. “She’s trying to hook up with Audrina’s ex, with is totally against girl rules.”

“Oh, okay,” he laughed.

“It’s like a really bad car accident, you just can’t look away,” Autum joked.

Autum was automatically reminded of when Kandi had first made her watch the mindless reality show with her. She wasn’t really a fan, but they only had the one television, so she didn’t really have a choice. What was really sad was that Kandi looked up to these girls, she wanted to live like that. She couldn’t exactly crush her friend’s dreams and tell her that reality television wasn’t really real.

“So what did you guys get besides ice cream?” Autum asked, holding up a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

“Oh, we got lots of stuff. By the way, we’re cooking spaghetti tomorrow night, so don’t make any plans.”

Autum put a hand on her hip. “Who would I make plans with? I only know you guys.”

Kandi grinned. “I don’t know, you might want to go out with James.”

“Yeah okay, whatever,” Autum sighed. “So when are we leaving?”

“After this goes off,” she smiled. “And do you have any sunscreen? We’re both really burnt.”

“Yeah, hold on.”

Autum ducked into her bathroom, grabbing her ultra-strength Neutrogena sunblock off of the far end of the counter. She strolled back into the living room and tossed the bottle at Kandi, who caught it in her lap.

“Who’s that?” Logan asked, pointing at the screen again.

Kandi turned from rubbing lotion on her arms to face the screen. “That’s Lo. I don’t really like her. She’s snooty.”

“You act like you know these people.”

She sighed. “Well, don’t star in a reality show if you don’t want to be judged by strangers.”

“True.”

Autum leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter, staring into a plastic cup left near the sink. “Sall, is this your nasty coffee?”

Kandi stopped applying sunscreen and looked over in Autum’s direction. “I’ve been looking for that, like literally, all day.”

“Do you want it?” Autum laughed, holding up the cup.

Her roommate’s brown eyes glazed over as she pondered the situation. “Nah, you can throw it out. You need to change.”

“What?” she asked as she poured the cold coffee down the drain.

“You need to change clothes. You can’t go to the beach in business attire.” Kandi shrugged.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Autum said. She had forgotten she was still wearing her interview clothes.

Kandi was now slathering obnoxious amounts of lotion on Logan while he tried to watch The Hills.

“Do you seriously have to use that much sunscreen? I didn’t know I would be getting back an empty bottle when you returned it,” Autum teased, standing at her bedroom door.

Kandi just replied, “Skin cancer’s no joke” and continued to pump lotion into her hand.

Autum’s dresser was a mess from her clothes search that morning, so it took her longer than usual to find her only swimsuit: a black cutout one piece.

“The Hills is off, time to go!” she could hear Kandi shout from outside her door.

“Coming, coming,” she muttered as she slid her feet into her flip flops. She swung the door open, and her friend was standing just outside, her head cocked to the side and her hands on her hips.

“Took you long enough,” she smirked.

“Phone call for pot, quit calling the kettle black,” Autum replied with a grin.

“Ha ha, let’s just go already.” Patience wasn’t really one of her roommate’s stronger traits.

After their usual exit from their apartment (Autum had to admit that she wanted to switch it up), they all piled up in Logan’s S.U.V. Apparently they had to go pick up James because his car was being worked on and something about his surfboard didn’t fit on top of his car, which didn’t make sense to Autum, but she went with it.

>>

By the time they got to the boys’ apartment complex across town, Autum’s head was throbbing in her skull. Logan and Kandi had something in common: they both loved to blast obnoxious rap music with tremendous bass. Every time the bass would hit, Autum felt like her head was going to explode and her heart was going to stop. She was relieved when they finally pulled over to the curb to get James.

She had to admit that she was taken aback when James slid into the backseat beside her, shirtless. He had a rocking body with great biceps and washboard abs, and he was definitely easy on the eyes.

But he wasn’t Autum’s type. She didn’t go for the “pretty” boys, and she was a little agitated that Kandi kept trying to throw her together with him. In her past experiences, “pretty” usually was a synonym for “no substance.”

>>

The beach actually wasn’t as crowded as Autum had pictured it in her mind; she actually found a place to lie out her beach towel and just relax.

Apparently, one of the guys’ friends was hosting a bonfire party after the sun went down, so people slowly began to trickle towards their area of beach. Luckily, Autum hadn’t had to struggle through any awkward moments with James; as soon as they’d hit the sand, he had run into the waves to surf.

Autum loved to swim, in pools, that is. She wasn’t about to run out into the ocean where all sorts of things lived and could bite or sting her. She’d been stung once by a jellyfish back at Myrtle Beach and had refused to piss on herself to ease the pain. She wasn’t planning on getting stung by one of those suckers again.

It wasn’t long before Kandi got tired of talking with random strangers; she didn’t like meeting “the friends.” The way she saw it, the whole fling would be over in a week, so why did she have to meet these people? Or at least that was Autum’s hypothesis, her friend never talked about that sort of thing.

“Hey, why aren’t you with James?” she asked as she stretched out her towel.

“He ditched me,” Autum replied, looking towards the water.

Kandi rolled her eyes. “You probably just scared him off with your attitude. I don’t see why you can’t just give him a chance, he’s a nice guy.”

“If he can’t put up with my attitude, then he’s just not right for me,” Autum shot back. “How do you know that he’s a nice guy? You’ve only known him for like, four days.”

“I like to see the best in people,” she replied, sliding on her oversized sunglasses and lying on her back.

“Obviously. So where’s your bee-eff?” she asked jokingly, digging her toes underneath the sand.

“Don’t use the “b” word, you know how I feel about labels. And I don’t know where Logan is, he went off with his dumb hipster friend,” she added. “I get bad vibes.”

“Oh,” Autum replied. “Looks like we’ve both been ditched.”

“Yep,” Kandi responded, folding her arms behind her head.