'Cause No One Knows You Like I Do.

The sun finally beat down on the back of my neck as I wandered the streets of Baltimore that Saturday. I'd been waiting for this day since the first snowfall, and it was finally here - the sun was finally out. The heat upon my legs felt better than I remembered after the long, harsh winter I had just been through. It had been far too long since I had taken to the streets of Baltimore alone, and it almost felt as nice as the sun. The thought of later on in the day, when I would meet up with my high school friends, added to the feeling of happiness that bubbled away in my stomach, almost causing a smile to cross my face.
The plans to shop today had been one of the best I had had in a long while, the fear of rain while I did so, thankfully, no longer hanging over my head. The fact I was alone never bothered me, I had never seen the need to constantly surround myself with people. I was confident enough to make my own decisions and not care if I was to be considered strange for shopping with no group of girls around me telling me what looked ‘cute’ on me. Needless to say, I wasn’t one for girlie girls.
But that's another point for another time.
The smile that had threatened previously broke through as I felt a pair of arms wrap around me and pick me up. I didn’t take much for me to figure out who it was, considering he and his other friends liked to do this to me and I had become accustomed to the sight of his back. Thankfully, I had learned that skirts and dresses were off limits once friendships with these boys had started. I didn’t even care – it certainly gave me less to worry about on windy days.
“Put me down!” I screeched into the t-shirt of my friend, his laughter and the others ringing in the air at my protests. “I mean it, I’m trying to shop!” Again, my screech was met with the boys’ laughter. I growled softly, knowing that there was no way he would put me down, no matter how hard I tried.
“Suck it up, sweet cheeks. We’re cutting your spree short and going to the pool,” I heard from directly above me.
“Oh, come on! I haven’t seen any of you in 2 months and this is how you greet me?! A hug would have sufficed!”
“We’ll leave the pussy shit to Zack and Rian,” a second voice stated. “We’re the hardcore boys and you’re our bitch. We get to abuse you all we like.”
Like I said, I had been looking forward to seeing my high school friends all day, unfortunately I had been looking forward to seeing these two with Zack and Rian to calm them down so I didn’t end up over Jack’s shoulder, as was my current position. He never did this when those two were around to stop him being amazingly immature.
Jack didn’t put me down the entire way to Rian’s house, taking me through the house on his shoulder and out toward the pool. I heard four sets of laughter from all around me, two male and two female. I grinned, knowing exactly who was here. The two girls I had seen various times over the past two months but the two boys formed the band that had taken Jack and Alex away from Baltimore for those months.
“Please don’t drop her in the pool again, Jack,” Zack’s voice called out, though laughter was still apparent in his tone. I knew he would be in fits if I somehow ended up in the pool again today. I couldn’t see any of my friends, besides when Alex walked by me to go see them. Jack had taken a standstill just outside of the doors, leaving me unaware of his next plan.
“Or what? She’ll hit me? You know she couldn’t hurt me, it’s not in her nature.” I could almost see the cocky grin plastered across his face; the look of positivity that he had whenever he was talking about me to anyone – like he knew better than even me what I would do in any situation. It was most likely true that he did, but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of admitting that. I stared at the pale tile on the floor, knowing exactly where Jack was stood from that alone. I knew he and Zack would bicker for a minute or two before Jack finally agreed to put me down. How well he knew me worked both ways; I knew him just as well as he knew me. “Okay, fine! God, Lisa, just take her!” Jack screamed finally, pulling me back over his shoulder and dropping me on my feet next to Alex’s girlfriend. I grinned up at him, knowing I had gotten my way and I was going to pay for it later. Lisa pulled out the chair next to her own, allowing me to fall into it before he boyfriend took it – there was no way in hell I was letting Alex Gaskarth take this seat after what he and Jack had just put me through.
It was difficult to believe my friends had only been gone two months, that it had only been two months since all seven of us had been together like this. The fact that it was April meant we hadn’t been together since the winter and none of us had been able to do anything we truly enjoyed through the snow. But now here we were. Here, sat outside in Rian’s back yard with the sun beating down as though we were seventeen again; as though nothing had changed and we had no responsibilities holding us down anywhere at all besides the school we somehow managed to love and hate at the same time. I watched the small smile tugging on both Lisa and Kara’s mouths, as though they were thinking the exact same as I when they looked at the four boys who kept leaving for weeks at a time. The three of us knew how to appreciate the time we had when they were around and had free time to waste with us. I knew my face mirrored theirs exactly, and I knew the boys had learned that this was just going to be one of the things they would never understand from us, though somewhere along the line all of us knew that the happiness us three girls felt was just the same as what our four boys felt.
“Drunken barbecue!” Jack screeched out suddenly. It only then occurred to me that I had blanked out of the conversation and the other six had been trying to think of things to do that night as a homecoming gift. I caught Jack’s eye and watched the smirk creep onto his face at the same pace as mine. I knew he was thinking of the last drunken barbecue we’d had the previous summer just after he’d finished on Warped Tour and the events that had followed. Alex flicked his eyes between the pair of us as soon as Jack had made the suggestion and I knew that he knew just as well as Jack and I did what had happened that night.
“I agree with Barakat. It’s been months and I feel like a barbecue! Come on, Rian, we’ll even let you cook again,” I told the dark haired boy next to Kara. It was the one way to assure the use of his barbecue. The fact that he would have full control of the cooking whilst the Kara helped and the rest of us got a head start on drinking suited him just fine. He always did catch up on alcohol consumption pretty quickly after the meal of burned burgers and sausages. His pearly whites flashed in my direction and it was clear Jack’s suggestion had taken well to him. The other four nodded one by one and Rian shooed Jack and I into the kitchen to cook the meat a little while he set up the barbecue and the other’s went to retrieve the alcohol for the night ahead.