This Time

I woke up a few hours later to the car door slamming; I figured that Duane must have stopped for some gas or something to eat. A small yawn escaped my lips as I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the truck to stretch. Looking around I noticed that we had stopped for both food and gas because I saw Duane in the convince store paying for gas and Ella was looking around the store for something to eat with bags and bags of food in her arms.

“Where are we?” I asked my brother as he was walking to the truck.

“Somewhere in Indiana” he answered taking out the gas pump.

I nodded knowing that we were making great timing and walked into the convince store to use the bathroom. Gas station bathrooms always gave me the creeps because of their lack of cleanliness in them, but this one was surprisingly clean. I wasn’t in the bathroom for even a minute when there was a loud bang on the door followed by some woman yelling at me to hurry my ass up that she had to piss. She didn’t stop banging on the door until I had opened it after washing my hands. “It’s about fucking time” she scoffed and pushed past me. This woman was lucky that Ella had called me over to her to help me with all of the things that she had bought or I would have told this woman off, thus causing a huge brawl in the gas station convince store.

“You do know that there are other convince stores along the way Ella” I laughed as she handed me three bags and walked out with the other two.

“I know but I wasn’t sure the next time we were going to stop at one so I bought the absolute necessities” she said walking back towards the truck.

“Yea because we absolutely need these lemon heads and sweedish fish” I laughed taking a look into the bag.

“Exactly” she grinned hopping back into the truck.

Shaking my head I walked over to the driver’s side of the truck and got in, my brother had been driving since we left and I wanted to give him a break rather than sleep. Duane Lee closed the gas cap to the truck and placed the pump back once he had finished pumping the gas and walked over to the passenger side. Once he was in and everyone was buckled I turned on the car and pulled out of the station and back onto the highway.

Driving down the highway with my best friend and little brother was fun. Ella and I sang at the top of our lungs to a bunch of different songs while Duane pretended that our singing was causing him to go deaf. We told stories about times when we were piss drunk and something happened to us, or when we were sober and something happened, Duane and I even had a heart to heart as soon as Ella passed out.

“So you know we are moving back to THEIR town, how are you feeling?” Duane asked me.

I didn’t answer him right away because I hadn’t really thought about it. I was so caught up in the excitement of opening up my tattoo shop that I had forgotten all about them for the moment. The heartache and pain that I had felt the last time I was in Huntington had gotten pushed aside. It’s been years since what happened back then and I still feel the pain every time I enter into a new relationship I still have a problem trusting the guy whenever he is around a beautiful girl. When I moved I had cut off all ties with everyone thinking it was all so easier that way; so moving back and possibly seeing those people that I once called my friends is now terrifying.

“Honestly, I’m scared to see everyone again but I know that I’m going to run into one of them sometime so I just have to deal” I told my brother.

“Yea but you know that you don’t have to deal with this alone”

“I know” I said turning to look at him quickly smiling.

When everything happened Duane was there for me helping me pick up the pieces. A few of them came over every once in a while but no one helped me more than my brother did and I am so grateful for that.

“You didn’t have to cut them all off just those two” Duane told me.

“Yea but if I kept in contact with the rest of them then I would have heard about those two and I couldn’t handle that” I shrugged.

“You know very well they wouldn’t have done that to you”

“Yea I know that, I guess I felt like if I talked to them they would have just reminded me of him and I just didn’t want that” I sighed.

“I feel you sis, well I hope if you do get to see everyone again it will be everyone except for him and that other girl,” Duane said with a hint of anger in his voice as he said the last part. He never forgave Matt for what he did to me and I’m not sure if he ever will.

“But you know that seeing everyone else also involves seeing those two too DL” I told my little brother.

“Alright fine then we will find a way to be invisible to them” Duane smiled at me.

“Thanks,” I smiled back at him, “Now get some rest you’ve been up ever since we left you’re like a freaking zombie” I laughed.

“Alright, alright” he laughed shifting in the seat and resting his head against the cool glass. It didn’t take him long to fall into a deep sleep.

I turned down the radio and drove in silence with a bunch of old memories and new thoughts swimming in my head. Matt and I lived next door each other since we were both little kids and we were the best of friends. We did almost everything together and I had developed this huge crush on him because of it, so when we finally got together in my freshman year I was ecstatic to say the least. Once Matt and I became a couple that was like the nail in the coffin because I my feelings for him grew tenfold and when he cheated on me with our friend Val I was devastated. I had no one to turn to because everyone usually came to me with their problems and I didn’t know how to bring mine to them especially because we were all friends. And to top it all off I was moving clear across the country so I thought it was best to just let them all go and start fresh.

Never once did I think about getting the chance to see them all again because they had all made this huge name for themselves and because I was still living in New York. Now that there is the chance I wondered if they would first off remember who the hell I was and then secondly I wondered if they would be pissed that I cut them off. I had to shake them all out of my head because they were all my past and I was looking ahead towards my future. But as Mr. Schwartz always told me the past always had a tendency of repeating itself leaving me to wonder if my past would be repeating itself this time.