Time Heals All Wounds

Having lived in Baltimore all my life, and having been in the same school system since I began Kindergarten, I have had the same friends for as long as I can remember, I also know who almost everyone at Dulaney High is. So when a new kid starts at the beginning of freshman year, I can immediately spot him as I go through the halls on my way to lunch.

He has shaggy brown hair hung below his ears and was dressed in blue jeans, a pair of converse and a black t-shirt underneath a plain black jacket. He was, I guess you could say, very bland and ordinary but at the same time there was something about him that intrigued me. So rather than continuing on into the cafeteria to meet my friends, I turned and followed him in the direction back down that hall that I had just come from.

The further we got from the cafeteria, the less people there were. I don't know how he hadn't noticed me yet, I wasn't being exactly discreet about following him. He finally stopped at a locker far down the hall, in the corner. Instead of walking up to him like I had planned, I instead decided to have him approach me.

I was lucky that one of my best friends, Jane, had a locker four down from him and that I knew the combination to it. So, pretending that her locker was actually my own, I went up to it and began to put in the numbers, pretending to be completely oblivious to the fact that he was just about 4 feet away from me and was eyeing me.

I pulled a binder out of my messenger bag and put it in Jane's locker before grabbing a textbook and then the binder once more. He shut his locker right as I shut Jane's the books now in my arms. As I closed the locker, I dropped the books, partly on purpose, and partly because I just happen to be that big of a klutz.

"Oh, are you okay? Let me help you." I looked up at the new kid as he walked towards me and bent down to pick up my fallen books. "Here you are." He said as he straightened up, my books clutched in his hands.

"Thank you." I responded, smiling at him as I took my books back, placing them into my bag. "You must be new here, I don't recall seeing you before today." His smile widened and he nodded, bringing a hand up to push some of his shaggy brown hair from his face, showing me part of his forehead, where he had two huge Caterpillar like eyebrows.They made me smile and think about my cousin Jack's eyebrows.

"Yeah, I am. I'm Alex." He extended his hand out towards me, making me smile a little wider and rest my hand in his.

"Sabrina. It's very nice to meet you, Alex."

After that initial meeting, we were inseparable. I ended up introducing him to my cousin Jack, as well as two of my other guy friends Rian and Zack. By the end of Freshman year, we were one happy group of friends but Alex and I were always the closest.

By the start of Junior year, we began dating. Though we had liked each other for some time before that, neither of us had pursued our feelings because we were content on just being best friends and didn't want to ruin that. Though once Jack found out that I had a crush on Alex, and then later that Alex had a crush on me, it was all about being match maker with Jack.

At our high school graduation party, Alex and I snuck off into this field that we had discovered just weeks into being friends. When one of us was upset, we would go here. If I got pissed off at him and ran out, he knew to go here, same goes when he gets pissed. Or, if we just want to get away from everyone else and be together, we go here. None of our other friends, or our family, knew about this. It was ours, and ours alone.

"What do you think is going to happen now?" He asked me, running his fingers up and down my arm that was laying across his stomach, while my head rested on his chest. We were curled up on the flatbed of my Ford Pickup truck, looking up at the night sky.

"Well... I go to college while you sit on your fat ass and do nothing." I answered, giggling, making him chuckle as well.

"I have a job, you know so I won't be sitting on my ass all the time. Which it should be said that my ass is not fat." He defended, making me giggle again.

"Yeah, sure it isn't, babe." We laughed again before we both fell back into silence.

"I mean it though, Sabrina...." He whispered. "What happens if you meet some hot Marketing major and you two fall in love and then you leave me for him?" I sighed and sat up, staring down at him.

"Alex, we've been through this before." I started. "There is no such thing as a hot marketing major, and plus, no one can make me fall out of love with you. You're all that I want and will ever need." He too sat up and smiled over at me.

"I just worry a lot, you know that." I nodded and leaned over to press my lips to his.

At that moment in time, I hadn't thought about asking what would happen if some hot music chick wandered into the music store he worked at. I thought I didn't have to because it wouldn't happen, but when it did, it was like my world turned upside down.

Not only did some hot music chick catch Alex's attention just two months after I began college at Baltimore University, but he didn't tell me until around January that he was sleeping with her. And the only reason he finally told me was because I found her house key in the pocket of his jeans.

I was willing to work through it if he was. I loved him too much to let this one mistake break us up. He had other ideas. He wanted her more.

So, rather than stay around and mourn the breakup, I got transferred to San Jose State in California and never looked back.

Now, five years after he dumped me for that hot, big busted blonde I work in San Francisco as the Chief of Marketing for The Regency Ballroom. No matter what event is going on here at the Regency, it's up to me to promote it. I love my job, it's what I went to college to do. I'm good at it, and the pay isn't all that bad.

I had moved on from Alex, cut that part out of my life. It was just now a memory. I didn't talk to any of the guys, not even Jack even though he was my cousin. I didn't talk to my own brother, or parents for that matter, so it wasn't anything personal to Jack. I just felt that cutting myself away from the past was the easiest thing for me. And it has been.

Until I decide to throw that Goddamn party....