Mile Marks

“Thanks,” I said to Lucy before pulling Alex out of the diner. She’d been bugging me throughout the hour and a half that we’d spent there.

“Sorry, but sometimes the ladies can’t stay away from me. I mean seriously, look at me.” He spun around like he was modeling. I couldn’t help but laugh and start acting like a photographer, holding my hands like I was holding a camera.

Through all of this, I couldn’t help but look at him. He’d been my best friend for so long, and I never actually realized how cute he was. His brown hair hung across his face, and he had soft brown eyes. The thing I liked most was his smile. It lit up his face, and I couldn’t help but smile when he did.

I paused for a moment to check my phone. It had beeped in my pocket, and I expected it was my mom texting to tell me that she wanted me back home by dinner tonight. I looked at the screen and saw that Rian had texted me.

Dawsome: Hey, are you with Alex? We haven’t heard from you guys, and we planned to have practice?

I realized that Rian didn’t know that we’d left. “Lex, are you sure you told Jack that we were leaving?”

He looked confused, but answered, “Yeah. I told him I was going away for a while and wouldn’t be there for the first month of senior year. Why?”

I didn’t answer, but instead texted back.

Roman: Jack didn’t tell you? Alex and I are taking a road trip. We won’t be back for a while.

“Why, Rome?”

“Rian didn’t know we left, but it’s okay. I told him,” I explained quickly, opening the car door.

My phone vibrated again, but it wasn’t a text. Rian was calling me.

“Hello?” I answered.

Without greeting me, he instructed me to put the phone on speaker. “You left?”

Alex exhaled loudly, “Jack didn’t tell you?”

“Jack didn’t know.” I made a glance at the boy sitting in the passenger seat. He raised his eyebrows and mouthed that he knows he told Jack about it.

“Alex said he told Jack.”

“Okay, whatever. It doesn’t matter that Jack forgot to tell us, but Alex, come on, man. Did you even think to drop me or Zack a line? Say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be gone for a month with our friend Roman.’”

“Sorry, Rian. I honestly thought that Jack would remember to tell you guys.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” I could tell Rian was getting tired of this, and he said he’d talk to us later.

After the conversation with Rian, we started to drive, and Alex put in his headphones, tuning me out. For about an hour, we drove in silence, until he decided that it was time to talk.

“So, Los Angeles, huh?”

I was taken by surprise since the car was quiet not a minute before. “Yep, Los Angeles, the city of angels.”

“Why L.A?”

“Why not?” Despite him being my best friend, I had never told him about all of my family issues, and I don’t think he had either. It was just one of those things. Although he was a very open person, he could close himself off to everyone around him in a second because someone said something that triggered a bad memory.

He could tell that I didn’t want to talk any more about why I said Los Angeles instead of something else like west. That was another thing I liked about Alex. He was always able to sense when I didn’t want to talk about things, he knew when I was sad and would magically show up with a Disney movie and a bag of Sour Patch Kids. He just knew things.