Keep your friends close and your enemies, closer

James arrived about two hours later. He stood at the porch looking all confident and amazing, as usual. He was wearing a white undershirt with an unbuttoned shirt over it.

“Hey, babe. Looking gorgeous.” He commented as I locked the front door behind me. He leaned down and gently brushed his lips against my cheek.

“You too.” I wrap an arm around his waist and allowed him to lead me to his car.

“So… Did you manage to rest up before I came?” James casually asked as he started to drive.

I shrugged, putting my seat belt on. “Kind of, I guess. I couldn’t really sleep though.”

“Neither could I.” He confessed, looking at me. “I was too excited for our date.”

I could feel myself slowly smiling. “You were?” That was sweet. I mean, I liked James but it wasn’t so much until I couldn’t sleep thinking about him.

“Well, yeah. I really like being around you.” He admitting, steering the wheel with only his right hand as he cocked his head to look at me.

I smiled. “Me too.” I reached for his hand and he grinned as he slipped it in mine.

I switched the radio to my favorite station and leaned my head back as it played Womanizer by Britney. I thought it was a good song. Britney was making good progress.

“Womanizer, woman-womanizer, you're a womanizer,
Oh womanizer, oh you're a womanizer, baby.
You, you, you are, you, you, you are
Womanizer, womanizer, womanizer (womanizer)”

~

We reached the beach in about a half hour later. James parked the car at some random place and jogged over to the passenger side to open the door for me.

“My lady?” He chivalrously gave a small bow as I stepped out. I rolled my eyes and laughed. I grabbed his hand and began to run away from the car. He gave a surprised ‘Whoa’ before locking the car and running behind me.

As soon as we stepped onto the beach, I could see a bonfire going on about less than a hundred feet away from us. There were, understandably, already tons of people dancing and barbequing and mingling.

“Hey, hold on. I want to have some time alone with you before we go over.” James tugged on my hand and walked over to the water.

He plopped down on the sand and tugged me down in front of him. He put his legs on both side of me, so that I was in between them, and wrapped his arms around my torso. I leaned against him and sighed as I closed my eyes.

“Comfortable?” He whispered into my ear.

“Absolutely.” I snuggled closer to him and rested my arms on top of his.

We didn’t do much. We didn’t talk, we didn’t speak, and we hardly even kissed. Well, James did all the kissing. He was kissing my cheek, my face and my neck softly and relaxingly

I was just about to doze off when I was gently shaken awake. “Oh no, no sleeping around here. Come on. We’ve got to get you to the party.” James stood up and slipped an arm under my legs to carry me in a bridal style.

I squealed as he straightened up and walked over to the party. This was going to get embarrassing. “James. James. Put me down. James.”

He pretty much just ignored me. He continued walking, flashing me a grin every ten feet to make sure I was okay.

As soon as we reached the party, a few boys started hollering at the sight of me in James’ arms. I was starting to feel uncomfortable but James was soaking in all the attention. It wasn’t until I saw a familiar face that I forced him to put me down.

“Geez, chillax why don’t you?” James muttered before putting me down to my feet. He walked over to some of the guys and started laughing with them, wrapping his arms around one of them.

I walked over to him because he had already seen me. I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t seen him.

“Hey.” I smiled at him, giving a tiny wave.

“Hi.” Kent showed me a small smile.

“So, what’re you doing here?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I have connections.”

“You do?” I started jokingly.

He grinned. “You making fun of me now?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. What are you going to do about that?” I teased. I felt a sense of deja vu as I said what I said. It was probably because I used the exact same phrase on Caleb.

“You really want to know? You sure?” He grinned, so amused. I walked behind him and jumped on his back.

I wrap my legs around his torso. “Tell me.” I whispered into his ear as he placed his hands on my thighs to keep me balanced.

Oh dang. Stupid butterflies were back.

He gave a low chuckle. “You’re on my back. I can’t do anything even if I tried.” He walked over to the sea and I tightened my grip around his shoulders. If he asked, I would say it was because I was getting cold.

We spotted two pretty big rocks not too deep into the water and Kent walked over to it, setting me down on the higher one while he took the other.

He was sitting right between my legs, and it was all I could do not to start playing with his inviting hair.

“Hey, Ash?”

“Yeah?”

He hesitated. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to blow up at you like that.”

I was touched. I hadn’t expected him to apologize. It should have been me, not him.

Okay, maybe he had to feel sorry a little too.

“Yeah, well me too. It wasn’t my intention to get so angry at you.”

“But you had every right.” He turned his head around so that he was looking at me straight in the eye. “I am really sorry about how I’ve ‘ignored’ you these past few days. I really am. I shouldn’t have, but I did, and that sucked. So I apologize.”

I couldn’t say anything for awhile. But that soon passed and only one question sprang to mine. “Why?”

Although he was facing me, he averted his eyes to the side. “I can’t tell you… At least not yet.”

I frowned at that. I had a million remarks to shoot back at him, but I bit my tongue to keep from doing so. He was apologizing; I didn’t want to screw our relationship up.

What relationship? He’s not your boyfriend.

It was my turn to look away. Lynn was right. He wasn’t. I could feel something in me aching as the information sunk in.

“Hey, Ashlynn.” I turned my head to see who had called me. From the sound of it, the person was angry and not too far away.

“James. Hey.” I smiled, but it quickly faded away. James was behind me with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.

“You’re my date, not his.” He started to walk towards me. He looked really angry and I stood up, ready to go with him. Normally, I wouldn’t have let him intimidated me, but he was right. I came with James, but here I was, spending more time with Kent instead.

“We were just talking.” Kent stood up too, looking defensive.

“Yeah well… Go talk to some other girl who isn’t my date.” James grabbed my hand and started to pull me to back to the party. I hadn’t expected to him pull me away so I stumbled a little. I was looking at Kent the whole time, over my shoulder.

He rolled his eyes at James and mouthed ‘Later’ at me. I gave a sorry expression and waved at him. As soon as we reached the shore, I tore my hand away from James so sharply; he whipped his head around to look at me.

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you so angry?”

He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what I had just said. “Why are you spending more time with him, instead of me?”

“We were just talking.” I repeated the same thing Kent had said to him. “Why are you getting all jealous?”

His face instantly softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get that jealous. It just felt weird to see you being really friendly around Kent. That’s still not a good excuse, though. So I’m sorry.”

I could feel myself melting. Why did James have to be such a sweet-talker? I had planned to stay angry at him but there goes that plan.

“It’s okay. Just… no more, okay?”

James grinned and enveloped me in an embrace. He was pretty much taller than me by a few, so he had to bend down to reach me.

“Come on.” He tugged my hand gently to the party, where it was now in full swing. The music was cranked up even louder and there were even more people.

A new song soon came on, and James used my hand that he was holding on, to start dancing with him. I laughed whilst moving my body along to the beat, enjoying myself.