Prologue

My name is Christina. I live in Bossier City. Bossier is a small city, compared to most others. We don’t have smog, or big time gangs, as a matter of fact, it’s pretty quiet. I think that’s why I always go looking for adventure, but since my city is so small, I have to find my adventures in other people instead of events…and I guess that’s how this whole thing got its start.
It was two years ago when I met him. It seems like so much longer, a lifetime, almost. I couldn’t tell you what I was wearing, or what my friends and I were talking about when I first saw him, but I can tell you that right then and there, my life changed forever.
After that day, I would never look at anything the way I had before. My relationship with my boyfriend would be completely changed, as would relationships with my friends. When I would lose faith in all the people I thought I could trust he would be my comfort. Everything would change, and it was all because of him. His name was Jake.

Chapter 1

Jake was one of those people who could look you in the eyes and tell you that a heap of rusted metal was a brand new car, and that the dog pee in the floor mats gave it a nice vintage feel, and you would believe him. I guess part of that was because of his eyes, they were deep and beautiful. They were blue, but not that normal light blue…his eyes were deep, velvet blue, with a green ring around his outer pupil that just made them stand out more. But part of it might have been the way he talked to you. Any guy could have told me that his lines were bull, but I wouldn’t believe them, because when I was looking into those big, blue eyes of his, I was sold.
But a part of that may have been that his stories were mostly of adventure, and that was just what I wanted. He had stories of rappelling down the sides of cliffs, of running from cops, of everything under the sun that a bored girl stuck in a boring town would want to hear. He was the adventure that I was looking for that weekend, on that church trip. He was the adventure that I had been waiting for.

I remember that it was at the mall in Alexandria when I first laid eyes on him, and it was Andrea who pointed him out. I wasn’t looking for any guys that weekend, not after the stuff I had been through the weekend before: my boyfriend and I had just broken up…and gotten back together…the second time. There had been a lot of drama involved…and something about his ex-girlfriend, and some guy that he thought I cheated on him with. Either way, I didn’t need to be looking at other guys; lest some bored little gossip girl hungry for drama should decide to start some with me.
No, it was Andrea who was interested. She had seen him first. She had been the one to lean over to me and tell me that there was an “Uber-sexy guy” right behind me. I turned to look, who wouldn’t? Well, short of a straight guy or a lesbian, and I’m neither of those. I could only see the back of his head, but it was pretty attractive that he had a full head of hair because those bald guys just don’t do a thing for me.
But seriously, when she asked me if I was attracted to him, what was I going to say? Of course I said no. Had I seen his face I might have chosen to confide in Andrea that I did, secretly, think that he was a little cute. But, I didn’t see his face until I was involved.
He had seen us. He had seen us, and he had come over to say hi. He had seen us, come over to say hi, and somewhere between the hellos and the goodbyes I found myself wishing that I didn’t have a boyfriend.
In my defense, I tried my hardest to stay away from any cute guys that weekend…but he approached me. What could I do? I didn’t want to like him…I didn’t want anyone to think that I would ever cheat on my boyfriend…but he was there, and he was so in my face, and…I just couldn’t resist those eyes.
In the time I spent talking to him in the mall, I learned that his favorite movie was The Nightmare before Christmas, that he loved Invader Zim, that Blink-182 was his favorite band, and that “I miss you” was his favorite song. Oh, and he was on the same trip as I was, but with his church. It wasn’t my fault that he was perfect. Really, could I help that he just happened to sound like he was describing me to myself? I mean, he was absolutely the only person I had ever met that I had that much in common with. I was crushing, majorly, and I knew it. I didn’t want to be, but I was, and it would only get worse once he got my phone number.
That’s all I really remember of that weekend. The rest is a bit hazy. I do remember little bits and pieces. He called me that night, but I didn’t know it because I had to turn my phone off at night. The other girl in my hotel room would have flipped if my phone had rung and woke her up. The voicemail he left me was hilarious though, something about a pharmacy that sold porn…and looking for another girl to be in his next video. It made me smile, because he had such a priceless sense of humor.
I remember writing a poem about how unexpected the whole thing was. I remember telling my best friend that Jake was someone I could see myself falling in love with…but I didn’t think that he would be the guy to ruin the relationship between my boyfriend and me.

Chapter 2

The ride home from Alexandria the next day seemed ten times longer than any of the previous years. I was hoping that he would call, but honestly, I don’t remember if he did or not. I remember that Andrea was sitting next to me on the van, and she was asleep on my shoulder. I think that if my phone had rung, and it had been him, Andie would have killed me. By the end of the night that we met, she hated Jake. Granted, he didn’t like her either. He loathed boring people, and Andie did fit that description. But either way, I found myself praying for my phone to ring on the way home. I wanted to hear his voice again.
I don’t understand how I got so wrapped up in him after the first day, but I did. I’m not normally like that; most of the time it takes me months to fall for a guy, no matter how attractive or how fun they are. But with Jake, things were different. Everything would be different, and I could feel it. He wasn’t going to be like the rest of the boys that I knew, even my boyfriend. He was going to be the one. He was going to be my first true love. I think I knew that the night that my best friend, Anna stayed over at my house.
I remember that we made a video that night. If my boyfriend had seen that video he would have broken up with me, then and there. Actually, that probably would have been better than what happened in the end, but oh well. When Anna pulled out that camera phone and decided that we should make our random video, I was in the middle of telling her all about Jake. She pulled out the phone and started recording and all I could say was “…and he’s so hot!”
That, of course, spurned a whole conversation about the weekend that I had just come home from, and the fact that I had a boyfriend, and how I should be ashamed of myself, all in humor, of course, because no one, not even Anna, really like my boyfriend and I together at that point. The video went on to be all about Jake and how I thought I might be falling for someone I had only talked to once since I met him, and how Anna thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care much. I thought she was pretty crazy herself, but for many reasons that I won’t discuss here, because this is not the time, or the place.
After that video, the only real memories that I have of myself and Jake from those first few months, are the night I asked him about his feelings for me. It had been a particularly long and boring day. My friend, John, had come over, and we were trying to get our friend Allie to come over too. It was while I was in the bathroom and John was on my computer that Jake sent the IM.
Basically, the conversation started out about a girl from Church Camp, and how her mom thought that she and Jake would be cute together, and how the girl joked that Jake would be better for her mother. The whole story bothered me a bit, because he was talking to me about another girl, and I hadn’t yet told him that I had feelings for him. Nor had I told much of anyone else. Finally, being that we were just friends, and I wanted to see if there was any hope of us being more, I said “I bet you really did like that girl, and you just don’t want to admit it.” That one little sentence ended up starting the following conversation:

Jake: “No, I really didn’t.”
Me: “Oh, so you liked the mom then?”
Jake: “lol no.”
Me: “So you didn’t like either of them?”
Jake: “No. I didn’t like either of them.”
Me: “well…do you like me?”

I thought it was a rather cunning way to get around to that question, myself. I know that it caught him off guard. He hesitated before typing anything, and when he finally started typing, he would type some, then stop, then type again, then stop. Finally I got tired of reading “lilshiza318 has entered text” and “lilshiza318 is typing” that I told him that he didn’t have to answer. Once I got that entered, he finally said “Can I call you?”
I was afraid. I thought he was going to tell me the same thing that I had heard a million and one times: I think of you as a sister. I hated hearing that. I never wanted to hear those words again, and especially not from him. But I told him that he could call me, because if I was going to hear it from him, I’d rather have heard it by phone, than IM.
I waited, nervously for about fifteen minuets, and by then I had started to think that he wasn’t going to call. But finally, my phone rang. The sound of “American Idiot” in polyphonic, was almost sickening every other time that I heard it, but this time…I actually thought I was going to vomit. Possibly because the polyphonic did no justice to the actual song, but I think it was the nerves, really, that were doing it to me. My hands were shaky as I tried to answer, and once I heard his voice it got even harder to stay still. I had to move, so I got up and paced.
The conversation that took place was too long, and had too many details to repeat to you verbatim, but what went down was, basically, this:

I answered, and he got straight into the topic at hand. I think his first words to me were “I was really hoping that this wouldn’t come up”, which didn’t help my shakiness and the vomit that was, somehow, being held in my throat for the moment, but threatening to project itself at the first sound of “I think…” Fortunately, though, for me, he didn’t even start to say that. He told me that, yes, he did in fact have feelings for me.
It was complicated. Because I had a boyfriend he felt an obligation to back off, and not try to make me like him. He also, had refused to tell me that he liked me, no matter how badly he wanted to. He said that it was wrong, what I was doing, that I shouldn’t have asked, and that if I cared so much whether or not he liked me, I should have broken up with my boyfriend. There was an entire lecture about it, I believe, but what it all boiled down to was that he liked me. My heart kind of jumped, and the vomit feeling subsided. I felt more like dancing than pacing, and something in the back of my head told me that he was the one, for sure, that he was going to be the one that I didn’t end up wishing I had never met, or the one that would leave me high and dry when I needed him the most. He was going to be the best friend I could have ever asked for, and all because we shared this bond of liking each other.
After that point, the rest of the night is a little fuzzy. I remember us joking about sex, and the fact that my boyfriend was pressuring me. I remember him saying that my friend, Allie, had no morals. I remember a few things but not enough details to explain with any kind of clarity, how amazing the rest of the night was, or how easy it was for him to make me fall in love. More than anything, I remember being happier than I ever had been before, in my entire life. My heart was dancing and my head was swimming, and my soul was singing and all because he actually liked me!