Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,36
your voice,” Cat continues. “So I called you.”
Now my body really tightens. “You were thinking about me in bed?” I say, feeling a smile slip across my lips as I press the phone closer to my ear, wishing I could be sitting next to Cat right about now.
“Not in that way, perv,” she says and laughs.
“Oh, shut up. It was totally meant that way.”
“You flatter yourself. Unfortunately, you have no reason to.” Then she adds, “I can feel you smirking through the phone.”
“Dude, I so am not.”
“You always were a terrible liar.”
“Am not.”
“Am too.”
I grin. “Idiot.”
“Loser.”
“Freak.”
“Creepo.”
“Did you really just call me a ‘creepo?’”
“Oh, West Ryder, I totally did.”
I sit up a little straighter. “I have just lost all respect for you.”
She laughs, and I swear I can feel her smiling through the phone, too. “Lies. LIES. All of them!”
“Sure,” I mumble. A sliver of light peeping in from under the doorway illuminates some of my room, showing the outline of my small desk in the corner and my backpack sitting with my camera atop it. My dad snores in the other room, deep and gruff noises that bring a shiver down my spine. I sigh.
“But yeah,” I say, nodding to myself. “I… I guess I miss your voice too. As a friend, that is.”
“I think we’ve established that we’re both friends here.”
“I don’t think we have,” I say.
“Oh really? Still afraid I’m going to pull something, are we?”
“More like straight-up afraid of you.”
“Oh yeah, at six inches shorter than you I’m utterly terrifying.”
“You are! You know where I sleep. You could murder me. I wouldn’t be surprised, either. Serial killers are always red-heads.”
“And rapists are always blond.”
I scoff, feigning hurt. “That’s entirely inaccurate. Blonds are the gorgeous swimsuit models who all the girls drool over.”
“Really? All the girls? Yeah, because I’m sure you get a ton of them.”
“Yes I do. In fact, one is sleeping beside me right now. Isn’t that right, Kayla?” I say to the empty space beside me, grinning like an idiot.
Cat cracks up. “Kayla? Kayla?! Oh my god what even goes on in your head?”
“An unending party.”
“Of suck.”
“I believe it is pronounced ‘awesome.’”
“I believe you are mistaken.”
“Oh, yeah, well… YOUR FACE.”
“IS GORGEOUS.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Idiot.”
“Loser.”
“Freak.”
“Bully.”
Cat sighs at that, and I can almost detect the happy smile behind it, which makes a smile ebb at the corners of my own lips. I realize then how good it feels to talk to her again—like normal friends. To smile and not worry about loving each other, about drifting apart, about our friendship falling to pieces. Somehow, talking to Cat always seems to boost my mood, even at freaking three-thirty in the morning.
My eyelids start to feel heavy again, and I realize once again that I need to sleep. But a much larger part of me wants to keep talking to Cat, because sitting here, alone in the darkness and hearing her voice, I feel like I’m walking on air. I need Cat like I need to breathe, and that is that.
After a while, I glance around. My room is a mess of computer and camera supplies for my vlog, unfolded laundry, and some hardcore food-related posters hanging on my fading, blue-painted wall. My desk and bedside table sit on either side of my bed, shoved into the corner of the room, and aside from the closet in front of me and the window to my left, there is nothing else to it.
“So,” Cat says after a long pause. I keep the phone pressed to my chest like it’s some kind of sacred object I can’t possibly lose. In a way, maybe it is a sacred object—after all, it’s Cat on the other end and she is more sacred to me than anything else in the world. “I was thinking about going to the lake this weekend. You want to come, friend?”
“The lake?” I say skeptically.
“Yep. The one on the edge of town. It’s only a few minutes away. You know it.”
“I do,” I say quietly. “We used to go there all the time.” And we did—in addition to my mom and dad’s kayaking wars, Cat and I used to go there too. We would sprint down the boardwalk and play in the water, running and jumping and having some seriously epic noodle wars, not even caring about the amused and slightly creepy adults watching us from the neighboring areas, and not even caring how utterly stupid we looked. Mom used to join Cat and I, to watch the sunset from the lake