It had taken much longer for us to pack than we had expected. This was probably because we constantly stopped in the middle of everything for Richie to tell me stories of his various souvenirs and shirts he obtained on tours throughout the years. I was exhausted when he took me home, but was a bit sad that the day was over.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
I walked toward my house, noticing that my dad’s car was gone, but that didn’t surprise me. He was basically nocturnal now that he worked nights. It had been hard for him to keep a steady job ever since he divorced my mom, but he tried hard and finally managed stick with a job, even though it meant that he was never awake or at home when I was. It didn’t make too much of a difference to me, though, because I wasn’t at home too often, either.
It was rather dark out, so I didn’t notice Nat sitting at the bottom of the stairs to my front door.
“Who was that?” he said, making me jump.
“Oh, Nat. It’s just you.”
“Sorry. Did I scare you?”
I smiled, something I seemed to be doing a lot today. “Just a little bit.”
“So who was the guy who dropped you off?”
Unsure of what to say, I froze. This was not how I wanted Nat to find out about Richie, but it looks like I had no other choice. “Oh, him? He’s just a friend of mine from school.”
“He? As in, a guy?”
It was too dark for me to see Nat’s expression. I didn’t know if I wanted to or not. “Well, yeah. But it’s nothing. We’re just friends,” I said almost frantically.
To my surprise, he laughed and stood up, allowing me to see him smiling. “Don’t worry about it, Rosalina. I mean, it’s great that you have some friends at school now. It just happens to be a guy, and I’m okay with that. You don’t have to hide these things from me, you know.”
“I know. I was just worried about what you guys might think. You know how the guys are.”
“Look,” Nat said, running his hand through his hair shaggy hair, “I know that Thomas and the guys can be really annoying sometimes, but you just have to sort of expect that from them. You’re still our friend and we just want you to be happy. They had felt really bad about what they said at rehearsals that one day. They just didn’t think you’d get so mad about it.”
“I was being a bit sensitive about it, too. You’re right; I should have expected it.”
“They’re just a little upset about you being in high school. You seem so far away sometimes, and they don’t feel like they can talk to you because of that.”
That actually surprised me a bit. I never imagined that any of the band members cared that much about me.
When Nat realized that I wasn’t going to respond, he changed the subject. “So when are we going to get to meet this new friend of yours?”
“He’s going out of town for a week, so maybe I can introduce him to you guys when he gets back.”
“Cool,” he smiled, trailing off.
“Cool,” I repeated, also trailing off.
“So, um, goodnight then.”
“Yeah, goodnight,” I waved as I walked into my house.
It was strange; I almost never had those awkward silences with Richie. It only showed how different the two truly were. Nat was shy, modest, and never sure of himself. He was never able to see in himself what everyone saw. On the other hand, Richie was just as, if not more, shy as Nat. However, he was much more steadfast, immediately charming, and well spoken than Nat was. Both of them were sweet and fun to spend time with.
There was Nat Wolff, a brilliant musician and my long-time best friend, and Richie Sheffield, the boy with soft, hopeful eyes and an undeniable spirit. As I laid in my bed and closed my eyes to sleep, I saw in my mind a boy with unruly brown hair and sweet brown eyes staring back at me.
But this time, I wasn’t sure which one I wanted it to be.
