Memories and Dreams

Casey finally gives in to Trevor's attractive ways and realizes they have more in common than she wants. They are friends, until Trevor stands Casey up, who then decides she's had enough of it all.

*Casey*

It happened again. The vision-dream. Something changed though. This time, it had the same beginning: the mysterious girl with the apple, but now, when she took a step towards me, something new occurred. A shady figure stepped out of the shadows that the buildings surrounded us provided. A sharp, piercing noise filled the air around us for only a second or two; the girl fell. Falling into the moonlight, a blood-red arrow was shot directly into where her heart was, or should have been. I caught my breath and the figure, I noticed, had their mouth and forehead covered with a piece of dark blue cloth, leaving a sliver that revealed his sparkling green eyes. In a flash, I exhaled and awoke.

 

*****

I hopped out of the tub from my shower and wrapped the towel around me. In my room, I had everything I laid out. I chose a blue-grey dress with a black tank top underneath and black leggings.

Slipping them on, I stepped into my charcoal gray converse, no socks. Just the way I liked. It was weird, but it suits me.

Trevor had refused to tell me where we were going or what we were doing. I guessed over and over, but he would not spill. Such a goober . . . The only thing he told me was to meet him in front of Coffee Bean in the mall at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Peddling towards the mall, I hid a secret smile from everyone who doesn’t care. It’s not like I like him, though. He . . . is just my friend, all the way. Trevor isn’t my type; yeah that’s it. Not my type . . . I got there five minutes before our schedule time. Inside the mall at Coffee Bean, I expected Trevor to be standing in front with two drinks and looking around for me. He wasn’t. He wasn’t even there yet. Okay, I started telling myself, he probably just ran into traffic. Trevor wouldn’t stand me up; he isn’t that type . . . right? I kept glancing around, twisting my head for someone who never came. I waited, and waited. It felt like countless hours just at the point of a half-an-hour later. I bought a frozen drink from Coffee Bean while I sat alone, hoping someone would come. Not anyone. Him.

Trevor never came. I sat in front of Coffee Bean until four with an empty carton of what used to be pretzel bites and an empty frozen drink cup.

At school, Trevor joined the football team. He told me about it, making it clear that we’ll still eat together at lunch because we’re still friends . . .for now. It’s always the same. Especially in movies, football players plus cheerleaders equal popular. Everyone wants to be popular at some point in his or her lives. I did, once. I snapped out of it after I discovered the difference between fantasies and reality.

I thought about things on my way home, things like why and when did they tell him to and how I was going to kick his a*s on Monday. Thank the gods that is tomorrow.

At my place, I own a little apartment; I dragged my bike in by the handles into the closet and plunged down onto my giant purple beanbag that totally clashed with my room. I remember it perfectly . . .

It was my friends, Willow, Michelle, and Cheyenne and I. We were painting my apartment over our Spring Break and me being me, I wanted each wall a different color! Stupidly, they didn’t completely understand my directions . . . They poured all the paint out at once, but thankfully not in the same container. Now my house was a maze filled with paint. This was not good.

Better sooner than later, Michelle was the first to know the huge mistake they made. “Holy s**t,” was all she said when she turned around. Her face was priceless, even though this was a bad situation . . .

Willow whipped around and her jaw dropped. Cheyenne was the last to discover how deep we were in this. When she realized no one else was painting. “What the-“ Her eyes got wide and she was the first to speak again, “What are we staring at?” she said with a chuckle.

Cheyenne has ADD and OCD and we’re okay with that. Sometimes, it just kicks her in the a*s and goes all the way up to her brain. I mean, was this mess really that hard to see? I don’t think so!

We just looked at her like she was completely insane, but we normally give her that look anyways. “Really, Chey? Really . . .” Michelle’s voice drowned out as she bent down and stuck her roller in some neon green paint. Chey still didn’t really process what was going on, but Willow and I looked at each other and stuffed our hands in our mouth to stop us from giving it away. Can’t ruin the surprise, now can we?

Michelle smirked as she ran the paint roller, with paint on it, like I mentioned, over Cheyenne’s whole face, getting her fire red bangs, pieces of her hair, and “paint on” mascara. “You said you we’re into make-up now,” Michelle said, trying to hold back any more comments or giggled. Even though Willow and I knew it was coming, we almost fell over laughing and gasping so hard, but we remembered the paint and came back to the real world, laughing as hard as ever.

Her mouth dropped and green paint from her nose dripped onto her tongue, she quickly spit it out and stood there, stunned. In one swift movement, so fast that we barely saw it, she picked up a handful of bright pink of gooey, slippery paint and threw it. Bad choice.

Willow, still laughing, was hit. It missed Michelle by only an inch. And Cheyenne being Cheyenne, Willow thought she did it purposely. So, pretty mad, Willow charged over there. Obviously forgetting all about the maze of paint, she stepped into the midnight blue carton-thing. Awestruck, Willow picked up her foot in astonishment and, well, kind of, uh, lost her balance.

She fell into multiple cans of paint and of course, thinks I nudged her, causing her to fall. Willow was a different color from head to toe. Even her normally, caramel-colored hair was blue and green!

Apparently shorter people can process things faster, so to keep her from falling, she grabbed me. Me being not so sturdy, fell with her. And it was all downhill from there . . .

Everyone threw different paints at each other and we eventually had a very colorful personality. It was around 6:45 when we started and I suggested we all take showers, without our clothes since I also suggested we slip them into the washer and dryer that was around 8. So it was a pretty long paint-war. Lets just say all my co-workers at TJ Max were very interested in why I would dye my hair. I just told them I was ready for a change.

I don’t see them anymore. Big bummer too. Michelle moved to Australia due to her Mom’s job. Willow is traveling the world with her boyfriend, Kyle. Cheyenne is a total different story; which I will tell another time, which is not now. I am stuck in little Thousand Oaks in California with no friends besides a guy who stood me up. I miss them.

Gasping, I decided to do something we all vowed never to do as long as we lived. Like, we actually put our hands on our heart and swore. I headed over to the computer and logged on. Desperately, I registered for eHarmony.com; a . . .a . . . online dating service! After that traumatizing event, I grabbed my bike once more and headed out. I needed some ice cream.

Now I know that sounds cliché, when the girl gets stood up and mascara pours down her cheeks into the big carton of ice cream turning the vanilla into chocolate. That is not I. No way in hell way that me. I went to 31 Flavors around the corner and saw him.

He was, like, my dream guy. It was almost too unbelievable until I did the unbelievable . . . I, well, uh, kind of, ran over his foot. The mystery guy reached down his leg, eyes bugging out. I immediately pulled over and practically threw my bike onto the grass. “Oh my god, I am so sorry!” I said as soon as I got over there. But he wasn’t looking at me. Apparently when that little mishap occurred, his ice cream, strawberry for your information, flew and hit his friend straight in his jawbone. At least it wasn’t another girl, right? I gasped and put my hands over my mouth as I failed at holding back my laughter.

Mystery guy turned to me and a little smile began to form in the sight of me. His eyes were a diamond blue and he was just, well, perfect! His hair was a midnight black with about a tow-inch rim of neon or radioactive green around it. He had a silver nose piercing and an upper lip one, too, on the left side. 

“Hey,” he said to me, sticking out his left hand, “what’s your name? I’m Nyles.” In my head I was freaking out: a sexy dude, my dream guy and the best fricking name ever! Best day ever by far. Sadly, I actually owed that b***h, Trevor. If it wasn’t for him . . . well, I don’t want to even go there.

“Oh, hey.” Stupid start. “I’m Casey. I am really sorry about your foot, it was a complete accident.”

Nyles laughed and then romantically said, “Or maybe it wasn’t.” I didn’t laugh; I didn’t even crack a smile. He pulled me in closer and we gazed into each other’s eyes for what felt like forever. Or I wanted it to be. “Eh-hem,” Nyles’ friend cleared his throat, making it obvious it was time to leave. “Oh,” he chuckled, “right. This is Cole,” he said, motioning to the dude standing next to him.

Cole didn’t say anything but nonetheless, he waved. Cute, silent type. I could go with that . . . “Hey do you wanna go get some coffee with us?” Nyles asked, directing his attention back towards me.

I nodded a little and then he said, “Coming, Cole?”

Cole shook his head no, then spoke, “Nah, I think I’m gonna go clean up. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Not that I need it . . .” His voice drowned out as we watched him go into 31 Flavors, still babbling.

Nyles laughed, shaking his head down. “Sorry, there are a few things you should know about Cole . . . One, he is a bit clingy and two, Cole’s gay.” He waited, most likely for me to freak or something. “Okay . . . “ Nyles began to say.

“Sorry? Do you want a big show?” I hopped up in the air and acted like this was the strangest thing in the world.

Nyles chuckled and I spoke, “Yeah, I’m not that surprised. My sister, Emilie is lesbian. Im used to her and her girlfriend making out all the time. No bigs.” Nyles looked rather impressed. On the outside, I was all “oh yeah, cool,” but deep within my soul I was flipping. This was by far the best day ever.

 

***

 

We walked over to Peet’s Coffee shop a couple blocks down and, well, got coffee. I got my specialty; a chai tea latte frappichino and he got a grenade red-eye with two shots. I grinned, as we talked for hours in that little coffee shop. I wish it lasted for all eternity.

The owners ended up booting us out and we decided to go back, go our separate ways. I pulled the same pen out from Monday that I kept in my boot and took Nyles’ hand. 805-242-5252 I wrote. He grinned even bigger than it was already and I said then, “See you later?” All he did was nod and I had officially classified today as a day worth writing about. My grandma always said to write down important things so you don’t forget them. Today was so one of them.

Author's Note

Chapter 3- Casey's point of view