Chapter 8: It's Too Late to Apologize, It's Too Late

I arrived at her house. Ready, willing, and able. I hoped. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I had my overnight bag, towel, gift, and CDs. For Rachel, I had burned two very long CDs, with "our" songs on them. I had even bought one of those Make-Your-Own-CD-Cover kits, and made some really cool covers for them. I had also written her a huge letter, reminiscing about some of our greatest memories, and telling her how much she meant to me as a friend, like-a-sister, etc.

As I flip-flopped up her walk, I realized that I had to slap on the happy face asap. This was the defining moment. I had to either prove that I was over him, or live in the misery of it for a long time to come. So I chose the better route. I slapped on the happiest, perkiest face I could, and gave her a huge hug as she opened the door.

"Happy birthday!" I cooed, and handed her the gift bag.

"Aww! Thank you so much Lauren!"

Then I shrugged, giving her the corniest smile I could muster. Then we both burst out laughing. "How are you holding up?" she asked, heading up to her room with me in tow.

"Okay I guess. He showed up at my door today."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It was really weird. He kept saying he wanted to talk, but what do we have to talk about?"

"Good point ... I guess he just feels bad about the whole thing..."

"Well I wish he would stop harassing me about it..."

We half laughed, knowing that our bashing of him was just an attempt to help me get over him. What he had done was stupid and unforgivable, right?

Whatever, more on that later.

She led the way, carrying two bowls filled to the brim with chips. I was stuck carrying the bowl of pretzels and a two liter bottle of diet coke. We went back in to get the rest of the food, and then some of the drinks. Her parents trusted us, and knew that the drinks we were supplying were for someone else, and not for ourselves. Of course, everyone would be bringing even more, so we didn't have to supply that much.

We put out a few towels and bottles of sun block, knowing that it wouldn't matter, everyone would be bringing their own. It was still sunny outside. Her house was exactly like mine. And our pools were literally like the public pools. We had a diving board, tons of lounge chairs and tables with chairs all over the place. We had the huge stereo system with speakers in the columns and randomly placed around. There was a huge open space between the house and the pool to serve as a dance floor.

We set up the balloons, streamers, etc. that were necessary for a party, and then sat down at one of the tables. We split a can of Diet Coke, and went through the CDs, planning the order and how we wanted to lay everything out. At five o'clock, I put on the first CD. The first group of people came (our clique), all excited and shouting happy birthday wishes. Gifts went to the living room. A few more people came, and slowly the party grew bigger.

At five thirty, he came. I was talking to Paul at that point.

He walked through the glass doors, and immediately looked around. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, while trying to pay attention (or at least pretending to pay attention) to what Paul was saying. His eyes finally landed on me, and stayed there for a few minutes. Paul snapped his fingers right in front of my nose, and I realized that I sucked at pretending to pay attention. He glanced in the direction I had been staring.

"Oh..." he said.

"Yeah ... look, I'm sorry. What were you saying?" I immediately felt uncomfortable. But I didn't have to. Why was I going to let problems between Luke and I screw up my friendship with the rest of them? Answer: I wasn't.

"It's nothing important..."

"No really, I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

"Look Lauren, you have to get over him. You deserve better than a guy like him. He treated you like crap, you deserve ten times better."