Aunt Sofie was quite literally the sweetest person I have ever met. I had a lot fun at Tristan's and all the baking we did.

Well I did, Tristan was sitting there watching us from stool chair. He would pitch in our conversation here and there and come to flick flour in my face.

Monday came and rolled by pretty fast. I asked Tristan to come over after school, mainly so we could do our homework together. I can't believe we basically took the same classes but our schedules didn't match up.

When he came in the first thing dad said was, "Wow! Tristan Presley? Last time I saw you, you were shorter than me kid."

Tristan chuckled politely at this and stuck his hand out for dad to take, "it's nice to see you again Mr. Beck."

"It's good to see you too son." He shook his hand In a firm grip.

"We have homework to do so, we'll be upstairs if you need us." And then I dragged Tristan after me.

As we made it to the top of the stairs, I heard dad shout, "and Tristan, if you ever need a place to stay for the night again, Carson's floor is just as comfortable as Adelaide's."

I slapped my hand on my mouth and turned around to face Tristan. His face was cringed as he said, "yes sir," back to dad.

We shut the door to my room and busted out laughing at what just happened.

"I'm so sorry for that." And I think my face was pink from embarrassment.

"That was my bad actually." And then we laughed again.

We had our textbooks and papers spread out all over my floor as we helped each other with questions.

We were almost done with our homework when my door flew open and Carson walked in.

"You see the polite thing to do when you enter a room with a closed door is to KNOCK." I said to Carson then threw a pillow at his face.

"Just seeing what y'all are up to, sup Tristan?"

"Hey man." He replied as Carson threw himself on my bed.

"Are y'all done here? Let's go shoot each other."

"What does that even mean?" I asked.

"with controllers, through my tv screen."

"I've been out of practice since like... the seventh grade." Tristan said.

"Well then you're long overdue, let's go."

Except I got up before either of them, ran out the door, and yelled, "race ya!"

I heard them running after me, but I managed to make it into Carson's room before them.

I plopped myself on one of the gamer chairs in front of the screen and grabbed a controller for myself.

I was actually beating Carson in this game of his and he was screaming at Tristan to do something.

He clearly couldn't handle getting beat by a girl.

I handed my controller to Tristan as Carson was muttering about how much he regrets teaching me how to play.

Tristan and I just laughed at him.

When he and Tristan were playing against each other, Carson was actually doing pretty well for himself. He would get caught up in his own hype and at one point, dad came in to tell him to quiet down.

He was on a winning streak against Tristan, which wasn't really fair since Tristan wasn't that experienced these days.

I walked behind Carson and covered his eyes from the screen.

Tristan shot him dead and Carson gasped when he heard.

"BETRAITOR!!!!" he yelled at me and I laughed out loud.

"Don't you mean betrayer dumbass?"

"I thought he meant traitor," Tristan said.

"I said what I said. Whatever I'm done with this game. How about you teach me some fighting moves?" he asked Tristan who in turn shot me an accusatory glare.

"Wasn't me." I shot my hands up in defense.

"Come on, I'm ready." He got up from his chair and put his hands up in what was supposed to be a defensive move.

Even I knew it looked wrong.

Tristan huffed and got out of his chair to fix his stance. Carson in turn responded with, "Hell yeah, now we're talking. Let's go big boy."

"Alright then, let's test your strength." He put his palms in front of Carson. "Left." He said.

Carson shot his fist out and I heard the pop of skin on skin.

"Left." Another pop.

"Right." Pop.

"Left, right." Pop, pop.

Tristan rubbed his hands together and nodded his head with an impressed expression on his face, "not bad Beck."

He popped his triceps at him, "I know, look at these guns. I keep in shape playing basketball with the boys on the weekends." Then gave his muscles a hard smack.

"Your turn." Tristan said to me.

"Mine?"

"Yeah, why not?"

I shrugged my shoulders before I got up myself and mimicked Carson's stance.

The second one that Tristan helped him with, not the first.

"Right" he said and I threw my fist into his palm. Carson was in the background throwing his own fists into the air.

"Here put this foot forward," Tristan told me as he tapped the side of my knee. "Use all of your strength, from your body, not just your arms."

He put his open palms back up and gave me a single nod of encouragement. "Try again."

I took a deep breath and concentrated to do what he said.

"Right." he said and I threw my fist out again. The pop was louder this time and Tristan smirked before he said, "left."

I threw my fist out again except this time he caught it in his hand. He reached to grab my arm with his other hand and flung me around so that my back was now against his chest.

I lifted my foot to slam it into his and then he immediately let go with a curse.

"What the hell was that for?" he asked but there was a hint of amusement in his face as I laughed.

"Pay back for the second grade." I said and winked at him.

We all sat down on the floor then and Tristan was laying there staring at the ceiling.

"What happened in the second grade?" Carson asked.

"He used to kick me in the shins."

"To be fair, I was borderline abused."

"That's not funny Tristan." I said seriously.

"My self therapy disagrees with you."

"My self therapy includes excessive sleeping." Carson added.

and then they fist bumped.

"I'm going to get our stuff so we can finish our work." I said and left the boys alone to talk about whatever it is boys talk about.

When I went to my room I gathered all our notebooks and stuffed them into the backpack they belonged to. I accidentally knocked my journal off my desk when I was doing this and the pages flipped open.

It was open to a doodle I made for Tristan when he had me all upset and in my feelings. I had almost forgotten about it. I ripped it out of its binding and looked at it.

It was us at the gas station that rainy day after detention. I drew his car in between us and in my hands was a giant glowing bag of our favorite gummies.  We both a smile on our face but I still labelled his stick figure as, Grumpy.

I folded it up and stuck it in his outside pocket for him to find later.