A/N--I know this ends in kind of a weird spot, but if let the chapter go on it would've been WAYYYY too long.  So the next half of this chapter will be out next week :) 

Thanksgiving comes and goes, and it’s one of those days I think will forever be etched into my mind.  Not because of it being so wonderful or anything, but just because it felt right.  My mom and grandma argued over how much cornbread to put into the stuffing while the guys all shouted at the football game on the TV.  I chased Charlie and Maddie around the house, grabbing and tickling them and laughing wildly.

It wasn’t anything I imagined it to be, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolls around and it’s time for me to head back to the dorms, I can tell that no one really wants to say bye.  Sean and Maria already left yesterday morning, as it was the one flight heading to Boston that wouldn’t put them rushing around for the Monday bustle of work and school, and saying bye to them was definitely harder than I imagined it to be.

And now I’m looking at my parents as they stand in front of me in the driveway, and my mom has tears in her eyes and my dad is hitching an arm over her shoulder in comfort.  Never in a million years did I think they’d be sad to see their notoriously shameful child leave, and noticing that they are makes me feel quite good.

My mom pulls me into her arms and says, “Be good.  I’ll call you soon.”

I wrap my arms around her dainty shoulders and take a whiff of her expensive perfume, telling her, “I will.  Promise.”

I move over to my dad and then bury my face into his warm chest, loving how safe and sound I feel in his embrace.  He wraps his arms around my waist and tells me loud enough for my mom to hear that he loves me, and then he whispers just to me, “If any of those boys show up again, call me.  That second.  Okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper back, leaning away from his embrace and then planting a kiss on his cheek.

Five minutes later I’m snug into the front seat of my car, backing out of the driveway and waving my goodbyes to them and feeling extremely surprised at the emotion building in my chest that’s sad to see them go.  Sure they’ve never been the greatest parents, but I’ve never had to question whether or not they love me.  And seeing that love so easily expressed is such a nice change.

The drive back to campus is a long one, and it’s spent thinking over the past week and how much closer I feel to my family now.  I’m sure that we won’t automatically become the best family in the world or anything, but for the first time since high school I feel like I haven’t been tossed out into the wind.

I’m about ten minutes from campus when my phone starts to blare beside me, and if it’d been ten minutes ago when I was jamming out to the newest Disney movie soundtrack, I wouldn’t have heard it.  But luckily I do hear it, and when I answer it I hear my best friend scream into the phone, “Where are you?!  I have so much to tell you!”

I laugh at her and say, “Ten minutes, I’ll be there in ten minutes!”

She hangs up after a shout of “You better be!”

The minute I step foot into the dorm room, my bags tossed over my shoulder and digging deeper and deeper into the flesh with every passing second, my best friend leaps from where she’d been sitting on her dresser and doing her makeup and bounds over to me.  I get a quick flash of an excited grin before she pulls me into her arms, playfully reprimanding me by saying, “You can never stay away from me for that long again!”

I laugh, having missed her being so over-the-top and energetic.  Sure we constantly texted over the break, and even once she got so enthused by something she had to call, but still…once you’ve gotten so used to living with someone and seeing them all of the time, you can’t just drop them for an entire week.

“Okay okay!” I giggle, getting out of her embrace and then tossing my things onto the floor so that they’re no longer putting indentations into my shoulders.  I then turn and lean against the edge of my bed, before asking her, “What’s got you so hyper?  Did something happen you haven’t told me?”

She nods so quickly it’s like she can’t contain herself, and then makes sure the door behind her is completely shut and locked.  I am practically dying from curiosity when I urge her loudly, “Come on! What’s going on?”

A huge grin lights up her lips as she squeals, “We had sex!  Me and Eli….we did it and it was so so good, Mackie!  I’ve been dying to tell you!”

For some reason, I’m not excited as I know I should be for her.  I know that she’s practically head over heels for the guy, as she texted me about him literally every couple of hours, and I should’ve known that she’d jump into going that final mile with him.  She’s always done that, thrown herself into relationships.  She’s able to do that, to love someone with no inhibition.  She’s not…she’s not like me.

And I don’t think that has ever bothered me as much as it does now.

I have someone in my life, for the first time in forever I have someone, but I still can’t be normal.  I still can’t be like Carly and be hormonal and crazy and so head over heels for someone that solid thought is thrown to the wind.  She can have sex with no regrets, and she can be that normal college girl that I can’t.

I’ve never felt this way about her before.  She’s slept with guys before, had boyfriends before, and yet I’ve never been so unsettled by the news.  It’s like it’s put this stone cold feeling in my chest, made me annoyed with her.  I’ve always been able to be happy for her, able to smile and beg her for details and all of that.  It’s never been this way.

As perceptive as she is, Carly immediately knows that something is wrong as the light in her expression quickly dims.  She takes a step towards me and asks, “Mack?  Aren’t you happy for me?”

I try my hardest to nod and convey all of the excitement that I’m obviously not feeling, but it doesn’t get passed her.  I don’t want to be like this right now, I want to be happy and be a best friend.  But something is stopping me from doing that.

“What’s wrong?  You look like you’re about to cry or something…”

And just like that, suddenly I am crying.

With no idea what’s come over me, I feel liquid betrayal slipping down my cheeks in the most pathetic form of confusion.  My mind is swirling and my stomach churning, and I feel so utterly horrible for turning what should have been a happy moment into yet another episode of self-loathing.

I absolutely hate this.

I just want to be normal.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” she asks, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me into her chest.  I can tell that this is upsetting her and I’m praying that she won’t be angry with me for ruining her happy news.  I can’t have her upset with me.

I’m trying my absolute hardest to quell the crying, to pull away and smile at her like nothing’s happened and to be that friend she’s always been to me, but it’s like someone’s flipped this switch that won’t let me stop.  She hugs me tighter, and I can hear her quiet shushes and coos to stop crying, and after a few moments, I feel the dark cloud start to whither away.

When I pull away, tears having stopped their falling and are now just drying onto my skin, I can’t meet her eyes.  I’m mortified and ashamed and feeling so guilty and ridiculous that I don’t know how to be with her.

She asks me for the millionth time, “Mackie, what’s wrong with you?  Did something happen with your parents?”

I shake my head in earnest, for once in my life knowing that my parents aren’t what’s wrong with me.  I tell her, “No, no they’re fine.  They were really nice over the break.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” I croak, taking my hand and wiping away the liquid underneath my eyes.  I see faint black specks come away as well, and I know that I’m going to have to repaint my face once this all over.  “I just…you told me that you’d slept with him and I just…I don’t know, it didn’t sit well with me and I don’t know why.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, almost a beat too long because it starts to make me nervous, but then she asks, “Is it because you still haven’t slept with Jesse?”

“Maybe?” I say, looking up at her and seeing that concern glistening in her pretty blue eyes.  “I just…it infuriates me because I really like him and we’ve been hanging out for, like, two months now and I still can’t, I just can’t do that with him.  And we’ve already done it!  But you’re so able to sleep with someone after just a couple of weeks and it just makes me think for the millionth time that I’m fucked up.  I’m so fucked up and it’s just not even fair.”

She shakes her head, looking at me like I’m absolutely crazy.  In her best maternal voice she says, “Sweetie, you can’t go on comparing yourself to everyone else.  You’ll drive yourself absolutely bonkers.  So what if I’ve had sex and you haven’t?  If you ask certain people, they’ll think you’re normal and I’m a total slut.  But what does it matter?  We’re different people.”

“I know,” I muse pathetically, as she lays it out in a way that makes it seem so easy.  But it’s just not that simple.  “It’s just…I don’t know, I’m not normal.”

“So?” she scoffs, almost laughing, “Who wants to be normal?  That’s so boring.”

I narrow my eyes at her, saying, “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I know,” she says a bit dejectedly, “But come on Macks, you have a pretty awesome life.  Sure you had this totally awful thing happen to you a few years ago, but you should be proud of yourself for coming this far!  I mean, sweetie, you’re this super famous blogger person and have millions of girls looking up to you.  And you’re getting paid to go to a really good school, and you’re gorgeous, and you have awesome friends.  And you have this really really attractive guy following you around like a lost puppy.”

I go to interject, but like the motivational speaker she is, she keeps going, “And you haven’t even slept with him!  That’s pretty fucking spectacular sweetheart--that you can keep a raging hormonal college guy at your beck and call and you’re not even putting out.  I can’t say that.  I have to sleep with a guy for him to be fully interested in me.”

I quickly go to tell her, “That’s not true, Carls…you’re not able to know that because you sleep with them so quickly.  They’d still be around even if you didn’t.”

She shrugs her shoulders, “Maybe, maybe not.  But this isn’t about me. You’re not as messed up as you think you are, and it makes me so mad that you’re still so focused on what happened to you.  You have so much going for you, concentrate on that.”

I know deep down that she’s right, that I’m just worsening what should be the best years of my life by not letting go of that past.   I wish with all of my heart that I could just drop it, just like that, but it’s something that’s not so easy to rid of.  But I need to stop thinking like that.  Maybe if I did, I’d be happier.

I’d be able to concentrate on the good side of things, and not be so damn hard on myself.

Is it that easy?  To just focus on the good?

She gives me a small smile, and says gently, “Now I promised Fred that I’d tell him the minute we were both back ‘cause they want to hang out.  So why don’t you stop crying and make yourself all pretty so that you can see your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I murmur, but by the end of the statement I can feel myself starting to smile again.

“Not yet,” she muses, before pushing my shoulder in the direction of my dresser and then saying, “Now get ready.  I’m sick of the crying.”

I giggle.

“Yes ma’am.”

---------

“So what are we here for again?” I ask, casting a look over at the tall, tattooed boy walking next to me.

It’s Tuesday, the one day this week I’m not scheduled for work, and when Jesse texted me wanting to hang out, I had no idea that it’d consist of running errands with him.  We've already gone to the restaurant he works at to pick up his check, the bank to deposit said check, and now we’re at Target.  It’s strangely domestic, to be doing this kind of stuff with him, but oddly enough I’m finding myself really enjoying it.

And besides, the enthralled glances he’s drawing from pretty girls around the store and completely ignoring is doing loads for my self-esteem.

“Umm…food and soap.  And a new trash can, because my jerk roommate broke mine.”

I can’t help but let out a quick laugh, “How did he break your trashcan?”

“Hell if I know,” he says dryly, turning the corner and heading down the shampoo and conditioner aisle.  I follow him, chancing a quick glance at his cute butt, before watching as he stops in front of the boy’s stuff.  I decide to take it upon myself to pick one out that smells delicious, and as I pick up the first one that looks like it can, Jesse explains, “He had some guys from the team come over, so I left, and when I came back my trash can was broken.”

After wrinkling my nose in disgust at the first one and shoving it back onto the shelf, I say, “I didn’t know trashcans could actually break.”  I then pick a new one and give it a whiff, loving it immediately and wanting him to pick this one.  He goes to grab a different one off the shelf, but before he can I shove the one I picked out at him and say, “This one.  It smells good.”

He gives me a strange look before extracting it from my hand, flicking the top open and then smelling it.  He looks pretty content with it, and then he tosses it into the red basket he picked up by the front door.  He jokes, “I didn't know we were at the stage where you were picking out my stuff.”

“I’m the one who has to smell you all the time,” I point out with a knowing grin.

He chuckles, shaking his head, before motioning with his head in the direction we came from and starting to walk that way.  I follow him, and ask, “What food are you getting?  ‘Cause I can totally help you pick that out too.”

He says, “I barely keep anything in my room since I’m never in there.  But I’d be more than willing to help you pick out stuff for your room since I’m in there a bunch.”

It’s true, the fact that he’s in my room all of the time, but still…the way that he’s talking about picking stuff out to keep in my room is pretty serious.  At least it is for me.  It’s like the adult equivalent of keeping a toothbrush or a spare change of clothes at their significant other’s house.

It scares me, but it also makes me extremely happy.

We turn onto the healthiest aisle in the store, the chips and candy aisle, and I watch in mild fascination as he grabs a bag of Doritos from the middle shelf and then a bag of the sour cream and onion chips a little further down.  I joke, “I’m never going to kiss you if your breath reeks of that stuff.”

He looks over at me and grins, saying confidently, “I could change your mind, don’t worry.”

The corner of my mouth twitches.  “You’re getting awfully cocky with me nowadays.  What’s up with that?”

He shrugs his shoulders, still smiling to himself, before he turns to the candy side and extracts a bag of sour gummy worms.  He then heads over towards me, and before I know it he’s putting a quick kiss on my lips.  When he pulls away and my eyes open to meet his, he says, “’Cause you’ll let me kiss you in the middle of a crowded grocery store.”

My eyes widen in shock as I whip my head around the aisle.  Did people actually see us?  Jesse bursts out in laughter as I realize that literally no one else is on this aisle with us, and that he said that just to freak me out.  “I hate you,” I hiss, whipping my hand out to hit his bicep.

He just keeps laughing.

The little booger.

We’re back in his truck just a little while later, and as he’s pulling onto the busy street I’m busy responding to a text Carly just sent me.  After the little scene in the chips aisle, things were pretty boring as we went up and down a couple of others, him randomly reaching out and tossing something into his basket.

It was a very couple-like thing for us to do, grocery shopping together like that, and I’m still trying to let the feeling of having a somewhat significant other sink in.  While Jesse and I haven’t made anything official quite yet, we’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time either together or texting.

Ever since Thanksgiving, after our little phone conversation, he’s seemed much more open to me and me to him.  While he still doesn’t know the whole story and I don’t plan on telling him anytime soon, I think that me telling him the little tidbit has definitely helped him understand why I’m so weird about certain things.  He’s still overly cautious about the whole physical aspect of our relationship, even when I’m practically throwing myself at him, but even when I’m disappointed that he’s stopped just when things were getting good, I’m still happy.

I don’t want to do something I’d regret, or even worse make a huge scene about, unless I’m absolutely sure.

And while I’m sure that it’s going to be with Jesse, I just don’t know exactly when it’s going to be.

His phone starts ringing from where he dumped it into his cup holder, and as he puts it to his ear, I hear him say in greeting, “Hey, mom.”

I can vaguely hear her voice over the low thrum of the radio, and I can’t help but watch him curiously as he talks to her.  “Umm no, not really.  Why?....what happened to her car?....I mean, yeah, I can, but I have someone with me….oh my God mom shut up….yes it’s a girl…okay, okay, yeah, I can get her….mom, I don’t know if she wants to stay for dinner….I mean, I’ll ask but y’all are a bit much to handle…come on, you know y’all are…okay fine, we’ll be there in a little while….yeah, love you too, bye.”

As he hangs up the phone and then comes to a stop at the intersection in front of us, he looks over at me and I can see the slight nerves marring his otherwise content expression.  I was able to get the gist of what him and his mom were talking about, and when I wasn’t freaking out over how cute and awkward he was about inviting me over for dinner with his parents, I was freaking out over how not freaked out I am over meeting his family.

I know I should be, since we’re not even dating and are just doing this weird thing of hanging out and making out, but I’m kind of excited.  I’ve always been good with parents and little kids, so I’m not nervous about that aspect like most people would be.  Instead I’m just looking forward to seeing how he is around his two little sisters.

He asks me, “You don’t have anything to do tonight, do you?”

“No,” I answer, kind of loving how apprehensive about this he is.  I have this gut feeling that it’s not because he doesn’t want me to meet them, but that he’s scared they’ll scare me off.  And the fact that he’s so concerned about me not being around puts a newfound confidence in this relationship.  I love it.  “Why?  Am I being invited to this famous dinner and Big Bang Theory night?”

His cheeks flush pink, and I can’t help but smile in return.

He’s so darn cute.

He says hurriedly, “If you don’t want to, I can drop you off.  I just…I was planning on heading over there later but my sister’s car didn’t start this morning and she needs me to pick her up from school.   If you’re not okay with it, I…”

I cut him off by surging forward, digging my fingers into the hair on the side of his head and pressing a long kiss on his pouty lips.  He immediately reciprocates, and during