“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” -Elbert Hubbard

Nick entered school on the first day of the new semester neither horribly upset or ridiculously happy. He was content and that was all. Samantha had seemingly recovered from her break up with Luke, Tobias and Meredith were happy, his mom seemed happy being single for once, and he could have much better grades this semester than last. Things were good.

The break had been as tough as could be expected. Samantha had shown up at his house on New Year's Eve in tears, ranting about Luke and some cheerleader (apparently Luke dumping Samantha had something to do with his extracurriculars with said cheerleader). Nick had managed, as always, to calm her down and they had watched the ball drop in Times Square before watching the utterly cliche movie, New Years Eve, before falling asleep

They had spent the rest of the week doing nothing special. Nick had mountains of homework left to do (Samantha had hers done, she tended to actually do her work when she was upset about something) so Samantha spent most of her time at his house while he did it, creating a list of movies they should watch. She discovered in horror that he had never seen The Princess Bride, The Goonies, or Meatballs (necessities in her mind) and set out to make sure he watched all three, plus any others she came up with.

They watched the movies the last four days of their two week break. The first day or so Nick did his homework while they watched the "low priority movies" (The Fault in Our Stars, We Are Marshall, Heathers) and then Samantha cut him off from his textbooks to watch the "important to understand my references" movies (Meatballs, The Italian Job, Stuck in Love, Peter Pan). Those movies took the next two days.

The fourth and final day was the "how have you lived without seeing these movies?" group of movies (Princess Bride, Goonies, Dead Poets Society) and were spent with Nick watching the movies and eating popcorn and Samantha sitting there, watching him watch the movies and eat popcorn (to better judge his reaction to each part).

The marathon as a whole had been a success but had backfired (for Nick at least) when that made Samantha decide that she would come up with a list of TV shows they should watch. Not the whole shows, of course, he had barely convinced her that that wouldn't be possible, but they would instead abide by the "three episode rule" (the rule that said you had to watch three episodes of a show to know if you liked it or not).

She had it all planned out for spring break and was very excited. He wasn't so sure if knowing he was going to spend his spring break watching the first three episodes of Gilmore Girls, Supernatural, and The 100 (to name a few).

Luckily he had found a way to finish most of his homework during this time (he had resorted to sneaking to the bathroom where he had stashed his textbooks) because now he had to go to class. First period he had AP English 12. He liked the class but today he dreaded it for one reason: he hadn’t finished reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

In his defense, he had read most of it. He had read acts one through four but not five, which was kind of the important one. He walked to class with his head down, clicking through his phone looking for the act five summary on SparkNotes to no avail.

He clicked around some more, hoping to find at least the major points on Wikipedia, when he was pushed by a passing student that was probably running late to class. Nick stumbled and knocked into someone’s locker and then into a couple. Collecting himself and shaking his head, Nick made his way down a side hall to get out of the way of the crazy people. That’s when he saw them.

They were in a corner of the hallway, with him caging her head with his hands. They were smiling and giggling as they kissed like a couple of freshmen in their first relationship. It was sickening to say the least. Nick wondered if his breakfast would make a reappearance.

Luke and Samantha, together again.

He exited out of Wikipedia’s description of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy and put his phone away, not taking his eyes away from the couple (they still hadn’t noticed him).

Nick tried to speak but all that came out was some kind of gargling noise. Granted, they were so wrapped up in each other they probably didn’t notice that all he said was nonsense but still. The couple turned his way and Samantha’s eyes widened.

“Nick?” she said.

Nick was already walking away.

Samantha ran after him, he could hear her flip flops making their signature noise behind him. He just kept walking, hoping his longer stride would keep her from catching up to him (he did not want to draw extra attention by running around like an idiot).

“Nick!” she called. He didn’t turn around.

“Nick I’m talking to you!” He turned the corner and made his way out towards the parking lot. School could go screw itself.

“Nicholas Kincaid stop this minute!”

“No!” he called back.

“Please just let me explain!”

“Explain what,” he stopped short of the front gate and turned to face her. “Explain how I should forgive you for getting back together with the dipshit who broke your heart? How I should be okay with that you wasted all the time I spent cheering you up? Or just how I should forgive you for not telling me. Maybe that’s it. Tell me, Sam, what are you trying to explain to me? I’m on the edge of my seat, believe me.”

“You’re not being fair.”

“Screw being fair! Life’s not fair, you’ve shown me that.”

“Nick just give me a-”

“Chance? Give you a chance? You don’t need any more chances. Actually, you might need one but you won’t get one! I’m tired of giving you chances. You’re all out of chances, honey.”

“What are you saying?” Samantha asked, her eyebrows scrunched together and her eyes beginning to fill with tears.

“I’m saying I’m done. No more second chances for any of us.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that this whole situation is ridiculous. I’m tired of all of this and I want nothing to do with it.”

“Oh.” That was all she had to say.

“Oh? Your best friend since the first grade says he wants nothing to do with the situation you’re in, so basically nothing to do with you and all you have to say is ‘oh’?”

“If I say more I’ll cry and then you’ll be mad at me for that too!”

“Please don’t make me seem like the bad guy here!”

“Well you’re sure acting like one!”

“The bad guy here is that guy you call your boyfriend! Where’s he right now huh? I see you guys, you run after me, and where does he go? He doesn’t even see if you’re okay? He’s an asshole and you’re just as bad for not seeing that,” Nick said, flailing his arms around for the sake of being dramatic.

“Luke is not a bad guy. He actually cares about me, which is more than I can say for you.”

“I don’t care about you? He does? I’m not sure what part of that sentence was more ridiculous.”

“He does care about me.”

“When a guy cares about a girl he doesn’t cheat on her.”

“Screw you.”

“And furthermore, I wouldn’t be saying any of this if I didn’t care about you.”

“Oh really,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Really. If I didn’t care about you I would be able to ignore your asshole of a boyfriend and move on. But no, I’m here making a fool of myself. All because I care about you.”

“You can take your ‘caring’ and shove it up your ass. I don’t need it. I don’t need you.”

“Good because you don’t have either anymore.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” he said.

“I guess we’re done here then.”

“I guess we are.”

“Are you planning on going to class?” she asked.

“I might as well, first day and all.”

“It’s already halfway through first period.”

“I’ll just wait in my car until second.”

“Whatever.”

“Glad to see you’re concerned,” he retorted.

“We’re not friends anymore remember?”

“I didn’t know it was that final.”

“You should know, you’re the one who had a stick up your ass in the first place.”

“Wow, with charm like that I can’t figure out why I didn’t want to be friends with you anymore.”

“Shut up and go to your car,” she said, turning away.

“Going to find Luke?”

“I have class.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“So what if I am?”

“Is it ever tiring? To always be the one looking instead of having him look for you?” he asked.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe not. But I do understand the feeling of knowing you care more about someone’s well being than they care about you.”

“Passive aggressive much?”

“Self absorbed much? I never said it was you.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Weren’t you leaving?” he asked.

“Weren’t you?”

“Just go.”

“Gladly.”

They both went their separate ways.

A/N: So I finally updated! Hoped you guys enjoyed it and there will be another update next Saturday and updates on Just the Highlights tomorrow and Thursday. After that there will be a break in updates for Camp NaNoWriMo. My novel for the April session is called "Two Sides" and the summary will be posted as soon as I have a cover. I'll give you more information in the update next Saturday.

The video on the right is my new trailer for this story! I'm so excited and I love it and this is dedicated to the person who made it, @springgfield, who is amazing and the best person ever for making this for me. Thanks again!

Sorry about the whole formatting thing on the website, I haven't had time to fix it. But I will soon, I promise. I doubt it'll be a problem though, most of you read on the app anyway. 

The photo on the right is who I have cast as Tobias, Freddie Highmore :)