"I'll take the bed, you sleep on the couch," Casey drawled while tying her hair in a sloppy ponytail.

"What? No way!" I argued. "You take the couch."

"I'm your guest."

"It's my bed."

Casey placed her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. "You're the worst hostess ever," she mumbled.

"It's not my fault that you're incapable of sharing a bed," I defended. "You should see someone about that by the way."

Casey had explained that she's an extremely light sleeper and that the sound of someone else's breathing, and any slight movement on their part wakes her up so she just prefers to sleep alone. But I failed to see how that was my problem.

"You can kick Logan out of the guest room," I suggested after another ten minutes of useless arguing.

She quirked her brow. "Logan's here?"

"Logan's always here."

She laughed and then gave me a mischievous smile. "Really, now?"

I rolled my eyes and tossed a pillow at her. "You're reprehensible," I muttered when she tossed it back.

"Can you even spell reprehensible?"

I groaned and massaged my temples. This girl was going to drive me insane.

She laughed and rolled her eyes before grabbing her bag from its place beside mine. She then motioned for me to follow her.

I let out another groan when she stopped at the guest room and turned the knob.

"You should knock first," I warned her but she ignored me and barged into the room anyway.

"What the fu―" Logan started when he saw us but Casey cut him off.

"I need this room," she informed him and threw her bag on the bed. "You can take the couch in Camille's room if it helps," she added when he scowled at her.

"Or he could not," I said, giving her a what the actual hell look.

"I swear between your sleeping disorder and your bipolar tendencies, I'm gonna lose it," he muttered, pointing a finger accusingly at Casey.

"I love you too, powder puff," Casey smirked and jumped onto the bed, shoving Logan out of her way.

He muttered something under his breath that I didn't quite catch before leaving the room, but I think it was somewhere along the lines of smothering her with a pillow in her sleep. He paused long enough to flip Casey the bird and then shut the door behind him.

"Okay, so I'm just gonna take off. 'Kay?" I called over my shoulder, heading towards the door.

"Or you can keep me company for a bit longer," Casey suggested.

I turned back to face her and although she tried to smile, I could tell that it was forced so I reluctantly joined her on the bed.

"I think that this is the part where we bare our souls to each other," Casey laughed from beside me. She was laying crossway on the bed with her phone in her hands.

I crinkled my nose. "Please, no."

She laughed again and I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket and my heart sunk when I saw that I didn't have any new messages.

After that weird conversation with Jason in which he blew up on me for no reason, I'd called April but she didn't pick up so I sent her a dozen texts but that was over an hour ago and still my phone was as dry as the Sahara Desert.

I sighed and tucked the phone back into my pocket before folding my hands under my head and staring at the ceiling.

"Blake and I sorta made out," Casey said after a minute had gone by.

I glanced at her and my brow raised a little. "Sorta?"

She nodded and changed positions so that she was now sitting up with her head resting on the wall. "I pushed away from him before it actually began."

I didn't say anything, but I did nod before returning my gaze to the ceiling. A part of me didn't want to hear another word about Blake nor Savannah; I had enough crap on my plate without adding Casey's relationship issues to it. But another part of me, the part that I usually ignored, said that I was being selfish and that listening to your friend's problems even though you've got your own is what friendship is all about.

I didn't agree with that entirely. It's not selfish to choose to not deal with someone else's problems when yours were weighing you down and you've got no one to talk to about it.

Sure, it's my fault that I've got no one to talk to about any of the crap that I've been dealing with seeing as I've never even told anyone why I moved here but nonetheless, I didn't think that that made me a selfish person per se.

I was just a mess of unfinished thoughts; a person too broken to help anyone else but herself, but that did not make me a selfish person.

"He told me that he still loves me," Casey said bitterly, snapping me out of my thoughts. "But what does he even know about love? If he really loved me, he never would've chosen Van over me. Over us."

I sighed and closed my eyes for a few seconds before looking at Casey. "Are you done?"

She wiped a tear off her cheek and nodded.

I reached over and patted her hands which were resting on her knees. "Boys are dumb," was my genius response.

She laughed and shook her head. "I didn't even see it coming. It was like one day he just decided that I wasn't important to him anymore and to hell with how I felt about it!"

She said that last part with so much anger that I turned away. I twirled the ends of my hair with my fingers and waited for her to continue since I had nothing to add.

I wasn't kidding when I said that I sucked at giving advice. I really do suck and I usually just make things ten times worse than they actually are.

"He was my first love," she mumbled.

"What do you know about love?" I asked before I could stop myself.

She thought about the question for a long time before glancing at me. "I only know that the way I felt about him and still do can only be classified as love," she replied.

I gave her a skeptical look before I nodded, not in understanding but because I didn't know what else to do.

I wasn't too big on the concept of love, so this was foreign territory for me. I loved my Dad and I loved Jason and April when they weren't pissing me off but that was as far as it went for me. I'd never had a boyfriend so that kind of puppy love wasn't something that I'd ever had the displeasure of experiencing and my crushes were usually on guys way out my league so, once again, no prospect of love there.

Listening to Casey talk about being in love with that dickhead only served to piss me off because I had no idea what she was talking about. I couldn't draw on any past experiences and nod to let her know that I totally understood her heartbreak because I really didn't understand it and to me Blake was just another asshole who wasn't worth her tears or my time thinking about him.

In the case of Carter and Savannah it was easy to sympathize with Carter's plight because I didn't know their history at that time, and believing that it was indeed love wasn't so hard to do, but Casey and Blake? I had no idea.

"What about you?" she asked.

"What about me?"

"Have you ever been in love?"

I snorted. "Nah."

"You're kidding," she stated. "Right?"

I bit down on my bottom lip and shook my head.

"Wow," she mumbled. And then, "that's really sad." I shoved her and she rolled onto her side laughing. "But seriously Camille, if you've never been in love then that means that you've never been heartbroken, so what keeps you up at night?"

I tilted my head and stared at her. "What?"

"You have trouble sleeping, right?"

"No," I lied. "I sleep just fine, Nancy Drew."

"You have bags the size of Texas under your eyes, so I call bullshit," she said with narrowed eyes.

I sighed in annoyance and crossed my arms. "I do not have trouble sleeping."

"I cannot believe you're really gonna lie to me," she muttered.

I sighed again and looked away. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I can't even remember the last time that I didn't have bags under my eyes."

She gave me a long, hard look before nodding, deciding to let it drop―for now. "So, what do you think about Aiden?"

I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands and groan. "What about him?" I asked instead.

"Do you like him?"

"No," I scoffed. "I barely know the guy."

She rolled her eyes. "So?"

I shook my head disapprovingly at her. "So, it won't be fair to like him just because he's easy on the eyes."

"What's so wrong with that?" she asked innocently.

"He could be an incredibly shallow and self-centered person for all I know," I reasoned.

"But he's not," she stated with a pointed stare. "He's one of the good guys."

"Then why aren't you dating him?"

"I'm still in my 'bad boy' phase," she shrugged and I burst into laughter.

"That's so lame," I replied, still laughing. "No wonder you're heartbroken."

She shoved me and I sobered up. "Low blow," she mumbled.

"I know, I'm sorry," I apologized and pulled myself up, so that I was sitting beside her. "Okay, tell me about Blake."

She looked pleasantly surprised at my request. To be honest, I was surprised too because I'd rather talk about the weather than him, but I felt really bad about poking fun at her pain. "What do you wanna know?" she asked with a small smile.

I thought about it for a second. "What was your first date like?"

Her face brightened as she launched into her tale. "It was the summer before our freshman year and it was a particularly hot day, might I add. So, he took me to a water park."

"Really?"

She laughed. "At first I was like 'is this dude for real?' The last thing that I had in mind was a water park, especially since I'd never been to one before so I didn't really know what to expect. But once we got there and I saw how much fun everyone was having, I lightened up a bit. We even played water basketball with some other couples and we lost," she said with a smile on her face. "But we had so much fun that it didn't even matter that we totally sucked at it. And then there were the rides, oh my gosh, Camille, you have got to let me take you sometime!" she said excitedly.

I couldn't help laughing. Her excitement was contagious.

"After our day at the water park, we grabbed dinner at this little Italian restaurant he'd found a few days before and then he took me home. In short, it was one of the best days of my life and I'd do it all again if given the choice," she finished with a wistful smile.

I nodded.

"I know that this might be hard for you to believe but he wasn't always the Blake that you know now," she mumbled.

I shrugged because I didn't really know the guy. I just knew that he was a douchebag.

"There was a time when he was everything a girl could ever dream of," she continued sadly. "He even got me to ditch going after the bad boys and give him a chance."

"Well, it seems to me that he owes you some time then for all that he's wasted," I muttered.

She chuckled. "Nah, I still wouldn't trade the time that we spent together. He thought me the meaning of love and―don't you shake your head at me!" she chided, and continued. "I know that we're still young but I still think that he was the real deal."

I sighed and shook my head anyway.

"Don't look at me with those judgy little eyes," she muttered.

She sighed and continued. "One day you'll meet someone and he'll completely knock the wind out of you with his love, he'll make you feel so safe that you begin to envision home as a person instead of a place. You won't even think of the possibility that you may break up because how could something so perfect come to an end. But should you lose that love, I'll be there. I'll hold your hand while you tell me about how much it hurts. And I know that it physically hurts to lose someone that you love. You'll feel like someone's stuck a rusty knife in your heart and with each breath you take, they're twisting it even further. And when you're feeling so lost that all you can think about doing is throwing yourself off of a bridge or running headfirst into the oncoming traffic, I'll be there to guide you back home, because I've been there and I'll know exactly how you feel."

I had tears streaming down my face at this point because I knew that overwhelming sense of helplessness followed by searing pain all too well. It was like I was reliving the moment that my Dad died all over again.

"And how do you feel?" I whispered, because I couldn't trust my voice to speak any louder.

She took my face in her hands and wiped my tears away before answering my question. "Let's just say that if a car was coming towards me, I wouldn't scream, or cry or even run. I would just stand there."

"I'm sorry," I murmured. "I'm so very sorry." I was speaking to myself as much as to her.

"Hey," she said, kneeling in front of me. "It gets easier, and I'm no longer speaking about a breakup here. I'm talking about your Dad."

My head shot up at her statement. "What?"

"I lost my father about two years ago," she said softly. "He didn't die like yours did but he did leave us. So, that ache that you feel in your heart all day long? I know that it goes away, not completely but bit by bit it gets fainter than it was the day before and then you'll wake up one day and realize that it's okay to be happy again, and you will be happy again."

"I never told you that my father died," I said, my tone accusatory.

"I'm best friends with your brother and sister, did you really think that I didn't know?" she asked, with a forlorn expression.

I pulled my leg up and wrapped my arms around it. I felt nauseous, so I rested my head on my knees and took a deep breath as a steady stream of tears flowed down my cheeks.

"Hey, it's going to be okay," Casey whispered. She then put an arm around me so that my head was now resting on her shoulder.

"It won't," I sniffled. "It's only going to get worse."

"Shhh," she whispered. "You need to stop this or you'll make yourself sick."

That only made me cry harder. I tried to tell her that I couldn't stop the tears from falling but every time I opened my mouth, a sob escaped. Images of my dad and me kept replaying in my mind. I felt joy, anger and immense sadness all at the same damn time and it only frustrated me.

With my nose now blocked up and runny and my eyes probably swollen from crying, I was misery personified.

After a while I stopped crying but was too tired to speak, I didn't know what to say anyway. Casey gave me a weak smile and helped me to my feet, all the while whispering that it'll be okay.

Feeling exhausted and defeated, I retreated to my room and curled up in a ball on the bed, waiting for sleep to take me out of my misery. I was vaguely aware of someone entering the room but with sadness weighing heavily on me and sleep so close, the only thing I could have done was close my eyes.