[Do you guys think we can get to 1,000 votes? Let's do it, for me! For Derek and Leo? For Nicole's STD results?]

(Leo's point of view)

"Leo, will you please stop twerking on your seat while I'm driving?" Derek complained.

There was nothing better in this life than shaking my ass to country pop music. Especially on a moving vehicle. I held on to dear life while I bounced my ass, hoping cars driving by saw it and honked.

Unfortunately, there were no cars because we were in the middle of nowhere. Like, there was nothing around except mountains or canyons, I honestly couldn't tell the difference. They were big gross hot rocks in the middle of Satan's ass crack.

Gasp. That meant we were in his booty hole.

"I will NOT stop the twerking, and my name is Leonardo DiTwerker."

"You're making me nervous."

"If I'm not making you nervous then what am I good for?"

"You're acting like a child," And then he said the one thing that pissed me off the most, "Grow up."

"I'm not acting like a child," I protested, sitting back down. "So kindly fuck off."

He knew telling me to grow up was going to set me off. He said it because he knew it would get to me. He said it because he didn't care. Telling me to grow up or calling me a child didn't make me just angry, it would make my body turn hot, turn my emotions on edge, make me form fists at my side hoping nothing was close to me because the frustration I felt was insufferable.

For as long as I lived, I felt like I was always true to myself. Whether people liked me because of it or not was not a priority of mine. I did not care what people think, I was always me. Even if I was being a mess or embarrassing myself, did I care? Ever? No, I did not. So the fact that the so-called "Love of my life" would make me feel ashamed because I wanted to just be my careless self really did make me question a bunch of shit.

"Just because you're unhappy with your life doesn't mean you have to bring me down with it," I said quietly.

I noticed he started scratching the driving wheel. He would do this when he had a lot more to say on his mind, or when he felt too nervous. Guessed he was too nervous to say what he wanted to say. I had a pretty good idea what he wanted to say, there was only one defense that he could use against me.

"Can we just . . . not fight?" he said instead.

"Why? Don't want to make a scene?"

"What scene? We aren't even there yet."

"I can see the stupid diner."

"Can we please just not?"

"You started it."

"Okay, and now I'm ending it, so please?"

He better know how to read silence because that was my answer as I looked at the diner in the distance and ignored his existence. There were four cars parked outside the diner from what I saw, and none of them looked familiar. Did we just get stood up? Pretty sure she hadn't changed cars.

We parked next to the entrance of the little restaurant in the middle of nowhere, but not completely, the next town was a few miles away and I could see it from where we were. We got out of the car and looked around, there was no sign of her.

"Call her?" Derek said

"She's your best friend, not mine."

Derek looked around awkwardly with his eyes bulged out and his lips pursed. She was behind me and she totally heard that and was going to be offended, I could already see her face burning in my mind.

I heard the diner door open, the bell at the top ringing loudly and making the skin on my neck tingle.

Nicole walked around me and stopped next to Derek. Her eyes were glistening. "We used to be best friends, you remember that? Or did you also choose to forget that part of your life as well?"

"I didn't forget about you, Nicole."

"Really? Because I haven't seen you in two years and you've barely texted me in that time. And now I get to spend time with both of my best friends who I basically grew up with only to be disappointed again."

"That's not fair," I said.

"Are you gonna give me the same excuse? People grow apart? People change? Not all friendships stay the same? Because I'm going to remind you one last time. You're the one that changed, you're the one that chose to stop being friends with me."

"NICOLE! I didn't mean for that to sound the way it did!"

"I don't CARE what you said, it's what you DID." She wiped a tear away with a finger and looked away from my face. "If you didn't want me to tag along you shouldn't have invited me."

"WE invited you, because we love you, I love you, and you have always been my friend. You have nothing to do with the way I act."

She looked back with a smirk, one eyebrow raised and wiggling. "You're gullible as hell if you fell for that. You think I'm gonna give yo bitch ass a tear like that? Naw, son. I KNOW you's a huge dick."

I blinked hard, hoping that when I opened my eyes I'd wake up in my warm, comfy bed. Nope. I was still standing there like an idiot while Nicole hugged Derek long and hard while she gave me a knowing side look.

"Wait, what?" I said dumbfounded. Emphasis on the dumb.

Nicole attacked me with a hug after she finished with Derek and tightly squeezed. She smelled like men cologne. I was glad to know she still looked the same, kind of. She was taller than me at the moment because of the heels. But it was a surprise to see that her hair was now shoulder length, maybe a tiny bit longer, just above her boobs, and it was brown and wavy and beautiful. But why was she wearing expensive looking high heel boots, fishnets with gold glitter, shorts, leather jacket and a gold choker around her neck when we were going camping? Did she think we were going to a club?

"I'm just trying to say that I DO have some unresolved feelings and anger towards you because you completely abandoned me for a new best friend and forgot I existed but I'm taking this trip as an apology."

"Nicole . . . I'm -"

"NOPE! Not accepting any sorrys, don't worry, you'll probably make it up to me with some good sex."

"Um, babe, the fuck?" a guy with a british accent said, who was coming out of the diner with a bag of food.

"Oh, shut up. I'm talking about me watching him do it with Derek, don't worry you're still mine," she said, taking the bag of food and handing it over to me and Derek.

Nicole attacked the stranger with her lips and tackled him. They both went down loudly, rolling on the dirt as they sucked each others tongues. Nicole humped him like she had to itch down there but had no arms or legs to relieve it.

"You American girls are crazy, I love it," the stranger said.

"Nope, just Nicole . . ." I casually whispered so that only Derek could hear.

"I want you to fuck me with a french fry. I want to feel that one grain of salt inside me, tearing me apart," she moaned.

"I think we should go now," I told Derek.

"NO, WAIT!" Nicole crawled towards us like she was the creepy girl from the grudge until she reached my leg and used it to get back up. "That monster pale guy is my boyfriend, Jack."

"That's not a generic name at all for a British guy, author," I said.

"Yeah, he's coming along. He's driving our RV."

"You have an RV?"

"Rented, but yeah. It's not that big. It has a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room and that's it."

Jack walked up behind Nicole after spending a minute dusting off his pants and hugged her, resting his head on her shoulder. He was kind of cute, and I was happy she had someone. It made me feel bad, though. She could have been with him for years and I would have never known because I never kept up with her. I was a shitty person.

"Can I watch when they fuck, too?" he asked her.

"Duh."

Leave it to Nicole to make me feel uncomfortable. But the fact that I was uncomfortable thinking about having sex with Derek made me feel uncomfortable. So I was uncomfortable because I felt uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable at being uncomfortable.

"Cool, can we go now? I really wanna set up our shit before night."

"Wanna ride with us Leo?" Nicole asked.

Don't look at Derek, he's not your dad. You can go if you want to, he doesn't control you.

"Uh, sure."

"GREAT!" she shouted excitedly, grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the back of the diner where the RV was parked.

When I entered, I became jealous. Derek told me we were going to be sleeping in tents and doing the whole outdoor experience, but Nicole was bringing a house with her, probably because she couldn't handle nature. It was a pretty cool RV.

Jack drove and followed Derek on the road while Nicole and I got comfortable on the bed in the back. We were going to sit at the small table that wasn't exactly small, since it could fit at least five people on it, but we didn't want Jack to hear our conversation.

"So, how is everything?" she asked.

"Fine, why?"

"Have you talked to Derek yet?"

"What? Of course I have, what do you mean?"

She leaned in closer as if some fly was buzzing around hungry for secrets. "I mean talk."

"Um."

"Oh my God, you are stupid. Have you talked to Derek about your cheating ass!" she said.

I should have known this was the conversation she wanted to talk about. For some stupid reason, I did not think about it. Not when she took me to the back of the RV so her British boyfriend wouldn't listen, not when I knew she was going to come with us. Nope. Didn't see it coming.

"We've talked."

"Face to face? Because from what I know, you haven't done shit and this is why he's even doing this whole thing."

I made a face, almost offended. This whole trip wasn't a huge built up to talk about the past. If he wanted to talk to me about something, he would have. He wouldn't use an excuse like this to talk. He was doing it because he loved me, and I knew that, and we understood that it was even more than just because of love, it was to do things together that we had never done before. It was to see life in other parts that we've never stepped on, together. It was to give what we had a chance to flourish, to regrow, to heal. It wasn't for some stupid talk.

"No, we talked about it when I told him what happened. We've never really talked about it since then," I replied quietly. I wasn't going to go into detail with Nicole. I loved Nicole but she really wasn't as close to me as we were in high school. I didn't feel the need to share every single part of my mind to her anymore. "Sometimes I slip up and say things that are insensitive that remind us of what I did but that is the only thing."

"He's breaking," she said, staring at the window.

There was this horrible feeling, an overwhelming one, of guilt and regret and fire deep in my stomach. It rose up my throat, turning my mouth dry. The feeling was turning my body hot, but not . . . not with anger. I wasn't angry. I was embarrassed, and most of all I was feeling the pain I had caused. Almost like Derek had a reflective shield that bounced back everything to me. If I burned him, I burned too.

"Nicole," I said, my voice becoming emotional, "tell me everything, please."

Nicole was crying now, and it wasn't a joke. She wasn't acting or pretending to be sad, tears were falling from her eyes. She looked at me with such heartache that the flame inside me turned cold immediately.

"You have it easy, you know. You don't even see how much he has suffered, like you don't even care, like you're so used to things being perfect for you that you're blind to anyone else's pain, including your loved ones."

"Nicole, what are you talking about? Why does everyone talk like I'm a monster? I know what I did was wrong, but I am not a bad person, what is going on?"

"He was in the hospital and you never checked on him, so you never knew."

"W-why was he in the hospital?"

I didn't need an answer, but I wanted to hear it.

"Overdose. He died, Leo. Derek fucking died." She burst into full tears and was screaming at me now. "THEY BROUGHT HIM BACK, BUT FOR THE TIME HE WAS DEAD HE WAS GONE! HE WAS FUCKING GONE, HE WAS SUFFERING FOR SO LONG AND WHERE WERE YOU? WHERE?"

"No, I don't believe you," I replied, even when I did believe her, even when the tears in my eyes were contradicting what I was saying.

"THIS is why I brought you here, away from Derek, so that I could tell you, because he made me promise that I wouldn't tell you, but I can't keep it a secret anymore. And I'm sure he knows that I'm telling you."

"When."

"Two months ago."

Two months ago was when . . . but why would he do that? I knew that I deserved the worst, I deserved to be dumped, because HE deserved better than me. But why would he do that? How could he do that? He chose to stay with me even with the mistake that completely tilted our relationship forever. He stayed because he loved me, so why would he do that?

"Why?"

"You know why, you just don't understand."

"Because I have the perfect life?"

"Because you have the perfect life without him."

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[Author's message]: So, it took me a while to post this chapter because I was away on vacation for three weeks, then when I got back I couldn't write for some reason, just a bad block. :( But I just finished it here (short chapter kind of) because I couldn't see myself writing more after this. I think it was the perfect ending to the chapter. But worry not! It continues dramatically on the next chapter which I HOPE to finish soon and not in one month lol. I'll try super hard, but it would help if you guys encouraged me and gave me your thoughts so far and how you feel and just ... COMMENT, LOVE, VOTE, LOVE, GIVE ME YO DANG OPINIONS. <3 (I don't want to say more because this chapter was sad and emotional and there's so much more so I want to wait till you guys know more till I talk about it)