I pulled up in front of Chloe's house, the imposing seven bedroom building was more of a mansion than a regular house. It always managed to remind me of our house in New York, spotless white painted walls and shiny marble floors. I turned off my car and gingerly got out, I promised Chloe I'd see her today so I had to drive here straight after school.

   I was exhausted from traveling two hours yesterday and Saturday and barely getting any rest before I had to continue my life today as a high schooler. I walked up the steps of the front porch and rang the doorbell. Chloe left school quite early today, I stayed behind with Ed while he practiced with his other teammates.

   Today I decided to sit with some of the other students who were watching the practice instead of on my own like I usually did. Christian sat with me bringing unnecessary attention with him, but he was such a nice person to hang around so I didn't mind a few stares. The icing on the cake was how well Ed and Christian were getting on, it was no longer awkward silence and death glares.

   I rang the doorbell again, Chloe's parents were probably not home, they were almost never home. She lived with a few helps her parents hired to take care of the house. I wondered why no one was answering the doorbell. I stopped using the doorbell and knocked with the brass. I only knocked for a while before the door opened and Chloe stood in front me with her dyed blonde hair in a messy bun wearing shorts and a crop top.

  "If it isn't my celebrity best friend." She said in a false voice, "Do come in please, it was so hard to get an appointment."

    She had a smile on her face but I could see that she was pissed at me for not hanging out with her this past week. The last time we hung out was last week Wednesday when I came over to her place so we could do our homework together.

    Chloe moved aside for me to get in before she locked the doors. The house was neat as always, with the floors gleaming and everything placed perfectly, beautiful paintings hung on the walls and equally beautiful chandeliers on the ceiling. The house was perfect, Chloe's mom was so proud of her minimalistic designs that screamed money in a silent way, she was even more proud of the fact that Architectural digest did a house tour of her house and covered it on the front page of their magazine last year.

  "Stop looking around like this is your first time here, I'm pissed at you and you know it," Chloe said, her hands was on her hips as she glared at me.

   Immediately I got into the house, I followed her lead through the long hallway and I only just realized we were in the movie room.

   "I've been a little bit busy, I'm sorry we couldn't hang out yesterday," I said.

  I felt bad for blowing her off yesterday, I just hope she didn't drag it out for too long, Chloe was a firecracker when it came to anger and I'm not ready to hear how mad she is.

  "Yeah right, busy, I thought it was besties before boyfriends but you picked that boyfriend of yours over me. Do you have any idea how bored I was yesterday." She picked up a remote and scrolled through different channels as she vented.

  "Let me make it up to you, we could go over to my house and have a sleepover," I tried with a shrug and she glared at me. "I said I was sorry."

   "Yeah whatever." She replied and rolled her eyes at me. "You get popcorn duty for pissing me off and I get to choose the movie."

   This time I rolled my eyes at her but I pulled off my uniform shirt leaving me in my tank top as I went into the big rarely used kitchen to make popcorn for us, I'm sure Chloe's going to make me watch a horror movie and I hate horror movies.

    I picked up the pack of microwave popcorn from the pantry and popped it into a bowl before putting it in the microwave. The kitchen was spotless but I wondered where everyone was, usually the cook or the housekeeper were doing something around the house, I made a mental note to ask Chloe where everyone was. The microwave beeped and I got the popcorn out, the buttery sweet aroma made my stomach grumble, this was going to be extra carbs but whatever.

   "Took you long enough," Chloe said as soon as I entered the movie room. Her long legs were propped against the seat in front of her. I put the bowl of popcorn on the seat beside her and sat down in the next seat.

  "What are we watching?" I knew it would be something I don't like but I still asked.

  "It."

"Thought so."

  She smirked at my eye roll and the annoyance on my face. We started eating the popcorn before the first scene came on, I brought out my phone and chatted with Ed while Chloe was also using her phone, we distractedly watched the movie for thirty minutes, the popcorn was finished and I'm still surprised we were only just watching movies not chatting like we tend to do when we were around each other. I was staring at Christian's text on my phone when I felt Chloe's eyes on me.

   "We're supposed to be watching a movie," she said.

  "Um... We are both scrolling through our phones and by the way, this is the third time we're watching It." I shrugged.

  Chloe rolled her eyes but smiled, then she picked up the remote control and turned on the light she had dimmed before and paused the movie since we were weren't watching it. She turned her attention to me and her eyes looked keen but I turned my attention back to my phone.

    "So...what's with you and Christian Giuseppe's friendship?"

  I looked up from my phone turning off the screen to see Chloe staring at me with interest. I then realized that we haven't really talked about Christian, I did not tell her the name of the person I saw at the club that made Ed and I fight and I don't think I've ever mentioned anything about Christian to Chloe within this last week, it meant the rumor Mill was churning and as I expected, Christian hanging out with me a few times at school has brought attention to me.

   I shrugged before I said, "He was the guy I met at Club 4 the Saturday before last and I guess we're friends now."

  She raised one of her perfectly tweezed brows that looked like an arc, "Friends?"

  "Yeah I guess so, he's nice and all."

  "So are you now comfortable with all the highschool attention, everyone is talking about the girl who's Christian's new bff."

  I shrugged again, "I can't hide forever and people always talk."

  "So you don't care about the attention you avoided for three years now?"

  Chloe's questions were starting to get on my nerves, she was just reminding me of how I hid away from all the highschool spotlight which was reminding me of why I decided to do that and I've had enough of thinking of my past choices and everyone reminding me of Leo's death, I just wanted to live like other people my age and just get through highschool, attention or not, I could at least have fun and meet new people, make new friends too.

  "What's with all these questions?" I arched my brows at her.

  "Chill, I'm just trying to look out for you, I don't want you doing anything you'll regret."

  "You should chill, it's friendship and not leaving the country and I get that you are concerned but Chris is a nice person, if he wasn't we wouldn't be friends."

   She nodded and started carefully like she was scared I'll get offended, maybe this is how everyone felt around me.  "Yeah everyone knows Christian is a nice person but he has friends and his fan girls don't have filter and would say anything."

  "Stop making me think too much, he's just my friend like you are."

  "Okay. What does Ed think about this? I know he doesn't really like popular people and Christian made you guys fight."

  "He's cool with it now, Christian is harmless and everyone knows that," I said. "Please enough with this topic, I'm tired of explaining my self to everyone, I've done a lot of that in Napa."

   She shrugged and said, "Talking about Napa, how was your trip and what do you mean explaining yourself?"

  "Oh, this story is not going to end now, but the good thing is Pierre and I made up."

  "Your cousin? The one I have a crush on?"

   "Ew no, that's Shawn."

  "What? He's hot. Tell me everything."

   I lunched into the whole story of everything that happened in Napa and Chloe made the appropriate remarks making me laugh, it felt nice to see everything from someone else's point of view. I couldn't laugh when I heard what everyone thought of my behavior but Chloe was making me laugh with her dry humour and sarcasm. She made me feel like everyone was exaggerating and that I wasn't as difficult as they all claimed. It might just be her trying to make me feel better but I appreciate that.

   "Should we get more popcorn?" Chloe asked.

  "I don't want more popcorn, that would be more carbs," I said without thinking and before I could stop myself.

  Chloe looked up from her phone and stared at me like she couldn't understand what I was saying. She never worried about what she ate especially when it came to her weight because she was one of those people who didn't need to watch their diet, she only ever cared because she tried to avoid acne. She stayed away from oily food most of the time and that was it and I never cared about what I ate because I believed no one was watching me.

  "Where did that come from?"

  "I don't know," I said in a small voice. "I figured if I have to walk for my mom's line like she wants me to, I'd better watch what I eat."

    Chloe looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time and I saw different emotions flash through her blue eyes, I knew this would be a long debate so I brought up the only conversation I knew would grab Chloe's attention enough to shift her focus from me.

   "Your parents are out of town again?"

   She rolled her eyes before she said, "You sound surprised, you should be surprised when they are home."

   Her parents owned a joint business so they were mostly out of town together for any business trip. According to Chloe, she spent most of her life traveling till they finally decided to settle in San Francisco in Chloe's last year of middle School so that she could have a normal life, she'd laugh whenever she said the words 'normal life' before asking me that what part of living with the helps was normal.

    "They aren't just out of town this time, they are out of the country, I really wish I had a sibling maybe I wouldn't be so bothered, I don't even have relatives living around here."

   Chloe and the old Lola were so similar, they cared about fashion and popularity and had parents who were too busy to spend time at home. Chloe and me now were still just as similar if not more similar than the old Lola, we both didn't have siblings to spend time with when our parents were too busy, the only difference was Chloe never had a sibling and I took mine for granted till he died and my parents made better efforts to spend time with me since we moved to SF.

  "Parents can be so annoying," I said because I didn't know what to say.

  "Tell me about it."

  I listened to her rant some more about her parents and other people's parents that were too busy, it turned out the housekeeper and cook went shopping for groceries. We talked about everything catching up on all the days we missed each other and I wondered why we never hung out at school. It might be because Chloe was helping me hide myself since her friendship with me might have brought attention to me but both of us had never made any move to talk to ourselves at school, maybe I should change that, life's too short to see my best friend only in secret.
  

A/n Maybe I should just accept the fact that I would always update on a Saturday because this is three times in a row already. Anyway, Hii! I miss y'all (me talking to nobody, lol). What have you all been up to?

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I'm in chapter twenty, people! It's surreal, I don't even know if I'm at half of the book at this point but I'm excited to have gotten to chapter twenty, I always end up talking too much.

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  Thanks for reading.
NmX.