Girl Code by LD Davis

thought of her non-apologetic apology.
    My dad offered to buy me a decent used car, had it all picked out, all he had to do was go pay for it. I turned it down. He told me I was being ridiculous, but I refused to accept any monetary gifts from him or my mom. Instead of the two-year-old car he had offered to purchase for me, I bought myself a ten-year-old Subaru for next to nothing. It was next to nothing for a reason, though; it needed a lot of work done on it, but thankfully, Leo had been tinkering with cars since he was in grade school. He had helped me pick out the car and he did all of the repairs on it for me.
    Leslie and Leo had broken up again just before graduation. They were nice to each other in those last days of school, and he had kissed her after we had thrown our caps into the air, but the reason behind their breakup was unclear to me, and I didn’t pry. Leslie left for Duke at the beginning of July. She and Stacy Glen were going to stay with Stacy’s aunt or some other relative until their dorms were ready. I was a little jealous, admittedly. My best friend was now best friends with another girl, and they were going to college and starting a whole new life together a few states away from New Jersey, but it may as well had been another world. I wasn’t going very far, just to the University of Delaware, and even though at least two or three of my classmates were also going to the same school, it wasn’t the same as going with my best friend.
    Before she left, Leslie employed me with the task of delivering a box of Leo’s crap she had collected over the years. I had put it in my closet and forgotten about it, but I found it as I was packing for my own trip to college on a warm evening in late July. I threw in a couple of shots of my senior portrait that he had requested and hefted the box up for the short walk to his house. I wasn’t just delivering the breakup box; Leo had finished getting my car in safe running condition and I was going to get it.
    As I walked to his house, I stopped to adjust the box in my arms, shifting some of the contents inside in the process. I looked down and saw a framed picture of Leo and Leslie from Homecoming last fall. I didn’t remember who took the picture, but they caught my friends in a tender moment. They were lost in a kiss on the dance floor, Leslie with her Homecoming Queen crown perched in her hair. His arms were wrapped securely around her in a loving embrace and her fingers were laced behind his neck. You could see their smiles in their kiss, their mouths pulled up slightly at the corners, cheeks rounded. It was the perfect picture of eternal youth and love. My heart swelled with love for both of them, and god it hurt at the same time. I couldn’t deny that, I couldn’t run away from that. It hurt.
    Leo and I never talked about that kiss. I was a terrible best friend. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen, because even all of that time later, my lips still felt the weight of his when I thought about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Leslie. And I should have, damn I know I should have, but I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose my best friend, not when I had already lost so much. I was pretty sure Leo never said anything to her, either. We went on as usual. We were still friends. We still fought like grade school children, and when things became too much at home, he and Leslie were always there to whisk me away. Once in a while, I’d catch him staring at me with a deep, thoughtful look on his face. Most of the time, he would hastily look away, but a few times I would stare back and wonder if he were thinking about that forbidden moment we shared. Then my face would glow an awful red, he’d smile devilishly, and I’d look away with irritation.
    I looked away from the picture in the box. I didn’t know what he was going to do with it, if he would hold on to it and look at it sometimes, if he’d put it on his bedside table after he moved out of his