Here For You by Denise Muniz

him, almost like a group shot. Behind him was the scene of a beach. The women were wearing bikinis and the guy’s, swimming trunks. His chest was bare with small circles of glistening wet drops, and what seemed like a new tattoo on his ribs but I couldn’t figure out what it was. A woman with wavy blonde hair had her arms wrapped around his waist, smiling. I hadn’t heard from James since my date, which was almost a week now. He said he’d been crazy busy with ‘work and shit.’
    There was a time when we wouldn’t have gone a day without talking to each other. It didn’t matter what we were doing, or what time of the day it was, we always spoke. Now it was like we could go a few days or a week without communication. It seemed to be okay with him. He had always been the one to have people around him all the time. For me, it was a little different. If I wasn’t talking to James, Emma, Grey or my dad, I wasn’t talking to anybody. It was very hard to trust people. Growing up and always moving around taught me not to get too attached to people until we moved out here and knew we were going to stay. You have to choose those that you want to get close to, that you wouldn’t mind them knowing about your life. People out there only want to get in to become a snake, to manipulate. I’m thankful for my two best friends: James and Emma.
    Emma kept clicking through pictures and I noticed that the blonde was in almost all of them. Whatever. He seemed like he was having fun anyway. Yeah, enough fun with his new friends to forget all about me. But that’s what happens when someone moves away, everything goes with them. You’re just in the back of everyone’s mind because you decided to stay. I tried to text him as much as I could but I didn’t want him to think that I was stalking him or something. I just missed him.
    Emma had her own life. I couldn’t expect her to drop what she was doing just to keep me company. Although, she was always there for me, like she was now. I just called her and said I needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t James. If James knew what Grey had said then he would probably knock him out. Probably .
    “Hey, Emma, when is Richard coming down?” I asked her, remembering her telling me something about it at the party. I’d told James, but she never mentioned it again.
    She swirled around in the chair. “Oh shit, I totally forgot! Good thing you reminded me. He’s coming this weekend,” she said, all nonchalant, like I was supposed to know that.
    This weekend? Leave it to Emma to forget important shit. That was in like three days. “Seriously, Emma? You couldn’t tell me this earlier?” Now I was going to have to call James and ask him where I could find a good priced hotel near where he lives. We needed to figure out where Emma and Richard were going to stay…wait. “Didn’t you say something about him being at his cousin’s house or some shit like that?” I asked her as I reached for my phone. I needed to text James real quick.
    Me: Hey punk, Emma’s boyfriend is coming up this weekend. Just wanted to let u know. I’ll text u later (10:32pm)
    “Oh, about that…” Here comes the bad news. “His cousin got evicted.”
    Oh great.
    I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t freaking out about this.
    “Emma!” Why did I have to be the adult in this situation? “Do you guys know where you’re staying?”
    She shook her head no, still besotted with the computer. “Do you not see the problem here?” I asked. I was right behind her now. I had to pack, before I knew it, it’d be time to leave.
    She replied, “I got everything under control, don’t worry.” Easier said than done.
    “Really, how?” I wanted to hear this. She was always fashionably late to everything. I’m pretty sure this was no different.
    She sat up straight, turning her head toward me. “Just trust me, okay?”
    “Yeah sure, whatever. I have to tell Gre...” I couldn’t finish the sentence because she