What Happens in High School

Bob’s POV

“Oh, it’s on, Toro!” I said as I threw a handful of snow at Ray. He ran to dodge the attack but Max caught him from behind and dumped an armful right into his hair. I had forgotten how fun it was to run around outside and play in the snow like a little kid. We ran around throwing snow at each other and dodging handfuls of the white powder.It was almost freeing to be outside with the two of them. I was so nervous when I first came to Jersey, thinking I wouldn’t make a single friend, but here I was acting like a little kid with not one, but two friends I’ve met since coming here. One of which happened to be my more than amazing girlfriend. The old Bob couldn’t have been more wrong about how things would turn out.

“Okay, okay! I surrender!” Max cried out as Ray held an armful of snow above her face, threatening to release it onto her if she didn’t give in. “Truce, I’m done. Now get off me!” She pushed Ray to her side and he collapsed on the ground next to her.

He laughed and replied, “Alright, alright. I’ll stop, and I think we should get inside soon or we’ll freeze to death.” With that he stood up dusting the snow from his jacket and offered a hand to Max who took it and got up herself.

In the midst of all the fun, Max and I hadn’t really had a proper greeting, so I walked over to her and put my arms around her, pulling her into a hug. She returned the gesture, wrapping her arms around my midsection and leaning her head against my chest.

“Hey there,” she said with her face somewhat buried in my jacket.

“Hey,” I returned. Ray was cool about us being together. You might think that he would be kind of uneasy about it considering they were best friends and he had always protected her like a sister, but Ray didn’t seem to mind us being together. In fact he was glad to see that Max was happy and was the person who had rooted for us in the first place. Even with this in mind, we tried to keep the PDA to a minimum.

We went inside Ray’s house and dried off. It was already freezing outside, so that mixed with our wet clothes made it almost unbearably cold. Ray lent me some dry clothes to change into and Max went into the bathroom to change into her own. While she was away, Ray and I decided to have a little, I guess you could call it, ‘heart-to-heart.’

“You know,” he started, “I’m glad you took my advice and worked things out with Max, she seems really happy now.”

“So am I, she’s an amazing person, and I’m glad I get to spend my time with her.”

Ray seemed pleased with this answer and continued. “Yeah, she really likes you too, so if you do anything to break her heart, I’ll have to kick your ass.” He said this in a joking way but I knew he was right. Max deserved the best and I only intended to give her just that. I’d never want to see her upset and I was willing to do anything to keep her happy.

“Don’t worry, man. I would never do anything to hurt Max, you can count on it.” Ray smiled and was just about to say something else when Max came back downstairs.

“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” Ray and I exchanged glances.

It would have been weird to say that we were talking about her so Ray saved both of us by replying with, “the band.” Nice save, Toro.

I tried to play along. “Yeah, the band’s going good so, that’s good.” I wasn’t as good of a liar as Ray was, but I’m sure that was a good thing.

“Wrote some new songs. You’ll get to hear them pretty soon, once they’re all together.” Max seemed to believe us and went along with it.

“I can’t wait.” She replied. Max always came to our band rehearsals, even before we were dating, and she had always been our biggest fan. I loved having her there and was becoming less nervous to play around her, which would be helpful in case we became famous; if I couldn’t play in front of my girlfriend, how would I be able to play in front of thousands of screaming fans?

We all sat in Ray’s living room for a while just talking about anything and everything. Ray and I fantasized of how our lives would be as famous rock stars and Max played along saying, “You’ll get there one day.” We just hung out and enjoyed our lazy snow-day off of school. We barely ever had days off from school due to weather back in Chicago, so this was a nice difference coming into Jersey.

“I should probably get home, my mom was worried about the snow coming down too hard.”
Max stood up as she said this.

“You want me to walk with you?” Ray offered.

I had to get home too so I cut in saying, “I’ll take her, I should probably get going too.”

“Alright. I had fun, Max. I missed you,” Ray said as he pulled her in for a hug.

“Me too. Thanks for having me over. We’ll spend another day together soon.” And with that she went upstairs to get her things. She appeared back a moment later.

“Ready?” she asked and I nodded. She gave Ray one last hug and I waved to him as we headed back to her house.

We carefully made our way down the slippery street. It had snowed so much the night before and it was still lightly coming down now. I watched as the flurries came down and landed gently on the street which was now pretty much cleared of snow, but still a little icy. I held onto Max’s hand as we walked, helping keep each other’s balance.

When we got to her house she turned to me.

“Thanks for walking me home.” She smiled that alluring smile of hers.

“Of course,” I answered. “Any time.”

I stood there just wanting to look at her, take in her beauty. Even with her hair slightly tangled from the snow and her glasses sliding down her face, she was still the most gorgeous girl in the world. “So I was thinking,” she began. “My parents wanted to meet you and your folks. Would you maybe want to come over for dinner on Saturday, you can bring Jessie too and she can meet Andy?”

I liked the idea of getting to know her parents. If I was going to be dating their daughter, I would want to do everything right. Meet the parents and have them approve. And I’m sure my parents would also like the chance to meet Max as well.

“Sounds good, I’m sure my parents would like that, and Jess could always use more friends.” We set the plans and agreed to get back to each other once we spoke to our parents about it. I hugged and kissed her goodbye as the snow came down.

“You know Gerard was right.” She looked at me a little confused. “You are an amazing kisser.”

I leaned in and planted one more kiss on her lips before she had the chance to respond. I pulled away to see her smiling at me with her cheeks flushed. I said goodbye one final time before turning and heading down the street to my house.

…

I got home and took off the clothes Ray lent me and threw them in the laundry. I’d give them to him at school the next day. I threw on my own clothes and went downstairs to find Jessie.
She was sitting on the living room floor with dolls and markers and paper all around her.
“Hey Jess.” She looked up at me as I said this.

“Hi, Bobby. Are you gonna play with me?” She held out a doll for me to take which reluctantly I did. I had really come to talk to Jessie, not to play with her. I sat down next to her as I held the doll in my hands, not really doing anything with it.

“So, Jess,” I began as she focused on her drawing. “Do want to make a new friend?” She looked up at me expectantly. Jessie was always kind of a shy kid and making friends was hard for her.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh come, but you’ll like him. He’s really nice.” I tried to make the offer sound more appealing. If I was going to bring Jess along to Max’s house I at least wanted to make sure she was okay with it.

“Who is it?”

“His name is Andrew, but he likes to be called Andy.”

“How do you know him?” she questioned.

“He’s my gir- uh, he’s Max’s brother.” A sly smile stretched across her face as she caught my slip up.

“Who’s Max?” she asked in a devious kind of sing-song voice.

I rolled my eyes and answered, “Just someone I know. So do you want to meet Andy or not?” She thought of this for a moment before responding.

“Fine, but you have to tell me who Max is, and you can’t lie. I’ll know.”

I breathed in slowly before quickly letting it out. “Okay, don’t say anything to Mom or Dad. I’ll tell them. Promise me?” She nodded her head and held out her little finger prompting me to a ‘pinky-swear.’ “Okay. Remember that girl who came over a few weeks ago? She had really long brown hair?” I asked as I tried to rekindle my little sister’s memory. She nodded and I continued, “She's Max.”

I hoped that would be enough to satisfy her suspicions but she saw right through it. “What don’t you want me to tell mommy and daddy?” I knew what she was waiting for, so I just spit it out.

“Max is my girlfriend, are you happy now that you know?” she smiled obviously pleased with this new information.

“Yes,” she answered happily. “But don’t worry, Bobby. I won’t say anything.” I looked down and smiled at her before handing back her doll and standing up.

“Good, because remember; you pinky-swore.” She let out a giggle and went back to coloring. Good, at least Jessie was on board with this. Now I just had to let my parents know.

…

“Mom? Dad?” I called into their room after knocking on the door. It was Tuesday morning. The snow had been cleared from the roads and school was back on for the day. The day off was nice while it lasted but classes had to continue eventually. My dad looked in the mirror tying his tie while my mom sat on the bed reading a book.

“Yes, Bob?”

“What are you guys doing on Saturday night?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh you know, just wondering if you wanted to meet my girlfriend?” As I said this, my mother looked up from her reading and smiled at me.

“So the date went well? I told you your hair looked nice cut short.” Leave it to my mother to create unnecessary awkwardness.

“Who is this girl?” my dad asked slipping on his jacket.

“Her name’s Max. I met her through mutual friends in the band.” I explained to my dad what my mom already knew.

“So what does this have to do with Saturday night?” questioned my father.

“Well, she invited us all over for dinner so you can meet her and her parents. She even invited Jess to meet her younger brother.” My parents gave each other a quick glance. Without even needing to say anything they came to an agreement.

“That sounds fine with us.” With that my dad kissed my mom goodbye and patted my shoulder as he walked out to leave for work.

“Thanks guys.” I sighed relieved to finally have gotten that over with.

Ray and Max showed up a few minutes later to get me for school. I got in the car saying hello to Ray and Max, taking note to keep the PDA to a minimum. I gave Ray his clothes from the day before and he thanked me. Once we got to school, I held Max’s hand as we walked through the halls. We got a few odd stares at first but ignored them. I even noticed Jack look a little pissed to see us together. Not that I cared.

We entered homeroom and spotted Gerard. This time he had moved over a seat so Max and I sat next to each other.

“Hey lovebirds," he greeted as we walked in. I rolled my eyes at him as Max proceeded to let go of my hand in order to punch him in the arm. He faked being detrimentally hurt causing Max to giggle slightly as we sat down.

Class started and I tried to focus on the lesson but Max kept distracting me. It wasn’t something she was doing, it was just her in general. I couldn’t stop my gaze from periodically falling on to her. I would have to shake this soon so I wouldn’t fail all of my classes.

The day continued on as normal. Max and I walked to class together and sat with the guys at lunch. The day went on like any other typically would. I liked how not much had changed between Max and I, well except that now we kissed, but that was one change I was willing to accept.

…

As the week continued, I waited in anticipation for our parents meeting. I knew my parents would love Max; what’s not to love about her? I had a pretty good feeling that Andy and Jess would get along. None of that was what had me worried though. I was worried of what her parents would think of me. I had always heard of girl’s fathers disapproving of their daughter’s boyfriend. I didn’t want him to be against us dating, because I loved Max too much to let her go, and secretly dating would just be wrong. I was probably just being paranoid. I took out my lip ring just in case.

We had band practice on Saturday as usual but this time Max didn’t come. She stayed home with her parents. I was still nervous and felt a little uneasy but I tried not to let it affect my drumming. We played about eight or nine songs and called it a day. I managed to play through them all without messing up too much. Even though rehearsal went relatively smoothly, Ray still noticed that something was up.

“Don’t worry Bob, you’ll be fine.” I guess Max told him about what was going on tonight. I nodded my head but didn’t actually respond.

“What’s going on?” Gerard asked putting away some equipment.

“Bob’s meeting Jane and Adam tonight.” I looked up at Ray with a look that said, ‘thanks a lot.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t want the guys to know, they just didn’t need to.

Gerard looked back at me and coolly said, “Eh man, don’t worry about it; they’re cool, they’ll love you.” I accepted Gerard’s encouragement and took his word for it. Maybe things would turn out alright.

When the time finally came to go to Max’s house, I did my best to look really nice. I showered, brushed my teeth and even shaved. I missed my scruff but it was worth losing for the night. I put on a nice shirt and some jeans trying not to look too dressy, but still presentable. I felt like I was freaking out too much over this. Max loved me and that’s all that mattered, right?

I was all ready to go and I was just waiting on my mom. I stood with my dad and sister in the living room. My dad could tell I was a little nervous and tried to offer his advice. “Bob, don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’m sure her parents are nice people and you’ll make a good impression on them.” I smiled hoping my dad was right.

My mom finally came downstairs. “Bob, did you shave?” she asked slightly shocked at my new appearance. “Look at you, you even took out that piercing. What happened to my son?” she said as she came over and took my face in her hands squeezing my cheeks.

“Okay, okay, Mom. Yes I shaved and took out the ring, but I’m growing it back out and replacing the ring later. Now can we go?” She dropped her hands and we made our way to Max’s house.

I held onto Jessie’s hand as we approached Max’s front door. I knocked and one handedly straightened my shirt. Max appeared a moment later wearing a knee length blue dress. She looked just as beautiful as ever, but her glowing smile only amped it up that much more.

She smiled and looked in my eyes with her perfect blue ones. How did I end up with a girl like her? I was the luckiest guy ever, that is, if I don’t screw up tonight.

Notes

Ugh!! I've been so sick for the past three days 'cause the dosage of my anti-depressants was increased and they already made me sick to begin with so... this sucks. Sorry I couldn't post sooner, I missed school today and yesterday so I was trying to catch up on what I missed and finish what I needed for Monday so I don't fall behind too much.

As always, enjoy the reading, I love your feedback so go ahead and leave me a comment, shoot me a message if you want to and I'll see you back here next week!!

ALSO!!!! I'm going to be creating a Tumblr account soon, mostly of my photography (which I've been doing for about three years) and probably some MCR and FOB stuff. I'll link it when it's made in case anyone is interested. That's all, carry on..