What did I do?

It was that night of the school year that I had asked myself that for the first time. 

Kayden and I were best friends. Every freaking body knew that. We were always together, in school, in lunch, heck we even had dinner in each other’s houses.

Some people in the school thought that it was weird that a guy and a girl who weren’t dating hung out with each other so much. Kayden was kind of popular and I was kind of not. But I wasn’t one of those people who liked to keep to themselves. I did weird stuff and I went to parties, I enjoyed my high school as much as I could. I was good in studies and was going to business school next year.

And I had enough extracurriculars to get me a decent scholarship, not that I needed it, my dad probably had enough money to buy the whole college. Or maybe not. Harvard is a big college.

Kayden was the kind of guy, whose smile made half of the girls swoon, but it made me want to punch him in the face since the last time I'd seen that smile was when he had accidentally spilt a whole glass of milkshake down my shirt. 

It was nearing the end of the school year. I was at the lunch table eating sandwich and Kayden as usual just came and snatched it out of my hands.

“Hey!” I protested.

“You have got to listen to this.” He pulled out his phone and shoved it in my face.

“Get it out of my face!” I snapped and took the phone from him. “No way. Liz manors is back? God I hate her.”

Kayden nodded, working his filthy mouth on my sandwich. 

I kicked him under the table as he yelped. "Aren’t you too strong for a girl?”

“Aren’t you too dumb for a human?” I shot back.

He shrugged. “So do you want to go to Rodney’s party?”

“ The guy who touches peoples butts for fun?” I asked.

Kayden nodded. “Hell yeah!” I said.

Kayden grinned and shook his head.

I got up and grabbed his bag. He had one of those nerdy locks on them that required a code. I knew him too well to not know the code. 

“ What are you doing?” He asked.

“ Stealing.” I said opening his bag. “ your money.”

He got up and tried to wrestle the bag, sorry to say he lost, badly. I had no idea how he had muscles. They were of practically no use. Or he let me win, either way, I got his money and a new sandwich, which was a complete waste since he ate that as well.

I was about to slap him silly when one of his friends came up to us and asked Kayden if he wanted to join them for a drink in the evening.

Kayden looked at me and said that he was busy. Which was true we were having a movie night today.

I kind of loved him for that. He never cancelled the plans that he had made with me until and unless it was really important. I mean it wasn’t like I called and he was there, he still rejected some stuff because he had other plans, but he never cancelled the plans that he'd already made before.

“ Sorry guys, he’s with me today.” I said putting my arm around his shoulder.

They just shrugged and moved forward, guess they were used to this, as it happened more times than you could count.

We'd decided to have a star wars marathon, but we ended up watching typical high school movies.

“ Who gave the idea of making these movies. You get your hopes up way too much when you are just about to go into high school. Even freaking Disney exaggerates. The most interesting thing that had ever happened in our school is when a guy got trampled by a loose horse. Remember?” I asked Kayden, nudging him with my leg.

“ Yeah.” He laughed. “good times.”

“ The guy got fifteen stitches. It certainly wasn’t good times for him.”

“ Poor bastard.”

I leaned over for the remote. “Screw this we are watching Riverdale.”

“ No. I don’t wanna.” He whined.

I glared at him.” Stop me.”

He tried to wrestle the remote out of my hands and he managed to, then he held the remote up in the air, his hands stretched. I jumped trying to get it from him.

I climbed on the sofa and wrapped my arms around his neck. After about fifteen minutes of trying to get the remote from each other, we collapsed on the sofa in a fit of laughter.

“ That was way more fun than drinking.” He said once he caught his breath.

“ Your mom and dad are out, pretty sure we could do that too,” I mumbled, clutching my side. “Damn, my jaw hurts from smiling too long.”

Our eyes met, we were still smiling. Suddenly his smile faded and he removed my leg from his stomach. He cleared his throat.

“ What time is it, Clara?” He asked ruffling his hair.

“ I dunno, I am not your clock am I?” I said jokingly.

He checked the clock and cursed. “It’s like one a.m.”

“So?” I scoffed. “ you know my parents don’t care where I am, or they would’ve called an hour ago.”

“ No.” He frowned. “ tomorrow… today I mean. Our projects due and we didn’t even start on it. It counts as fifty per cent of our grade.”

“ Shit.” I muttered. “um…okay. Uh, we can pull an all-nighter but at my house. We have a small stationery for everything that might need for a school project.”

He nodded and we locked up his house and headed over to mine.

We did finish the project but during the painting part we ended up doused from head to toe in paint. 

“Great.” Kayden mumbled. “ where will I find a new shirt?”

“ You can always wear one of my dresses.”

Kayden scoffed. “Yeah right.” 

“ Don’t worry you can wear one of dad’s shirts and.” I looked down. “Pants.”

Kayden rolled his eyes. 

“So you sleeping with me?” I asked

Usually, he wouldn’t have minded, we’d been friends forever. It wasn’t weird for us to be sharing a bed, but he shook his head and said that he should probably use a mattress. I gave him a look. “Really?”

He nodded. 

I shrugged and pulled out a mattress and set it out, as soon as I did he collapsed on it. We didn’t have much time to sleep, maybe two hours 

It was almost the end of the year and there was our prom next week and then graduation. So the next day we found ourselves at a party. The usual fun, drinks and playing stupid games, I didn’t see Kayden much during the party. He was probably somewhere with his friends playing beer pong or making out with girls, which was gross. He was like a brother to me, but I could talk to him about anything, which you can’t do with a real brother. 

It was a decent party, not many people, some people were drunk and trying to dismantle a radio to see how it worked, or they weren’t drunk and were just weird.

In the middle of the party, almost everybody was ushered to play a game of spin the bottle. People protested, but with Kristina there, nobody could say no to her. She was like a ball of energy and saying no to her about anything was like kicking a puppy in the face.

After about fifteen minutes of missing people, the bottle landed on me and Kayden, which was disgusting since he was like a brother. 

I straight up refused at first, but after a few minutes of persuasion I gave in. Kayden leaned over, it barely lasted two seconds before he pulled away.

I laughed uncomfortably. 

“Come on.” I nudged his arm. “It wasn’t that bad.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked away.

The party had turned more awkward than I would’ve preferred, so I made my excuses and headed back got my house. Kayden didn’t offer to ‘escort’ me like he usually did.

I walked home alone but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought that it would be. We pretended that nothing happened and everything was great till prom though I wish it hadn’t happened. After prom I didn’t talk to him, ever and I still don’t know what happened. 

I got him a date, because I figured that was what friends do. When I told him that he smiled. One of his fake ones. Something was bothering him, I asked him but he shook me off. 

I tried to poke him for the truth, but he was acting so closed off, that I left him. I didn’t want to, but he was this close to saying it himself and I wanted to save him the pain of saying it to me. 

I got myself a date and I instantly ran to Kayden to tell him that I did, he grinned and congratulated me, but he didn’t sound as excited as he normally would have. He looked more dejected than happy.

“ Okay what is up with you?” I asked.

“ You have been acting weird all week and I think that you are hiding something from me. What is it? And I won't go until you tell me the truth.”

He shook his head. “ I guess that I am bummed out that school is about to be over in a matter of time, I guess I’m going to miss all the people and you when I go to college.”

That was enough reason to be bummed out I figured, so I agreed with him and we spent the rest of the day talking about how depressing our lives were.

Soon, prom came and so did that horrible night, after which I didn’t talk to Kayden again. Ever.

We carpooled to go to the dance. I still couldn’t figure out why Kayden was bummed. His date looked straight up hot. I’d got him a good one, he should’ve been thankful for it, but he was ignoring his date like she was a piece of rock.

We entered the hall. The school had done a great job of decorating for the theme under the sea. The lights were hues of blues and greens and teal and aqua coloured satin banners hung all over the place. 

We ate and drank punch for the start of it and then the slow dances came up. Matt, my date leaned down and placed a kiss on my lips, when I pulled away, I noticed that Kayden wasn’t there anymore, Keira was sitting cross-legged on chair and she looked mad.

I excused myself and went to find him, I went around the gym but couldn’t see him , so I went out the gym and roamed around the halls till I saw him just outside the second door to the gym. I ran up to him.

“ What happened?” I asked.

He looked angry. "You never know what happened, do you?” He said softly. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”

“No we are going to clear this once and for all. What is your problem?” 

“You. You are my problem, you can never tell anything, can you? You think that you are so smart just because you get good grades and got into Harvard, well guess what you are so dumb that you can’t even tell when someone is mad at you and when they are not. You don’t see the obvious, even if it dances in front of you naked!” He was breathing heavily.

What the hell happened to him? He was never like this. Whatever it was, I wasn’t just going to stand here and let him scream at me for something that wasn’t even my fault. 

“ I didn’t do anything! What is your problem, have you finally gone insane?” I yelled.

“ You still don’t know what happened, do you? You're so pathetic.”

I scoffed. “ I am pathetic?” Now I was getting angry. “ You are the one that had a psychological breakdown for no apparent reason.”

“ So you still don’t know what happened? God!” He slammed his fist into the nearest wall. “ shut up!”

“ What did I do?” I yelled. “ TELL ME!”

He shook his head. “ if you don’t know, then I am not going to tell you.”

“ Screw you!” I yelled and stormed off.

This was the first time that we had fought and the last time.

I thought that we would get back to how we were before it and I kept expecting him to come apologise, I didn’t say sorry because I wasn’t. Io had doe nothing that I knew of. I tried to catch his eye in school multiple numbers of times but he always managed to avoid me.

I should've tried to talk to him but I admit that my ego wouldn’t let me be the first one to say something.

The days passed and soon graduation came, we still hadn’t talked. By now I had managed to force my ego down and I went to talk to him.  

“ What did I do?” I whispered as I dragged him in the hall.

He jerked his arm out of my grip and gave me a cold hard look. “ nothing.”

That was the last time that we had talked. 

Now ten years later, lying in bed in my mansion I’m still asking myself the same thing. What did I do?