I love her! She's like a martian!

"Luke?"  I questioned, almost stupidly.

"Yeah," she paused, then continued.  "He was with a girl."

"Okay?"

"And she had a massive rock on her hand."

"Oh, yeah probably his cousin he told me about.  What'd she look like?"

"Thin.  Pretty.  Red hair.  But I don't think..."

I cut her off.  "Yeah, that sounds like his cousin Victoria.  I saw a picture of them on Facebook."

"No, Aleah.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't his cousin."

"Why?"

"They were sitting across from each other holding hands at a table," she blurted out.

I froze.  My stomach immediately started churning.  "What?" I squeaked out.

"Listen, I can't talk much longer.  I don't think Luke saw me.  I was at some cafe in town.  I just wanted to let you know."

We got off the phone then, and I was dumbfounded.  Could I have been that stupid to believe that Luke was a better guy than what he appears?  I started thinking back to all of our conversations, and his weird "quirks" that I had written off to him being so "private."  I assumed this is why he didn't want a "Facebook official" relationship.  Every ounce of my being wanted to respond back to Luke's texts then.  I was furious.  I felt tears well up in my eyes.  I felt betrayed.

I slammed my phone down on the bed next to me and hoisted myself up.  I involuntarily made a disgusted noise.  I unpacked, which consisted of me throwing everything into the dirty clothes.

I couldn't focus on anything except how angry I was.  I had forgotten all about Luke's text messages, and was focused on the seemingly lies and non-truths of our relationship.

Not having any of my roommates there in this moment made me feel empty.  I snatched my phone off of the bed and started scrolling up and down my contacts, not really looking at the names, trying to think of who I could call.  I knew Elena was doing some cake tasting today, so I didn't want to bother her.  Sarah was unavailable.  Maddie wasn't in town.

I sighed heavily and called Joe.  No answer.

I scrolled through my contacts again and let it stop, and it landed on the letter F.  I squinted at the name.  Falon.

Falon had been my other best friend in high school.  Kind of like Zach and I, once we went to college, we kind of drifted apart.  But during high school, we were inseparable.  We had nicknamed each other "Fal" and "Al."  She and I had similar personalities, but opposite interests.  She was much more outgoing than I, and "involved."  She was in show choir, was vice president of student counsel, and worked on the sets of all the plays and musicals.  She also had been in charge of the yearbook, and so she and I occupied the most pages.  We always reconnected over the summer when she was back from school.  She had gone to Azusa Pacific University in California and was majoring in Nursing.  She was not interested in athletics like I had been.  She also was beautiful, but had never had a boyfriend.  She seemed to always crush on guys that were "unattainable," but I think that was just her way of avoiding being hurt.  She was half Native American, with jet black hair and dark eyes.  She had kept her hair very short in high school and was obsessed with brand names.  She got along with everyone, but we always came back to each other. I loved her dearly and we had been the best of friends. No matter how much time we spent apart and didn't talk, it was like none had elapsed when we reconnected.

I figured since school was out for me, she was probably back in Nebraska now.  I clicked on her name and hit the call button.  It rang twice before she answered.

"Hello?"

"Hey!  Falon?  It's Aleah."

There was a moment of silence.  "Duh.  Girl, you know I got your number!"

I laughed.  "What are you doing?  Where are you?  Are you back?"  I asked excitedly.  Just hearing her voice made me all giddy.

"Well, I just got to the parents' about... mmmm.. 8 minutes ago?  So basically, 8 minutes too long to not have called you, right?"

"Of course!  When will your mom release you from your grasp?"  I sat there with the mental image of Falon being pinned to the ground in a bear hug by her mom.  Falon and her mom were best friends.  As in, if I hadn't existed in high school, her mom would've been her partner in crime.  And although they were bests, I knew that Falon had felt suffocated by her mom a lot of times.

"She's smothering me already," she whispered.  Her voice then raised to normal volume, "I can probably come over for dinner tonight?"

"Yes, please!  I'll text you the address."

When we got off the phone, I sent her my address.  The past two summers when she came back into town, we had gotten together and had taco night.  It was like our thing, I guess.

I put on some black spandex athletic capris, and an oversized tshirt.  I opted for running shoes, and threw my hair up into a messy/bumpy ponytail.  I decided to run to the grocery store to everything we needed, so we'd be prepared.  I mentally made a list of items to get, and in addition to the taco supplies I noted to get sweet tea vodka, lemonade, and to try to find Mean Girls on DVD somewhere.  That our movie, and sadly, my copy had disappeared during the school year.  I knew we would just binge on food, alcohol, and movies, so I didn't need to actually get dressed nice.

After arriving back at my apartment, I cleaned up a bit and put everything away.  This was the first time either of us had "our own place," even though it was just my on-campus housing, it wasn't one of our parents' houses, which is where we usually crashed.  I happily put the copy of Mean Girls I found in the $5 bin at Walmart on the DVD rack.  After I sent Falon the text where I lived, she had told me she'd be over about 7 p.m.

I checked the time and saw it was 6:30.  I decided to jump on Facebook and see if there was any sign of Luke and his cousin/fiancee on there.  When I logged on. I saw I had a few notifications and a new message.  I always save my messages for last, because I love getting them randomly.  Falon knew this, and I figured she had probably sent me a message telling me how excited she was for tonight.

On my notifications I saw I had 14 likes on the picture I had uploaded earlier of my face with Mean Girls right next to it, and a super cheesy smile plastered on me.  There was a comment on the picture from Falon stating: That is SO fetch!

I laughed and commented back: Oh, it's like slang, from... England!

I also had an invite to play Farmville.  People still play that?  Annoying.

I then smiled in anticipation of the message, and clicked on my message.  The smile immediately washed off my face when I saw who it was from.

Victoria.