Bro Girl

I missed talking to her so much. We were on the same wavelength. We had the same interests and did a lot of things together. Seemingly we were the perfect couple, and yet we weren't. And I doubted that we ever would be.

After a moment, Jenna grinned cheekily and suggested a little dueling session in Street Fighter V, and of course, I eagerly agreed. We played and talked, and everything seemed like it had been before. As if the last year hadn't existed. I felt happy again.

And I missed our gaming sessions, too - Jenna was a hell of a gamer and we were both pretty competitive, albeit in a rather healthy way. We like to play against each other, as well as in co-op modes, like in Diablo or other games. Right now we went toe to toe in Street Fighter, and Jenna won the last fight. Her favorite character, Cammy, knocked out my Ryu.

"Ha! Still got it, baby!" she exclaimed, doing a little victory dance. It was funny because she didn't even get up from the couch. She turned to me with a wide grin. "Way to go, Lane, an A for effort, but there can only be one winner!"

"Well, congrats," I said, sticking my fist out at her. She bumped it and laughed. "That was a lucky punch though! I can see you still use your sophisticated technique of mashing all buttons!" I bantered with her.

"Yeah, for sure! Pure skill, dude!" She snorted but smiled anyway. Then she sighed lightly and said a little more seriously, "Gosh, I really needed this, Lane. Just sitting there, playing, and talking about silly stuff."

"Really no one was into gaming in college?"

"I don't know, maybe someone was but no one from my, let's call it, circle. Uh, people in general were nice, but they used to pretend to be focused only on important things, you know? Serious adult things like politics, minorities discrimination, gender war, LGBTQIA+ stuff, climate change, or... whatever," she said quite morosely, then chuckled and added, "I guess I'm not mature enough to be in such an activist mindset all the time," she giggled again.

"Oh, c'mon, how dare you think about games when we all are about to die in five years because of sea level rising? Grow up, Jenna! Do something about it! Start using paper straws wrapped in plastic, instead of those simple plastic ones, wrapped in paper, a bit of sophistication, would you? You're killing turtles for fuck's sake," I said sarcastically and she burst into laughter.

"Exactly! Silly insensitive small-town me, right?" she answered and gave me a wide, bright smile. I loved that smile...

We talked about her college friends in the context of games and other forms of entertainment for a moment. From what I could notice, Jenna had not met many people with similar views and interests there.

"So, Tyler also isn't a gamer, I assume?" I asked out of curiosity but it seemed my question surprised Jenna.

"Oh, no, he isn't a gamer at all..." She looked as if she wanted to add something but hesitated.

Her tone was pretty normal but I knew her way too well. Because of the way she quickly glanced at me before answering, I sensed that something wasn't exactly perfect between her and Tyler...

...and it instantly made me happy. As quickly as this feeling appeared I started to feel like shit again. I shouldn't be glad that something was wrong in her relationship. So selfish, so immature...

Jenna didn't say anything else about Tyler and quickly changed the topic back to the games again. I didn't feel like digging into that matter either. Eventually, she would tell me, as she always did. And when it would happen, I had to be a better friend...

Soon after that Jenna launched the new God of War game and we tried it, playing in turns and talking all the time. We had a great time and I felt like she left for college only for a few days, not months.

It was getting late though and we stopped playing. Jenna went with me to our backyards.

When I was next to the fence, she said, "Hey, how about tomorrow we go on the long walk? I want to see if something has changed in town."

She used another inside joke which we told when one of us was out of Marietta for a short period of time. It was a form of absurd, as in towns like ours, nothing really changed in years. However, this time Jenna was out for a really long time.

I smiled at her and answered jokingly, "Sure! You're gonna have your mind blow away, Kendall, when you see all these new buildings and investments."

"Hah! Definitely! So, for tomorrow, Monroe!" she said with a wide grin, using my surname too. That was just our thing.

I was about to go to my side of the backyard when she grabbed my shoulder and suddenly pulled me into a hug.

"I missed you so much, dude!" she whispered to my ear and squeezed me firmly. I could observe in my own body that her muscles were not only for a show. She was really strong.

I embraced her waist and reciprocated the hug. "I missed you too, dork!"

She hugged me for a bit longer than she usually did. In the past, we hugged occasionally, mostly during saying birthday or Christmas wishes or congratulating on something. Sometimes when one of us was downbeat. Just the normal, casual hugs friends do.

This time holding her body was much different for me. I felt the warmth of her breath, the silkiness of her skin on her forearms on my neck. I smelled her hair and body. This hug was weirdly intimate for me, for the first time I was holding her in my arms not like a friend, but a girl I had feelings for. The girl I was physically attracted to.

And my body began to see it that way too. Fortunately, before Jenna could feel anything, she released me from the hug. Thankfully, it would be unbearably awkward.

"See ya!" she said cheerfully and went back to her house.

And I went to mine, feeling a bit overwhelmed and dumbfounded, but happy. And very much aroused. But of that latter problem, I could take care of. I was an expert in it like every eighteen-year-old virgin guy was.

***

The next day, right at noon, I went to Jenna's front door and knocked. She had texted me earlier that I had better put on long pants because we were going on a mysterious trip.

Jenna opened the door and came out with a big smile. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and had on a baseball cap with her ponytail going through the clasp. She also had a backpack with her, which surprised me a bit.

"So, what's the mystery, huh? Where are we going?" I asked her, pointing to her backpack. "What do you have there?"

"Supplies, Mister Frodo. We're going on an adventure!" she said, trying to sound like Gandalf, or maybe more like Samwise.

"Where?" I asked, laughing.

"On the Red River!" Jenna answered, grinning broadly.

"Oh, wow, pretty long trip, but okay!" I replied, rather surprised.

It was indeed a long walk, about two hours or so, but Jenna's enthusiasm was so contagious that I didn't complain at all. We had been there several times in the past. Besides, I got to spend so much time with her, and I was looking forward to it.

I took the backpack from her, even though she resisted at first. I knew she could carry it, but I just wanted to be a gentleman. Of course, Jenna didn't miss the opportunity to tease me a bit about it, but I thought she liked it anyway. The backpack was quite heavy, though. She must have packed a lot of 'supplies'.

Of course, we took shortcuts and roads unknown even to regular visitors through the unimpressive topography of Marietta. Even though we knew Marietta wasn't anything special, we always joked that the only Love you could find in our town was the name of the county. Jenna, however, seemed very excited to be home. She was very talkative and looked for even the smallest changes in our town. I asked her about it.

"Are you really so happy to be back in our dullsville? Even after seeing the beautiful and vibrant Dallas?"

"Yes, especially after seeing Dallas. I didn't feel comfortable in such a big city. It was like keeping your head in a beehive," she stated so firmly that I looked at her in surprise.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really. Wait. Stop for a moment," she said suddenly, holding my arm. "Do you hear that?"

I did as she asked and strained my ears, but I couldn't hear anything in particular. I didn't know what she meant.

"What? I don't hear anything."

She gave me a big grin. "Exactly! It's so quiet in here."

I laughed. "Hah, when did you start to appreciate such things? Did you magically age fifty years in Dallas?"

"To be honest, the year away from here made me realize that. Okay, Dallas is great and all, you've got everything there, shops, gyms and so on, but... I just wasn't a fan of the noise and the crowds and..." Jenna stopped suddenly and looked at me, as if she thought she was being too serious. She smiled a little awkwardly and said in a different tone, "I guess I'm just a small-town parochial girl, haha!"

"Small-town, sure, but provincial? Definitely not!" I replied, smiling at her too.

"Awww! So you don't think I'm totally lame?" she asked and jovially nudged me in the ribs.

"You are, but I like it. And that makes two of us," I said, and we both laughed.

We were about to enter one of our few city parks, Shellenberger Park, when I turned to Jenna and said, "Take a deep breath, Kendall, and brace yourself. There are a lot of changes going on at the park."

"Oh?" That was her only response. She furrowed her eyebrows.

As we walked further into the park, she realized what I meant. Our favorite playground from our childhood was being renovated along with the rest of the park. All the swings, monkey bars, carousels, and so on were being dismantled. The construction workers also dug up all the benches and ripped up the old asphalt in the alleys.

"Oh man, they totally ruined it. When did that happen?" Jenna asked, scowling a little sadly.

"At the beginning of spring. Since then they've only managed to destroy everything, but let's hope our grandkids will have a nice new playground," I replied sarcastically, but it was partially true. Hardly anything was renovated in Marietta, and if it was, it took ages to finish the work.

Jenna laughed softly, but without much humor. She looked around with a thoughtful expression on her face.

"So many memories with this playground..." she said, more to herself than to me. Then she turned to me and asked, "Our favorite bench is gone too?"

"Yup."

"Damn, you weren't kidding about my mind being blown by the changes," Jenna said, more cheerfully this time. After a short pause she added, "Well, I guess it's all for the better, right? This playground hasn't been refurbished since we were kids."

"Exactly. Some of this equipment was more suited to the challenges of the Squid Game than a safe place for kids," I said, and we both laughed.

Then we walked through the suburbs of Marietta, if you could call it that, since the whole city was full of such infrastructure and buildings. After walking down more and more secluded streets, we finally reached our destination. The "beautiful" brownish waters of the Red River were visible a couple of yards in front of us.

It was quite a hike and I was sweating, though more from the weather than the effort. It was a very hot day. Of course, Jenna had an amazing cardio, so her breathing didn't even increase a bit.

"Isn't it beautiful? It looks like a river full of..." I paused on purpose, curious if Jenna would finish the sentence. And of course she did. She always had.

"...of fucking diarrhea! Haha!" she said with a wide grin and we both burst out laughing.

Jenna picked a spot and I put her backpack down. She took out a small blanket that we could barely fit on unless we sat very close to each other. Which we did.

It was... different being so close to her. I could smell her shampoo, our arms brushed against each other, and I could see the freckles on her nose and cheeks. She only had them in the summer and I had always found them a subject to tease her about. Right now I thought she looked cute and girlish with them. They made her look young, less serious and even a little impishly And her gray eyes looked very bright in this light, almost silver or something.

Jenna gave me a can of grape soda and for a moment we just sat and drank, looking at the river. It was really nice to sit with her. Even the mosquitoes knew better than to ruin our little escapade and didn't bother us.

"Remember Matthew Bondarchuk? You know, that fat jerk who was always trying to bully us?" Jenna asked suddenly and I cut her off, obviously knowing who she meant.

"The fucking Snorlax? Of course, I remember. What about him?"

We call that boy Snorlax because he resembled the Pokemon of that name. Big, fat, with a perpetually red face and small, narrow eyes, and slow, both physically and mentally. He wasn't challenged though, he was just really mean and stupid. Matt was two years older than Jenna, and he was bullied by his peers, so he liked to hassle younger kids out of some wicked sense of revenge. Yeah, speaking of the vicious cycle of bullying...

"Hah, the fucking Snorlax, right. Ah, when we were in the park, I just thought of a situation with him," Jenna said, looking at me with a hard-to-read expression on her face. Then she looked back at the river.

"Which one?"

"Remember when I had really short hair? I was eleven, I think." She suddenly changed the subject, but I began to realize what situation she had in mind.

"Yeah, you looked like Eleven from Stranger Things, but sadly without the powers," I said with a smile and she chuckled softly. "You got that haircut because of Mike, right?"

"Yes! I thought I was going to kill him! He got this weird toy, a figurine of something, never mind, but it came with a plastic egg full of disgusting slime. And he put it in my hair while I was sleeping!" Jenna said with amusement, but also with a fair amount of annoyance.

"He was a little devil when he was young," I said, shaking my head with a smile.

I remembered how angry Jenna had been, but even that couldn't compare to the fury of her mother, Lucy. The slime dried in Jenna's hair and there was no way to get rid of it except to cut her hair very short. Jenna was devastated and Mikey was grounded for weeks.

"Yeah, he was a little troll." She also shook her head and smiled. "Anyway, I probably never told you this, but back then, having that haircut was horrible for me. Yes, I know, there are worse things, but it was a nightmare. Even before that, I was very insecure about my hair. It was thin and ugly, mousy in color. And having a jarhead style didn't do me any favors..."

" C'mon, you didn't look that bad. You have a very pleasantly... shaped head, so you can pull off all those edgy hairstyles," I said this funny compliment to cheer her up a bit because she was getting really nostalgic.

"I did!" Jenna insisted with a smile. "But just like now, back then you didn't let me think for a moment that I looked weird. You don't know how much that meant to me. And when Bondarchuk started insulting me..."

"Oh, I forgot that dipshit was still in the story," I joked, a little awkwardly now that I knew what situation Jenna had in mind.

"Yeah. I remember that day perfectly," Jenna said with a kind of melancholic smile. "We were in the park, sitting on our bench. You were doing everything you could to distract me from my hair tragedy. And then that idiot showed up."

"On his stupid scooter. I still don't know how his weight didn't destroy it."

"That's true," Jenna said briefly, keeping her eyes on the second bank of the river. After a short pause, she continued, "The moment he saw me, I knew he wouldn't miss this opportunity, not for anything in the world. It was a perfect moment for him."

I said nothing, just waited for her to tell the whole story. I remembered the situation, though not in as much detail as Jenna. It must have been a much more significant event for her.

"He cackled and yelled: Kendall, you look so ugly! Like a fucking dyke! with his stupid asthmatic voice," Jenna said in a cheerless tone. Then she looked at me. "I'm sure I didn't know exactly what that term meant back then, but I knew it was a bad slur."

She snorted with laughter and turned to me. "And you didn't know either, for sure, because you immediately countered with 'Your dad is a fucking dyke! That made him so mad!"

"I remember that, hah! He started chasing me around the benches."

"Yeah, it looked hilarious because he obviously couldn't catch you. But the best part was that you were running in circles and still dissing him! Man, you were epic at that moment!"

"Oh, come on..." I waved my hand, feeling a little embarrassed by what Jenna was saying. She was treating me like I was a hero. And it was weird, but also a little pleasant. But still weird.

"No, you were amazing, Lane," she said firmly. "You totally roasted him. Do you remember exactly what you yelled at him?"

"Not really, maybe something about dykes?" I replied uncertainly, but I didn't really remember.

"You were rhyming on the fly! That was so funny! 'Your dad is a dyke and he lives with a guy named Mike' or 'Your dad is a dyke and he likes to sit on a spike'!" Jenna said in a slightly hoarse voice and laughed. "I have no idea how you came up with all those lines, but it made Bondarchuk so furious."

"Well, I paid for it with a few bruises next time, but it was totally worth it," I said, shrugging my shoulders and trying to sound cool as a cucumber. But hearing all that was like ambrosia for my ego, I won't lie.

"I know," Jenna said softly, in an emotional voice.

And suddenly she put her hand on the back of my neck and kissed me on the cheek. She pressed her lips against my skin for a few seconds. Then she slowly pulled away and sighed. Surprised, I turned my face, not knowing what to think. Her lips were so close, slightly parted, as if awaiting. She looked at me with teary eyes.

Did she want me to kiss her back? Should I do that? What the hell was going on? But before anything else could happen, my stupid mind decided to ruin it.

Almost involuntarily, I snorted and asked, "What was that for?"

And that was it - whatever weird energy there was between us for that split second, it completely disappeared. I wanted to punch myself in the balls. I should follow my hunch, for crying out loud!

Jenna laughed, too, and turned her face away. She wiped her eyes discreetly. Again, she turned her gaze to the opposite bank of the river.

"For defending my honor against Snorlax. I guess I never thanked you properly for that."

"Oh, it was nothing, really..." For God knows what reason, I tried to brush it off, but Jenna was having none of it.

"No, Lane, it wasn't nothing. It was very important to me. Sure, crying over short hair might be considered silly, but I remember being vulnerable and... alone. And you supported me and proved that you had my back no matter what! I cried and laughed at the same time when I saw you running away from Bondarchuk. That was the first time I saw you as more than just a nice kid to hang out with. I knew you were my best friend, someone very special to me," Jenna finished, clearing her throat a few times as if to get rid of some lumps.

I could feel that she was very emotional and apparently, it was contagious, because my eyes got a little wet, too. Or someone on the Texas side of the river was chopping a shitload of onions.

"Hey, you're special to me too, Jenna," I said, tapping her lightly on the arm, trying to break the tension, but still sounding serious. "And you always had my back, too! Remember when we went to that creepy abandoned building and some fucking old wacko jumped on me? You threw an apple at the back of his head! That was amazing! I still can't believe the Dodgers didn't draft you as a pitcher!

And finally, it was effective. Jenna laughed heartily. She grabbed her backpack.