Just What I Needed

Just What I Needed (6)

"Miss Jones is coming again on Saturday morning," Keely told Haley as they settled in the red luxurious couches that graced the coffee shop room inside of their school. "I mean, I was amazing as usual," she let go of her traditional humbleness for the replacement of humour. "But, I guess, Joseph might have been a bit of help," Keely grinned.

"Well, that's great," Haley muttered suddenly tapping her foot inconsistently.

For some reason, the tapping annoyed Keely beyond belief. Maybe it was because Haley couldn't hold a tune in her foot.

But it was most probably because Keely hadn't slept in a real bed the night before. After Joe walked home - having stayed for dinner at her house instead of the tuna casserole waiting for him at home - she had grabbed her guitar.

Only wanting to find somewhere quiet, she meandered all the way to the back of her property's fifty acres. She wandered until she found the hay waggon. Keely liked playing there almost as much as she adored playing on the deck, but there was nothing significant about the old wooden waggon sitting on the edge of the forest line. No memories to keep her company or haunt her, depending on Keely's mood.

Though that might be the reason she liked it.

When she sat on the deck, Keely would play other artists' songs, like her mother had. But when she was out back, she mostly wrote her own songs. With no sound besides the hoot of an owl or the spine quivering lonely sound of the coyote.

Keely had woken up, her arm stretched over the guitar, and the rest of her body wrapped around the curves of the old acoustic fender guitar while the sun rose.

"Could you stop that?!" Keely burst out suddenly.

Startled, Haley stopped immediately. Her expression changing from shock into wariness.

It was then Keely realized what was making her best friend so on edge, and felt abruptly terrible. But she didn't apologize to Haley, first of all, Keely found that - on occasion - apologizing made the problem worse, and secondly, that she really thought Hales should be over it by now, or at least close to there.

Even when it had started, Keely had been against the entire concept.

Joe and Haley started - break to puke silently in your mouth - dating.

And - as Keely had predicted voicelessly - it had only ended in tears. And instead of being the three musketeers, they now only talked through Keely. Which was really becoming a pain.

Because they were undisputed Keely's favourite people in the entire universe. And they had always been there, and been there together.

"What are you doing on Saturday night?" Haley asked out of the blue.

"Can't do Saturday," Keely informed her, in an almost computer voice. She was going through her personal planner, which was in her head. She had spent her last Saturday night with Haley, so this Saturday, she was hanging with Joe. And Keely told Haley that much, and then winced the moment the words were out of her mouth.

"Oh, okay... I've got to go," with just those six words of warning, Haley grabbed her bag and rushed out of the room.

"Hales!" Keely called, following her at a much slower pace. She just couldn't understand why Haley reacted that way to Joe's name. They had only dated for a few months, and they weren't even in love.

If her two best friends had been in love, Keely would know it.

Careful to watch where her own feet were going, Keely made her way through the crammed doorway with her head down.