"Dunn!" Jamie called from a distance as her bearded companion attempted to mess with Bam yet again. She knew it was going to be bad when she saw him pick up a chainsaw. Stepping closer, she said to herself, "Will this madness never end?"
She'd seen many a prank over the past five years. Back then, she might have even been the biggest jokester out of the three of them. The day she met Bam, Dunn was pushing him in a shopping cart, and he flew over the pavement into the curb over and over again. She watched from her car for a while before walking over and asking what the two idiots were doing. Dunn simply replied "We're bored." After a bit of coaxing, she joined them. She gained two things that day: a broken arm and a new set of friends.
"What?" Dunn shouted through his thick red beard that never seemed to look quite right with his blonde hair. Jamie watched in horror as he lifted the chainsaw and took it to Bam's favorite car (he owned several); a purple Lamborghini.
Jamie took a few steps closer and yelled, "Ryan Dunn! I know you can hear me!"
Dunn shut off the chainsaw and walked over to her, covering her mouth with his hand. "Shh! You're going to wake him up," he said.
"Oh yeah, like the chainsaw wasn't doing a good enough job of that already," she said sarcastically, "One day without chaos, that's all I ask."
"Oh come on, this is hilarious. You love this kind of stuff!" Dunn said.
"I used to love this kind of stuff," she said. She'd grown out of her joking days and baggy jeans. She'd been living in L.A. as a filmmaker with a friend of Bam's for the past year. She came back to West Chester hoping to find two mature men rather than the boys she left a year earlier.
Ryan looked at her with his head slightly tilted, puzzled. "What happened to you?" he asked.
Jamie shared a look of equal confusion and said, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Look at you. You're- You're different. What happened to the girl that skated straight into rivers and could kick some ass if she needed to?" He looked at her earrings and said "Are those pearls?" She put a hand to her ear. "Heels," he said looking at her shoes, "You're not the same girl. You're like a stranger lately."
She was becoming a bit angry. She couldn't understand how he hadn't even slightly matured over the past year. "I just wanted to spend some time with my friends and talk about life. I don't know. I hoped I'd be able to actually hold a conversation with you without someone hitting someone else upside the head or dragging us off to do some ridiculous stunt," she said.
"Look, I'm sorry. I get that you've changed, but that doesn't mean we all have to change too," he said, "Sorry we don't want to be boring."
"Oh, so I'm boring now?" she asked.
"That's not what I meant-"
"No, forget it," she said, "It's obvious you don't want me here, so I'll leave." She turned around and started walking off.
By now, Bam was wide awake and shouting out of his bedroom window about his beloved Lambo. Dunn knew he had to tell her soon, before he lost her for good. He'd been trying to deny it for so long now, but it was evident. He shouted after her, "What happened to the girl I fell in love with?"
Jamie froze in her tracks. There was no way she just heard the word 'love' come out of Dunn's mouth. She didn't even think it was in his vocabulary. She slowly turned around to face him and managed to sputter, "What?"
Dunn stepped closer to her and said, "I fell in love with you the day I met you five years ago." He took another step closer, closing the gap between them and said, "I'm still in love with you. And, dammit, I don't know what to about it." He ran his hands through his thick blonde hair in frustration. After a few moments he added sounding almost like he was going to cry, "I don't want to lose you."
Jamie was floored. She'd never heard so much emotion from Dunn in all of the years she'd known him. She looked up at him and said with as much sincerity as she possibly could, "You'll never lose me, Ryan." No one ever called him by his first name. He knew exactly what she meant without her saying it.
He gently cupped her face and pulled her closer. She leaned into his embrace and their lips met. It sent a shock down her spine; she'd been waiting for this moment for a long time. They kissed passionately for what seemed like an eternity before finally pulling apart.
Bam stood, hanging out of his window, mouth agape. After the initial shock of seeing his two best friends admitting their love for each other subsided, he shouted "It's about time!" He rushed downstairs and out the front door with his parents following close behind. He hugged the two and they all laughed for a good while.
That's how their story began… Or perhaps it began all those years ago when Jamie first jumped in that shopping cart and Dunn hesitantly launched her forward into the curb, then into the ground. Maybe it was later that night in the emergency room. No matter the time, it was undeniable; love never fades, it merely hides and turns up again when it's needed the most.