I haven't written in just about forever – and I honestly am immensely guilty about that. Between my last entry and now, a lot has happened, and all that has culminated in the dilemma that I suffer today. Which is, to say, whether or not I should attend the Fourth of July beach party I was invited to.

Before all that, however, there was that trouble that I mentioned. I called up Luke that next morning, twiddling my fingers in hope that he was awake (mind you, it was probably still dark in the East Coast), needing to unload my baggage on someone that I could trust. He was, thankfully, awake – although not wide awake like I wished he was. Instead, he was only half awake, which meant that I had to deal with a grumpy old man who wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and to enjoy some shut-eye – something that I had, with my phone call, denied him of.

"What?!" He nearly yelled at me, voice heavy with the need to sleep.

"Were you even listening?" I nearly yelled back.

"No!" He answered loudly. "You've been going back and forth and back and forth and I have no idea what the fuck you're saying!"

"Luke, I – I was saying I missed you, man."

"Like hell you do. You haven't called me in forever and now you call me all blubbering and stuttering like an idiot, the way you always do when you have boy troubles."

"I don't – I - ...Okay, maybe I do, but hear me out, okay? I've just been kind of busy settling down here and so I didn't call you, okay?" I bit my lip slightly, hoping that Luke wouldn't see through my white lie – something that was perfectly wishful thinking, of course:

"Right. So much that you've forgotten about me. Well, at least I don't have to worry about you not settling down in California. You're a big boy now, and you're settling down quickly and making new friends that you've forgotten your own big brother."

"I haven't forgotten you."

"That or you've been too busy staring at some hot guy to remember that I'm sitting here sick and worried for you half the time."

Bingo. He'd hit the nail in the head, as much as I disliked it. Except it was two guys, and not just one. Two guys that are so charmingly beautiful and attractive that it almost felt like the heavens were playing a trick on me, cackling deviously at the fool who had so angrily sworn off ever being together with another person again as the said fool takes interest in not one, but two people. I couldn't help it, either, I was surrounded by incredibly good-looking angels everywhere, from corner to corner, each one equipped with either a killer smile or a killer pout. It was easy to ignore those things, but it wasn't that easy to ignore it all when the killer smiles were tied to killer personalities that made me feel happy with every moment that I spent around them. I wasn't in love – not yet, at least. It was just that warmth, that feeling that you feel just as you feel closer to a person, and as you grow closer, it gets warmer and warmer, like a sort of warm glow in your chest. I wasn't ready to let that happen – and so I decided to lock up that romantic part of me in a dark part of my mind, and tried to ignore his screams as much as I could.

But I couldn't deny that I felt especially nice around Evan – he seemed to understand me and tolerate me and he didn't mind my blundering bum or my stammering mouth. Most of all, he seemed to genuinely like me for who I was, not because I told funny jokes and made him look good. He seemed like someone I could really become great friends with, and someone I could confide in. At the same time, I felt the same strain around Brandon, albeit slightly duller and slightly colder. They were similar, I concluded of the two, with the main and possibly the most drastic difference being in their demeanor. Brandon had a colder, more cynical and weary look in his eyes, whilst Evan was warm and boundlessly energetic. As attractive as they both were to me, I refused to let myself fall in love with them.

But I digress again. I was speaking on the phone to Luke, and my silence to his statement was met with a triumphant, yet disappointed little sigh.

"Bullseye."

I returned his sigh with my own. "Look, Luke… I'm sorry."

"I know you are. I'm sorry myself." There it was again, Luke being the generous big brother and letting me have my way. It was that thing that he did – apologizing first (even when it wasn't his fault), being understanding and gentle and stepping away from any conflict that we had – and it all made me feel terrible for being the mean guy. He was too kind and too good, and I felt miserable for that. It made me more compelled to apologize even more, and it made me even more compelled to atone for my sins.

"Look…Is there any way at all that I can make you feel better? I'm really sorry, Luke. I just want to make it up to you."

But I was milking it. I was using that syrupy, overly sweet voice I used ever since I was little – the one that I used when I wanted to charm my way into someone's good books. It was how – despite my tendency to be the class clown – the teachers could never seem to fault me. At least, not seriously enough. It was all too easy – thicken the accent, sound really innocent and sweet…

I suppose it had an effect on Luke, too, because he had to clear his throat and growl at me to stop using that voice, and that it was hard to stay angry at me when I was doing that.

"Does that mean I'm forgiven?" I asked softly.

"Yeah, as much as I hate it," Luke replied, his voice gruff and still dripping with a humored annoyance. "Just make sure that I know if you're still alive every once in a while. What's up this time, anyway? Which guy stole your heart this time?"

I grimaced. "Guys. And I'm not in love, I just feel like… if I'm careless… I might be."

"God damn, Jonathan. It's been forever. You've gotta get over it and let go. Date someone new, get laid, I don't care. Just let go of him. You can't keep pining away forever and not let yourself be with anybody else just because he's gone. It's time to move on, Jonathan, and you know it."

I knew he would say that – he's always been saying that. But I couldn't. I couldn't let my heart be moved by another again, not after the one man that stole my heart vanished. I couldn't let myself feel that sort of affection again after swinging back and forth between anger that he had probably let me down and hope that he would eventually return. I couldn't love whilst wondering if he was still out there loving me or if he had truly left me without a single thought of me. I couldn't love whilst I was left hanging.

But Luke thought differently. He held on to hope just like I did at first, and kept telling me that he was probably fine. Whenever he could, he held my hand when I thought I was about to cry from despair. He'd held me whenever I was crying because I was practically losing the plot. But after some time, that hope vanished within him. He wasn't certain what had happened to the man I loved, but he chalked it down to either him secretly eloping with someone else or him being killed in a crash without any identification. I wasn't ready to believe either – but he didn't care. All he was sure of was that he wasn't coming back. At that point, slowly, he told me to cop on and deal with it. And so I did, for the most part. I went back to my life and wrote the feelings away. I stopped crying, and I stopped pining – but it never stopped me wondering and hoping, and neither did it stop me from being afraid to ever be in love again.

I'd decided then that Luke wasn't going to convince me and neither was I going to change Luke's mind about what my next course of action should be, and so I decided to cut that part of the conversation short and change the subject.

"Ugh, this is getting too cheesy for me," I complained. "Have you sent my stuff out yet?"

"Nope," he deadpanned. "I was actually rather tempted to burn them instead, since I figured out you didn't really care about them or me anymore."

"Oh come on, you're still on about that?!"

But I had to laugh. This felt more familiar, and I honestly missed hearing Luke's voice as well as the way he'd speak to me. Over here, nobody reached that level of crassness that Luke seemed to always bring around, but at least he was honest and just about as genuine as anybody could get.

And so I was in hysterics the whole time that I was on the phone with my big brother for the first time in what felt like forever, talking about my new life here, the new people I've met since I last called him, the insane weather and how embarrassed I was in my first meeting with Evan. Yet, despite all that, one of the ghosts of my past still haunted me, hanging over me as I laughed, as if it were waiting to pounce.

It got so bad that the moment I got off the phone with Luke, I was dying to distract myself so that I wouldn't think about the man I loved. I quickly left the empty apartment and knocked on my neighbors' door, hoping that they would head occupy my time with some activity that they had come up with for the rest of the day.

When I knocked, however, everything else was silent. There was not a single sound coming from within the apartment, and neither was there a response to my call. My apartment was silent, and so was theirs. They were, evidently, not at home.

I considered for a moment where I would go to spend my day. I could wander about Los Angeles and do some window-shopping of my own. I could go about taking pictures for my emails to Luke, or I could simply drop by Mrs. Sandler's place and have tea with her (and possibly learn a trick or two in the kitchen for the sake of my and Evan's sanity).

Yet there was the beach, right there through the windows, staring at me and calling out to me with its siren song. There was already so much familiarity within it that I was drawn to it, and unknowingly, I was already walking towards the golden glimmer that was the beach.

I had a difficult time picking out a single familiar face through the thick crowds that had gathered around the volleyball nets as well as by the shoreline. I must've looked like a complete fool, standing there squinting in the distance as I looked around for any signs of Marcel or Scott or David or Alex or…

"Jonathan, right?" A voice called out from the (surprisingly empty) bar.

I turned about sharply on my heel, not quite sure what to expect other than Diane standing there, a look of sharp disapproval on her face and her hands on her hips. What I saw was only very slightly different – her hands were not on her hips, but outstretched, gesturing for me to come closer to her. I obliged quickly, unsure, yet afraid to incur her wrath.

"I thought I recognized you." She muttered as I came closer. "None of them are here right now. They're off to somewhere I don't know to eat and shop and probably won't drop back until much later."

"Oh." I simply breathed.

Her eyes narrowed as she took a moment to study me once more, as if she did not get a chance to study me thoroughly enough the first time through. This time, however, she studied me with a critical eye, searching for something within my own eyes for a long while before the harshness in her demeanor subsided slowly, as if she found what she wanted to find. I was definitely painfully curious about what she thought about me, but I couldn't speak in the face of the lioness herself.

She leaned in towards me and whispered, "Be careful around Brandon."

I blinked stupidly. "What?"

"I said, be careful around Brandon. He's a coward and he'll break your heart."

"I don't –"

"No, you do," she cut in. "He's irresistible and you know it. And you're the exact type he'd go for."

"How'd – how would you know that?" I tried to challenge weakly, only for her to glance at me incredulously.

"I dated him. I've known him forever now. I'm still working with him – that is, whenever I'm not doing my own shoots or helping out at this bar. He broke my heart for someone like you, and ended breaking the poor boy's heart too. And trust me, he's interested in you. His eyes are so empty, but they flicker so slightly when you appear or when you're mentioned. You don't see it, but I do. And I'm telling you to be careful unless you want your heart to be broken by this coward of a man."

Suddenly I understood the reasons behind the visceral reactions that Marcel and Scott had when Brandon was mentioned. There was that wonderfully bitter picture that Diane had painted for them, one that portrayed Brandon as a heartless coward who used trickery and deception to break as many hearts as he could. He was a playboy, a heartbreaker, the big bad man who broke her apart and left destruction in his wake. And it was all that that I was not ready to believe. He had seemed like a perfectly fine, a perfectly attractive and amiable person when we first met. He had seemed like an interesting enough individual to hang around with, and he had not been the playboy Diane had made him out to be. There was that lack of interest in everybody – as if he saw them as people and not as playthings. It was all that perfection that made my heart steer into a dangerous direction around him, and it was also all that that made me resistant to Diane's words.

In that same moment I also thought I saw Diane a little clearer. She wasn't as beautiful as she was on the outside, or as perfect as she was on the outside. Her eyes, despite being the same olive as David's, were nowhere near as warm. Her lopsided grin seemed almost like a dark, manipulative smirk, as if she were gloating about something terrible. I wasn't sure if I intensely disliked her yet, but I didn't have the best of opinions of her.

"He doesn't seem like that. He hasn't 'played' a single person ever since I met him." I pointed out.

A mirthful laugh escaped her lips. "He's got his eyes on you, Jonathan. He's not going to pay attention to anyone else other than you. That is, until he decides he's had enough fun. He's not a serial playboy, Jonathan, he's in for the long haul. And if I were you, I'd stay well away."

She conjured a cup from nowhere and took a sip, before starting again –

"Of course, I can't control you. I can only warn you but I can't make you not fall for him, can I?" She sighed softly and sorrowfully, so sadly that I might have felt terrible for her if not for her bitterness. "And I can't blame you for your heart, either. I can't even blame his when he…"

Her voice trailed off, and her gaze became slightly distant. She was remembering something – perhaps something bittersweet, for she carried a pained smile on her face as she immersed herself in her recollections. The scene before me had such a melancholic quality that I chose not to disrupt it. After all, I had something else to think about.

"He's got his eyes on you, Jonathan."

My heart swelled rather uncomfortably at that idea. I loved it and hated it at the same time. It was nice feeling liked and appreciated, but it was… painful knowing that he felt what I felt. The mutuality of our attraction for each other would mean an impending relationship, which, in my current state, was impending doom instead. I liked him, and he liked me back. But a relationship was impossible, and that added to the hurt.

"Hey, uh," Diane's voice cut in once more, her voice lighter this time. "On another note, Alex and the guys are holding a huge beach party on the Fourth of July. I've been told to tell you about it and invite you while they're all away. So… Please come to the beach party?"

I shot her an incredulous look. I wasn't quite sure what she wanted from me – she sounded incredibly sincere in her invite, as if she really, truly wanted me to be there, and that she really, truly wanted to know me better. Yet, her words from mere minutes ago seemed so hostile and so unwelcoming, as if she didn't like the idea of me, or of Brandon, or of me and Brandon.

She answered my look with a soft sigh. "Sure, I know, I'm a big meanie for saying all that. I don't care. Come to the beach party, anyway. Everybody wants to see you there. Even I do."

She turned away to serve a group of people who had begun to gather at the bar, and the chatter began to flood and drown out everything else that I could hear. Slowly, I walked away from the bar and towards the shoreline. I settled myself down a nice distance away from the water, lying my body down on the warm sand as the sunlight filtered through the clouds and the warmth of it all gently caressed my face. It was there that I spent possibly eons staring at the familiar sky and the familiar clouds, listening to the waves crash against the rocks nearby almost as if it were dancing to the beat of the music in the background. The solitude was calming and surprisingly welcome – it gave berth for reflection and space for myself. Everything was so peaceful, so calm, and the clouds above were forming mesmerizing patterns…

I think I must've daydreamt, or fallen half asleep right there and then, because the next thing I knew, a handsome face was staring down at me from the slightly darkening sky above me.

The face began to speak. "I'm surprised you could sleep like that. It's hot and it's bright."

I sat up almost immediately, my heart nearly jumping out of my chest. Of all the people I had to see, I saw one of the two people I didn't expect to see that early that day. It took me some time before I could regain myself and turn back to look into his brown eyes.

"I didn't expect you to be here that early, Evan."

"Early?" He shot me a look. "It's nearly dinnertime, silly. I came back and you weren't home, so I figured you were probably here. I just didn't realize it's so comfy that you'd be taking a good long nap here."

"I didn't think… I didn't think I'd fall asleep," I murmured, and looked around us before commenting, "Everyone's gone, now."

"Yeah," Evan replied, making himself comfortable beside me. "Well, no complaints here. The quiet's nice every once in a while."

An appreciative silence fell upon the both of us then, and it was another moment before he spoke again –

"Regardless… I'm not quite sure how you can spend all your time here for the past… I don't know how long."

"I have friends, you know," I bit back. "Everything's better with friends."

He chuckled, and patted my shoulder gently, sending a jolt of electricity straight through my body and down my front. "I suppose so."

I wasn't quite sure if I was in Heaven or in Hell in that one split second of physical contact that we had. Looking back, it was definitely an overreaction on my part, and he probably meant it as a friendly gesture – one that I had, in my confused mind, thought of something a little more. It was that combination of attraction and generally feeling great around him that might've made me feel that way, but in any case, I didn't want to feel that way. I drew my feelings back as quickly as I felt it, catching my heart in my hands before it flew away in my roommate's direction.

He spoke once more. "So are you ever going to introduce me to these new friends of yours, or are you going to keep them all to yourself?"

He was smiling at me, his eyebrows raised in a questioning, yet joking fashion. I could feel my cheeks burning away under his glance, and I barely was able to tear my eyes away from him just as another voice called out –

"Jonathan!"

I quickly whipped around, taking the chance to hide my face from Evan.

There they were, all my new friends heading towards me. Marcel was waving at me with both his arms up in the air, whilst Scott flipped me off from a distance. Alex's small frame was being piggybacked by Brandon, who flashed me a killer smile that was somehow able to stab me straight through the heart from that far away. David, on the other hand, looked absolutely embarrassed by them, and had his shaking head in his hands.

"I see they're here," Evan breathed, before hastily adding as he tried to stand, "I think I should go. I –"

"Don't."

I grabbed onto his hand quickly, the grains of sand rubbing between our skin. His skin was warm and his palm was slightly wet and most of all, my system was short circuiting under the delight of contact, but I held onto his hand for dear life. I needed him to be there for me. I wanted him to know my new friends, and I wanted to include him in my life. It was the very least I could do for him after not being in his for far too long.

"There you aaaare," Alex sang as she hopped off Brandon's shoulders and leapt towards me. "We thought you weren't coming today, and then we came back and Diane said you're heeeere."

"Uh, guys," I began. "This, uh, this is Evan. My roommate. Evan, this is Brandon, David and his sister Alex. And I think you've already met Marcel and Scott."

"Hi guys," Evan began awkwardly, his shoulders still tense and his fingers painfully and firmly wrapped around mine, possibly crushing them in the process. He wasn't exactly comfortable in the presence of new people, and I understood exactly how he felt. A part of my mind wondered how a person like him could be that intensely uncomfortable in a new social setting. He was good-looking, and he was funny and charming – a complete contrast to how he was acting then.

Brandon was the first to react. He held his hand out to Evan and they shook hands quite mechanically, eyeing each other and examining each other thoroughly. I was reminded of the jocks in the football team back in school sizing each other up before a match – and Evan and Brandon had a similar air about them, except they were smiling the entire time.

"I'd have thought you were his boyfriend, but it seems you're just his roommate," Brandon laughed, an almost insincere note buried in his laugh. "You two are holding hands like you'd die if you let go."

Flustered, we let go of each other's hands, trying to explain the situation without it sounding odd – but no matter how we tried (or at least, no matter how I tried), it still sounded weird. In the end, we both gave up and settled for the idea that we were simply playing around. By the end of it, however, the rest were in giggling fits. It was then that we both gave up entirely and joined in the laughter. Not a single one was spared – perhaps except Brandon, who had a coy smile upon his face that seemed to hide a million words from me.

"Anyway," Marcel began, wiping his eyes as the last of his laughs escaped him. "Sorry about leaving you alone here. We were hungry, Alex wanted to buy some stuff, so we ran off without thinking much. I think Diane told you about the Fourth of July beach party?"

I nodded, but Evan shook his head and turned towards me instead.

"They've organized one for the Fourth of July," I told him. "I was asked to come."

"You can come if you like, too," Alex piped up, her voice slightly higher than usual. "It's open for everybody to come, anyway."

"I don't know… it's your party –"

"– which you are very free to attend," Brandon cut in. "Just come. At the very least, come and accompany Jonathan. He'll want his dear roommate to be around, won't you, Jonathan?"

"Y-yeah…" I said after a long pause. It wasn't that I didn't want him to come – but I was very sure I wasn't ready to see beach Evan. Casual Evan was already pretty enough.

Evan thought about it for a while, nibbling on his lower lip as he considered hesitantly whilst everybody else around us begged him to come. Everybody seemed interested in getting to know the golden man, and everybody wanted his presence at the party. I didn't blame them – he did, after all, look like the sort of person that you wanted to get to know straight off the bat.

"Alright. I'll be there."

A cheer erupted from my new friends – a cheer of joy, of happiness, of anticipation. I wasn't quite that enthusiastic, and suddenly, I didn't know if I wanted to go for the Fourth of July party anymore. I was suddenly really scared of what might come from it, and what might ensue.

The Fourth of July. Everybody associates the day with fireworks and celebrations, and I associate it with what is singularly both the most amazing and the worst experience of my life. At least, that's what I associate it with this year's Fourth of July.

I was still unsure if I wanted to go for the party on the day itself. Yep – on the morning of the Fourth of July, I moped about the apartment, dressed in my pajamas and unsure if I should even go to a party that I half-promised that I would go to. I did everything except prepare myself for the party – I slumped on a couch and ate a good portion of a can of Pringles, and I reclined against a lounger by the pool. I even returned to bed, sleepless, hoping I wouldn't have to think about the dilemma if I fell asleep. But I didn't, and I was caught between my choices. On top of that, I was bored to death.

I had been waiting for ages for my stuff to arrive. Luke dropped me a message earlier that week about him sending out my things, and amongst the things that I neglected to bring in my luggage that I missed terribly were all my games. I was aching to play something, and I missed the thrill and the escape that playing games gave me. It would've been a great distraction in all the mild internal turmoil that I had been going through, but the postal services seemed to have decided that they would deny me that joy with their incompetence.

"I still haven't got my stuff. I'm bored to… I don't know, death." I told Luke over the phone for the second time in less than a day. "I wanna play something but there's nothing here. I've even checked with the post offices and everything but there's nothing."

"I don't know, man, but you can't expect it to appear out of nowhere. I've only mailed it for a couple of days, it'll take some time."

"But I'm bored," I drawled lazily. "I'm bored and I wanna play something."

"God damn it, you sound like a little kid." Luke grumbled. "Get off your ass and do something. Go read something. Or just do your favorite and write a story."

"I'm out of ideas." I complained.

"Well, that's a first," he replied, sounding genuinely surprised. "I've never heard you say that before. Does your brain ever run out of ideas?"

"As of these days, yeah. I can't write more than a page before I feel like jumping off a cliff."

Silence came from the other end, before a loud screech sounded in the background.

"Maybe you should," he finally said. "Then at least you'd have something to do. Maybe you should hook up with whichever hot guy you've set your sights upon."

Another screech sounded in the background.

"First – I don't like heights," I defended. "And you know the second part is impossible for now. Anyway, you aren't servicing your dearest again, are you?"

"Hey, she's high maintenance but she's absolutely beautiful, okay. I just needed to tighten a few bolts here and there and she'll be perfect."

I could never understand his love for his cars, especially not the sleek white-and-black one that ran the fastest. I didn't even know what it brand or model it was, and although I had some idea of the specifics that came with it – horsepower, you name it – I was barely interested. Somehow, along the way as we grew up, whilst we developed similar interests and personalities, Luke and I also deviated in ways. He was almost your stereotypical Southern guy: cars, guns, women, slang and all. I had the accent and the colorful Southern vocabulary, but the rest – not quite. What kept him away from the stereotype was that he wasn't half as crazy as the stereotype made us out to be. Instead, I took on the crazy (somewhat). I was insane, hopping mad. I was delirious (I liked that word.).

"Yeah, I know, I'm boring you just talking to you about this baby right here."

"I'm – I'm not. I mean – I'm bored, but not because of you." I sputtered out.

"Whatever," Luke barely enunciated, grunting as if something were between his teeth. "Do something. I bet L.A. has lots of things to do. Tonight, especially. Don't you have some party to go to?"

"Do you have some cross-country mind reading device or something?" I quickly replied. "That's freaky as shit. And yes, I do but I don't know if I should go."

"Go, then. It won't kill you."

At that point there was a click at the door just as Luke hung up, and a beautiful presence entered the room, glowing and shimmering and sending my heart pounding against my chest. It's been what felt like ages now, but Evan's appearance anywhere always seemed to be able to knock the air out of my chest every single time. I suppose he was one of those people who held the definition of being breathtakingly beautiful, and I disliked myself for liking that.

"What're you doing?" He asked, eyes wide with surprise. "It's nearly time for the party at the beach!"

"And what're you doing here? Shouldn't you be there?" I shot back.

He looked away, a slight glint of guilt in his eyes. "I… I wanted to change before I went."

"Really?"

He stared at him steadily until he broke under my glare. "Okay, okay… I was thinking of skipping it. I mean… I don't even know them, they probably won't notice if I wasn't there..."

"I would. And I would scream at you the next time I see you if you weren't there."

"You probably would." He sighed, and walked over to settle beside me on the couch. "What're you doing, then? You should be there by now. Unless you're planning the same as I was."

He glanced at me for a moment before continuing. "You were, weren't you?"

It was my turn to sigh. "Yeah." Because I thought you were going.

"D'you think we should still go?" He asked after a pause. "I don't think they'll take very lightly to the both of us missing it."

"They won't."

"Then change up and we'll go, I guess."

He slid off the couch, pulling off his shirt as he walked into his room. For a full ten seconds, I had a glorious view of the muscles on his back. I liked it, and I hated that I liked it.

In little to no time at all, we were trudging along the road towards the beach, the loud music already blaring and the countless bright lights shining and blinking away just as the sun was beginning to set and the sky was caught in the brilliant mixture of pink and purple. Everything was ridiculously colorful, with glow sticks of various sizes scattered across the sand. Despite the convivial atmosphere that was starting to reach us, neither Evan nor I were as enthusiastic. We both shared the same dour, dreary mood, although I was pretty sure we had entirely different reasons for it.

It was easy enough to find the group – they were adorned by the most numbers of glow sticks, and even had taken to painting parts of their faces in red, blue and white. They seemed to be getting into the entire celebratory spirit already, even before the sun had set and the fireworks had went. Their enthusiasm seemed contagious enough, and I was sorely tempted simply by their candor to feel enthused and excited.

"Jonathan! Evan!" Alex called out as we approached them. "Thank God you guys came. We kept waiting for you guys, but none of you showed up and we thought you guys bailed on us. We really wanted you guys around, you know. Do you want a drink? Or if you guys are hungry, I can get you guys a skewer from the pit."

"Both sound great, actually," Evan moaned, clutching his stomach slightly. He was hungry – and I was too, to be quite honest. We might not have been quite in the mood for partying hard, but we were definitely famished. It didn't help that we could smell something faintly barbequing away in all its savory goodness.

"Yeah, both sound great," I agreed. "Tell you what, I'll go get us some drinks, and Alex can grab some choice pieces from the pit."

She flashed us a brilliant, devious smile. "I'll bully the guys at the pit for the best stuff. Just you wait!"

I wasn't at all surprised that Evan returned her smile – not at all. I wasn't even surprised that his smile was stunning, as it always was. I was more surprised by the way he looked at her, the way he looked as he smiled back at her. There was a sort of warm glow about it, one that made him sparkle a little bit and make him even more attractive than he already was. I wasn't exactly sure what that look was supposed to be, but I had a nasty suspicion what it might be and what it might all lead to.

It was a short moment before I could tear my eyes away from the man before me. Alex had already set off to do her part for us, and so I did as well, heading towards the bar where Diane stood watching us from a distance.

"You're not tending the bar?" I asked, keeping all emotion out of my voice as best as I could. I still could remember our rather frosty conversation from some time before, and whilst I wasn't sure if I felt great about her, I wasn't going to be nasty to her straight off the bat. It was, after all, the Fourth of July. Even if I wasn't in a party-hard mood, I wasn't going to be a completely party pooper, and I certainly wasn't going to dampen somebody else's spirits.

Her eyes flickered instantly to me as I approached her, and she welcomed me with her usual wary glare that wore down to something a little warmer.

"Not really. It's free for all, but I'll still grab you a drink if you like." She replied. "I think Alex likes him. Your roommate, I hear?"

"Evan." I told her.

"Well, I think she likes him. I know my younger sister like the back of my hand. She's unusually cheery and chatty, which means she's interested. And I think he likes her back – somewhat."

"He's just being nice. He's always nice."

"Eh," She shrugged almost nonchalantly, and handed me two cups of ice-cold drinks that she carelessly grabbed from a tray on the other side of the counter. "I don't care. It doesn't affect me in any way, so it doesn't matter to me and I don't care. But you do."

I took the drinks from her and raised an eyebrow. "I do?"

She smirked in that fashion that I really hated – it was as if she was gloating and mocking me whilst amusing herself all at once. "When you look at him, you have that same dumb look that you have when you talk about Brandon."

"I don't." Never have I wanted to hide my face more from her. Not only have we started our relationship off on a rocky note, she was able to see through me almost instantly, and I felt incredibly stupid trying to cover up everything in front of her prying eyes.

"Whatever keeps you happy, Johnny."

"Don't call me that."

"Right. Jonathan."

She turned away to tend to the quickly-emptying tray on the other side of the bar counter, and I simply slipped away, having had nothing more to say. I wasn't going to subscribe to that idea, as attractive as Evan was. But I also wasn't quite ready to subscribe to the idea of Evan and Alex being together romantically. I hadn't even considered the possibility of the wonderful roommate that was Evan dating someone. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it – on one hand, I was happy that he might have found someone that he's happy with, but on another, I wasn't too glad that I had to share someone that I just got to know with someone else that soon.

"What's this?" Evan queried almost a little too happily as I approached him with the drinks and traded it with a skewer.

I took a sip. The drink was overwhelmingly sweet, yet it stung with a bite of acidity and the slight burn of alcohol. I wasn't quite clear with this combination, but there was a distinctive taste of pineapple as well as rum within it.

"Pineapple juice with a splash of rum, I think." I answered, taking another intrigued sip. "It's actually really nice."

"Yeah. Alex says her sister's got a taste for these sort of things. That's her by the bar, isn't it?" He nodded towards the area that I just came from. "She keeps looking over at us."

"Yeah, never mind that," I told him. "You look like you're enjoying yourself."

Evan flashed another brilliant smile at me. "Actually, yes. Alex has a way of getting people hyped up. That girl's got some really great energy going around her."

The way he spoke her name – so full of interest and admiration – put me off slightly. I hadn't ever heard him say anybody's name like that before, and suddenly, I felt like I needed to drown everything out with my drink, as if the slightest splash of alcohol in the drink could somehow wash it all away. And so I hurriedly downed my drink, coughing and spluttering as the sudden burn of the alcohol met my throat. It seemed there was more alcohol in the drink than I had anticipated.

"Easy there," Evan laughed, gently patting my back as I struggled to regain myself. When I did, he held his drink in front of me, still smiling like a god.

"I'm not sure if it's a great idea, but you can have mine. Go slowly with this one."

I took the drink from him mindlessly, hands still shaking slightly from the stress of my coughing fit – although I was pretty sure a good part of the shaking came from the fact that he had his large, warm hands running along my back and his lips curved into the most godlike smile I had ever seen.

I was, however, distracted by something else almost immediately. Not too far away from us, a new song began, with the music blaring loudly from a number of huge speakers near a platform. The song was immensely familiar – something I think I grew up on – but I couldn't put my finger on what its title was. It reminded me vaguely of carnival music at first, before the rhythmic drumbeat chimed in alongside the vocals –

"WOULDN'T IT BE NICE IF WE WERE OLDER, AND WE DIDN'T HAVE TO WAIT SO LONG?!"

I winced slightly. Just as I remembered what the name of the song was, I was delivered with what was possibly the worst rendition of it that I would ever hear. The culprit at hand - a brown-haired man that looked much younger than me – stepped up onto a platform with the microphone in his hands, continuing to sing as if he were the best singer in the world. Red-faced, he slurred out his lyrics as he swayed from side to side, and suddenly, despite being initially irked by his terrible singing, I felt bad for him. He was drunker than everybody else, and he was publicly airing his drunkenness at the expense of his dignity.

Evan, however, let out a small laugh beside me. I shot an incredulous look at him, not quite sure what he was finding funny.

"What?" I asked him.

"Looks like everybody's having fun." He replied simply, and took my hand in his. "Come on, let's get a little bit closer."

"Close-?!" I barely managed as he dragged me along with him closer to the platform. Any protest that I had vanished, and I could only focus on one thing. His hands were really warm.

As we made our way through the crowd, a few familiar faces popped up into view. Alex was cheering the man on enthusiastically at the bottom of the platform, alongside David, Scott and Marcel. Not long after we caught sight of her, she cheerily clambered up onto the platform, taking the singing man by an arm, and began singing along with him.

Evan was right – everybody did seem to be having fun. Alex sang her heart out, not caring if she was off key or if she didn't quite sound perfect, beckoning to her friends at the foot of the platform as she did. David shook his head, uninterested, but Marcel and Scott negated his reluctance almost immediately, dragging him playfully up onto the platform with them. Arm in arm, they gathered together to sing without a care in the world. I watched them, almost mystified, slowly downing my new cup of drink as I did.

"Wouldn't it be nice?"

The crowd burst into a mixture of applause, cheers and whooping as the song finally came to an end, with the group on the stage laughing their guts out. They must have caught a glimpse of me and Evan at some point, because Alex soon pointed in our general direction as she snatched the microphone from someone in the group and announced –

"This song goes out to the Beach Booty Boys, aka Jonathan and Evan down there. I see ya!"

A roar of laughter burst out from within the crowd as she addressed us. Evan joined in as well, as if he understood the joke. I didn't.

I think Evan saw the confusion on my face, then, because he quickly turned to explain to me over the commotion. "It's - uh – their new nickname for all of us. According to Alex, that is."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Beats me. They think it's funny."

But I was barely listening. In the distance, a thunderous bang sounded, and soon the sky lit up with an amazing red light. The red suddenly split in the sky, bursting into countless fragments of blinding colors that lingered in the sky for a moment before they fell and faded. Another thunderous clap pierced the air, and the sky lit up once more, illuminating the dark night sky with its light, before shattering into a gazillion petals of brilliant bright light.

It was a stunning sight to behold.

I stood there, looking silly, watching as the sky lit up before me again and again. At some point, I felt an arm slide under my right arm and over my left shoulder. I turned, my head beginning to spin a little, and for a moment I thought I would see Evan – but Evan was on my other side, his large, warm hand still gripping onto my left hand. Instead, Brandon stood before me, charming smile and all, dark hair slightly matted and wet.

"Hey," he said loudly over the continued bursts of fireworks. "Like what you see?"

I sure did. The fireworks were amazing, but Brandon looked amazing as well – at least, that's what my swirling head thought. Somehow, everything was becoming blurry and my head was swimming more and more, but I wasn't about to collapse. It was a pleasant sort of swirling, the one that made one feel lightheaded in a good way, like there wasn't anything that they needed to care about in the world. I wasn't quite sure of how it happened, but instead of answering Brandon, I started giggling instead.

"I'll take that as a yes," Brandon replied, smiling with a hint of incredulity. "Hi, Evan."

Evan returned his greeting quietly over the continued explosions in the sky as well as my compulsive giggling. He carried the same expression that Brandon did – and for a moment, looking at the both of them, I confirmed why I had a terrible crush on the both of them at the same time. They were so similar in ways, yet different in others, and no matter how many times I note that to myself, the similarity kept striking me hard. In the state that I was, the similarity charmed me even further.

From thereon it was just a downhill tumble.

At some point in the night, everybody else joined us. Alex came back with gazillions of skewers which I think I devoured with such insane zeal it was funny to me and just about everybody else who wasn't grossed out by my eating habit, and David made a point of whipping a guitar out of nowhere and gracing our ears with a couple of songs he wrote on his own. For a person with the oddest accent on the planet that I had ever heard, he sang incredibly clearly and beautifully – not that I was the best judge at that point. At another point, a group of teenagers came running past us with some water guns and sprayed us down with them, to the ire of David and to the amusement of the rest of us. I vaguely remembered keeling over in the sand slightly as I laughed myself silly, euphoric, and when I stood up again, the world whirled around me on the spot.

My legs stopped being able to cooperate with my barely functioning head then. They gave way quickly, and I wobbled on the spot, tipping over almost immediately.

"Whoah there!"

I felt Evan's hands on my back, large and warm and calming. He held onto me as I sagged, my weight pressing onto his body. I couldn't think.

"Are you okay?" He asked, concerned.

I looked around groggily, everything still somewhat weirdly amusing to me. Brandon's eyes bore into mine from a distance, worry building up behind the mask of coolness he held his face in.

"'Mo-kay." I slurred. I wasn't even sure if I had said anything else or if I had even said it correctly at all, but it was these words and my continued slumping that made Evan cut our little outing on Independence Day short. He promptly announced to everybody that he was taking me home, and with surprisingly little effort, lifted me onto his back and piggy-backed me away from the crowds and the music and the shouts of joy that surrounded us. I would've felt more apologetic for leaving everybody that early, but everything was just a blur of faces and noises and people and I wasn't sure what exactly was going on any longer. There were very few things that I was sure of from that point onwards.

But I was sure when I woke up that something odd had happened. I was in my bed, partially undressed and all, but my head hurt. I felt like something was awfully missing from my system, and if felt like sheer misery. Something that gave me joy the night before was gone, and I badly wished that it could come back.

Outside of my room, two voices were arguing in hushed voices – one high, and one low. It took me some time before I could properly make out what they were saying.

"Look, I'm really sorry that happened. Nobody knew what was going on, we were all a little buzzed from the drinks –"

"And you guys couldn't keep an eye on the consumables? You guys were the ones who organized the party!"

Evan's voice came out in a rough hiss, and for a moment I was startled. In the time that I've had him as a roommate, I haven't heard him that angry before. Of course, I didn't get to see much of him, but it still shocked me that he was capable of that level of fury.

"Well – we didn't expect something like that to happen!" The other voice quietly shot back. Alex, I thought. I wondered what she was doing there, then.

She continued after a short, tense silence between them both. "Diane thinks it's one of the people on bar duty last night. She doesn't know who, but she thinks one of them messed with some of the drinks."

Evan let out a heavy sigh. "Was it just Jonathan?"

"Apparently not." Alex returned his sigh. "Some time after you guys left, one of the kids who drank more than he should have passed out foaming at the mouth."

"OD?"

Silence, followed by another heavy sigh from one of them.

"He's fine, though. The ambulance arrived quickly and the last we heard he got his stomach pumped. But we're not quite sure why some drinks were spiked and why some drinks weren't, and neither were we sure who did it. Diane decided to take responsibility for not being careful enough and resigned this morning."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be – I mean, it's not her main job, anyway. It's just something she decided to do for the summer for kicks." Alex reassured him.

"Not that," Evan replied, tone softening. "I'm sorry I blew up at you. I shouldn't have. It was nice enough that you guys invited us to the party. It's really not your fault if some idiot decides to do something like that."

An awkward silence settled upon them, and I would've simply continued to lie in my bed lazily if not for the fact that my stomach finally protested and demanded that I scour the house for food. Slowly, I pulled myself out of bed, shuffling my heavy feet and dragging my reluctant body out of my room like an old man who just came back from the dead. My head spun slightly as I walked, but I managed to walk out of my own room and into the living area, where Alex and Evan sat. Almost instantly as I entered, Alex sprung up from her area on the couch. Evan followed quickly after her gaze and stood up as well, as if that were an appropriate greeting for me.

"You're awake," he commented. "How are you feeling?"

"Groggy," I replied. "What happened?"

Evan opened his mouth to explained, but Alex cut in quickly –

"Actually, I think I'll go now. I'll see you guys soon."

With a final, quick, longing glance at Evan, she picked up her purse and left the apartment in a flash, the door shutting behind her with a thick thud. For a moment there, as she left, I thought I caught a glimpse of her biting her lip slightly, as if she were trying her best to hide something from us. I knew that look a little too well; I made that look all the time around Evan.

Evan looked absolutely bemused for a moment after she left, before he turned back to me.

"How are you?" He asked again.

"I told you." I replied, my voice thick from sleep.

"Oh yeah, you did."

"What happened?" I asked again, stupidly. "I heard something about the drinks…"

"Yeah. You started acting weird sometime after the fireworks started, and I thought you were just getting drunk. But then you weren't just acting drunk – you were about close to passing out, you weren't even talking right, your eyes were… twitching, kind of. And you only ever had a couple of drinks, so you couldn't have been that drunk. When you started breaking out into a cold sweat in the middle of the night, I figured something wasn't quite right."

Something that was quite blurry in my head surfaced in my memories. I wasn't sure if I had remembered it all correctly, or if it actually happened – and I needed to know.

"Did I do anything s-stupid…? Or weird…?"

Evan paused, hesitating slightly, before saying –

"No."

"Ah, okay." That was all I could managed.

He broke out into one of his incredibly charming smiles again. "Are you hungry? I'll make you a sandwich. I swear I won't mess this one up this time."

I nodded mechanically. Suddenly, despite my hunger, I couldn't really care about food – not when something that I really wanted to be true was just dismissed by Evan as simply a hallucination that I had in my drugged state. I wasn't sure if I was disappointed or elated when Evan implied that it didn't happen.

Somehow, somewhere in my mind – perhaps I dreamt it – was a memory of the two of us in the darkness of our apartment, stumbling about, with me laughing myself silly. We hadn't quite made it into my room when I collapsed onto his warm, firm body, my own not quite strong enough to keep up. He grumbled for a moment before he lifted me off my feet, finishing the final stretch to my bed and laying me down onto the softness and the comfort of the mattress. I vaguely remembered a short pause as we stared into each other's eyes in the darkness, his face blurry in my vision, before he tried to undress me. I must've found that funny or something, because I heard myself laughing – something which he responded with a silent glare. It was then that I noticed how close his face was to mine.

And I simply closed the gap between us, my hands reaching for the back of his head as I hastily took his lips into mine. I thought I remembered how they felt – soft, hot and tender. I thought I remembered how his body melded into mine, as if he couldn't get enough of the kiss as well. I thought I remembered how my tongue curiously explored his mouth, and how he returned my curiosity with his own. I also thought I remembered him pulling away suddenly, shocked at himself, and rushing away from me in a flurry as I lay back onto the bed, blacking out and into sleep. It all felt so real, and all so beautiful, and I really wished that it was real, that it really happened.

Except Evan had said that nothing had happened. I didn't do anything weird, or anything stupid, and so all that – the wonderful kiss, the wonderful touch – was all but a dream, or but a figment of my silly imagination.

We hadn't returned to the beach since the party on the Fourth of July, and it wasn't by choice, either. Ever since the incident with another partygoer overdosing on some drug happened, the security's been tightened and inquiries have been made. Many of the regulars at the beach scattered off elsewhere temporarily to wait until the entire thing blows over, and that included us, too. After all, there was little to almost no reason to hang around after Diane resigned from her little side-job at the beach bar. Alex and David preferred to be around their sister, and without her around at the beach bar or even at the beach meant that they stopped hanging around the beach until things became a lot less tense there. For the rest of us, we simply followed suit.

Marcel and Scott weren't quite up to giving up the fun in the last legs of summer. A week or so after the party, they began plotting again, looking for some way to have fun and gather the group once again for a final time before we all went back to school or work.

I had come back from a general check-up one afternoon, bummed out after the optician that checked on my eyes declared that I was short-sighted and needed to wear glasses – desperately. I protested and tried to worm my way out of it, saying that it wasn't all that bad and I could still see fine, but nothing would stop him and he wrote out a prescription for an assistant, demanding that I come back after my round of check-ups to put the glasses on and truly see how short-sighted I was. He was right – after all the other physicians determined that I was in great health, I returned to him, sighed, and tried on my new pair of glasses made at top speed in a handful of hours. My vision instantly became clearer and sharper, and at the same time, my head spun a little from the sudden clarity that it struggled to adjust to. I gripped the sides of my glasses, ready to rip it off, but he demanded that I keep them on and only take them off when I honestly felt dizzy. He said I had to get used to it – after all, I was quite short-sighted. I blamed my reading habits, my writing habits, my gaming habits, and my stupidity all in one go on my way back.

I returned to the apartment then, fully expecting to have some peace and quiet and some rest time to myself. My hopes were instantly dashed the moment I shut the door and Marcel and Scott's voice instantly reached me as they shouted in unison –

"JONATHAN!"

As soon as I turned around, their yell died down and turned into howls of loud laughter as they pointed at my now-bespectacled face. I could've blushed, but after nearly two months of their antics, I merely sighed and settled down in the space on the couch that they made for me.

"How did you guys get in here?" I asked, exasperation easily seeping into my tone. Somehow, I already knew the answer, and I wasn't at all surprised when they told me that it was Evan who let them in.

"What's so funny?" Evan's voice sounded out as the sliding doors to the balcony slid open. Instinctively, I turned to look for the source of his voice.

The moment he saw my face, he knew, and a soft chuckle left his lips even before he realized it. I groaned.

"Alright, I'll take it off, it looks fucking stupid…"

I was almost too eager to pull the stupid glasses off my face. But even then, the damage was already done. The guys were all in hysterics, and that annoyingly charming smile on Evan's face just would not come off.

"Go on, laugh," I egged him on. "It looked fucking stupid."

"Not really." Evan said as he shut the sliding door behind him, wiping off the droplets of water from his time in the pool off his bare chest. "Actually, it's not even surprising given how much time you spend writing in that secretive book of yours in the dark."

I felt Scott and Marcel gaze at me once more, their eyes boring holes into me, and somehow, I knew exactly what was on their mind.

"Don't you bitches dare," I warned, narrowing my eyes into slits.

"DIBS!" They both yelled at the same time, quickly getting up and attempting to manoeuvre over the couch. Scott hopped over the back of the couch gracefully, whilst Marcel rushed around the side towards the door that led to my room. Panic set in instantly, and I tried to give chase by hopping over the back of the couch as well, but I evidently wasn't as agile as Scott was. Instead of cleanly hopping over the couch, I tripped and landed on my chest on the ground - at least, I expected to. The instant I felt my foot get caught on the couch, I shut my eyes and braced myself for impact. There was none.

Instead, I landed on something warm and soft, yet firm. Slowly, I opened my eyes, only to see tanned skin before me.

"Real smooth," Evan chuckled, as he released me slightly, helping me back onto my feet. I felt my cheeks burn - it was the closest I'd ever been to him since the Fourth, and it also didn't help that the stupid crush that I had on him wasn't fading in the least bit. The both of us fell into a stunned, awkward silence, a silence broken mere seconds later by Scott and Marcel's screaming.

"FOUND IT!" Scott hollered, stumbling out of my room triumphantly as Marcel trailed grouchily behind him. He raised his arms above him, and my journal - this very same journal - was in his hands.

Evan, however, wasted no time. As soon as Scott paraded his loot before us, Evan made his way towards Scott and grabbed my journal out of his hands. I felt strangely relieved that it was in his hands - but perhaps that was just me trusting him.

"Okay, enough. Don't you guys have something else to do?" He chided.

"But it's the last bit of summer," Marcel whined.

"And we're bored." Scott chimed in.

Evan sighed in mock exasperation. "The beach is kind of out of bounds now but it doesn't mean you guys can't have fun here, does it? You guys have a pool, we have a pool, we gather all our food and drinks, bring some entertainment and we get the gang to come along, and there's your fun."

Their faces began to light up as the idea slowly unfolded before their eyes. Evan began to grin as well, and started again.

"But," he continued, "Condition is, you guys clean up after your messes and give us our privacy where it needs to be at. That means no stealing or peeking into Jonathan's diary without his permission, curious as you are. Deal?"

A short pause.

"Deal." Marcel spoke up first.

And there the Friday night party was formed. That night was the very first night, with Marcel and Scott running off straight after that to prepare and make calls for everybody to come over and hang out. It was the first time we'd ever done something like that, and things were a little awkward and shaky at first, but it made a good start for something new - and something that we'd decided at the end of the night to make it weekly (and if not weekly, fortnightly).

That night, Evan knocked on my door, both of us worn out from the partying and the cleaning.

"Hey," he greeted.

I returned his greeting. "Hey yourself."

"Tired?"

"Yeah. I didn't… think that I'd become a party-boy. I was a - what d'you call it - a party pooper most of the time."

He laughed softly. "Well, you'll have to live with it for a bit. The L.A. crowd loves these things. But I need to return you your book before I turn in myself."

He held out my journal that he had quite fortunately snatched from Scott's hands that afternoon. It looked untouched, without a thing out of place. However, I still frowned in suspicion. As much as I trusted Evan, I had written some incriminating things in there that I did not want him to read.

"Don't worry, I didn't even look," he assured. "I'm not one to pry into people's secrets unless they're willing to tell me themselves. Take good care of those written secrets, will you?"

I smirked. "You're another one to call the stuff I write that."

He paused, and glanced back at me incredulously.

"My family calls the little notes I leave around 'written secrets'."

"Oh." He stood there silently for a moment, before adding, "Well, I guess you can add your diary to the list."

He turned and shut my door, leaving me in my room alone with my own journal. My secrets were still safe, it seemed, and so I flipped the pages open, pulling out my pen set that I brought along from North Carolina, and decided to pen another entry in, immortalizing another part of my first summer here in California with my very first memory of the Friday night party.

Welcome back to me puking on my keyboard! First off, sorry for the very long wait! Secondly, I really hope that even through the mess that I've made out of this story, you guys can still enjoy this. I have some ideas that I have been playing with that should come up in the later portions of the story, but it'll be some time before those things come to fruition so I do hope everybody can understand! I really do hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and I really hope I can churn out another one soon! (And if I don't, I hope I can keep everybody entertained with other things!) -delmin