Mended Hearts.

Part IV.

It was Monday now, the twenty-fourth of August.

Unsurprisingly, it was a date to which the majority of South Park citizens wouldn't even bat an eye to, considering the fact that it was also the very first day of the week, so to many residents of the podunk little mountain town it simply signaled the start of yet another work week in their fairly mundane lives.

But for the students of South Park High School, it actually meant saying goodbye to their summer break and saying hello to the start of yet another school year, which was pretty much to the chagrin of the vast majority of teenagers attending the biggest high school in South Park and its surrounding region.

Nearly two weeks had passed since the bonfire party that was held on the shores of Stark's Pond, with summer holidays coming to their dreaded halt and the beginning of the new school year approaching even more rapidly. And just like many of their peers, a certain group of teenagers from South Park had been doing their very best to both mentally and physically prepare themselves for the upcoming start of their Junior year of high school and everything that came with it.

And amongst the teenagers who hadn't been that thrilled about going back to school and switching up a more relaxed routine they had had over the course of the summer break for a more serious one, was the now sixteen, soon-to-be seventeen year old Stan Marsh.

On that particular Monday morning, the teenage boy woke up feeling like a crusty ass and like he needed to hit the shower as soon as possible – all thanks to a certain fatass and his seemingly fantastic idea to organize a little get-together for himself and the guys on the last Sunday night of their summer break, accompanied by several rounds of playing CSGO and lots of booze Cartman had managed to take from the unlocked liquor cabinet in the living room.

So, with the fatass' mom going out on another one of her trysts with a man Cartman still hadn't gotten around to meet and leaving her poopsikins all on his own for the night, the evening had then gone on to be not that different than most of their typical hangouts – Kyle and his arch frenemy had bickered over the pettiest of little things, Stan had found himself either acting as a peacemaker between two of his long-time friends or texting his girlfriend back, Kenny had presumably been too busy with watching porn on his phone, while good old Butters had just kept on being his usual self and had occasionally annoyed the ever-living crap out of everyone (except the other blonde teenager of the group, of course).

With everyone having at least a little bit of vodka flowing through their bloodstreams, it wasn't long until alcohol started doing wonders for all five teenagers and made them act rowdier than they had earlier that evening, especially both Butters and Kenny, so it wasn't that big of a surprise when the two of them eventually went upstairs for a little rendezvous of their own, thus confirming everyone's suspicions about something simmering between the two blondes and them being more than just best friends.

And after the effects of the booze had started to wear down and he had felt himself being somewhat sober enough to drive everyone back to their respective houses, Stan soon left Cartman's house and came home just a little bit past midnight, relieved not to find either of his parents waiting for him in the living room and ready to give him a stern talk about how driving under the influence was never a good idea – although the dark haired teenager thought that getting a talk about the dangers of driving under the influence from his father would be nothing else but irony at its finest.

In the aftermath of plopping himself down on his bed and falling asleep almost immediately, Stan barely managed to get six hours of a good night's sleep, so it wasn't a huge shocker that he was feeling really tired the following morning and not really in the mood to start getting ready for school.

And what was making the raven haired teenager even more annoyed and less like he wanted to get out of his cozy bed, was the fact that he had told the guys earlier last night that he would gladly pick them all up and drive everyone to school the next day, since he was the only one in his group of friends that had his own car – a solid navy blue hatchback with a rather hefty mileage, but also with enough space inside to easily fit all of his friends.

Groaning out and throwing the covers off his body, Stan finally summoned the strength to get himself out of bed and start getting ready for the day – taking a quick shower, brushing his teeth and getting dressed. And to finish everything off, he gave his raven black locks a quick tousle and grabbed his trusty old red and blue poofball hat, placing it on the back of his head and feeling satisfied with his overall appearance.

Stan, unsurprisingly, had gone through his own fair share of ups and downs throughout puberty, although he still technically hadn't been done with it.

The teenage boy had grown to be the second tallest in his group of friends, standing at six foot three and trailing only behind his super best friend who grew maybe an inch or two taller than him. His body was well-defined and kept in good shape thanks to playing football since his Freshman year and occasionally playing a game of baseball or two. His dark hair had also grown longer over the years, now sitting messily at the top of his head and often making him brush some of the longer strands of his hair away from his bright blue eyes.

After he was done with getting ready for the day, Stan grabbed his letterman jacket and slung it over his shoulders, making a beeline for the kitchen downstairs in order to make himself something to eat – with his stomach growling very loudly in response.

But just as he was about to round the corner and enter inside the kitchen, Stan groaned out in disbelief at the sight he probably should have gotten used to by now – his father laying on the couch stoned out of his fucking mind, although it was only a little bit past seven AM at that point. He also expected Randy's reason for smoking the latest Tegridy Farms' weed concoction to be somewhere along the lines of 'trying out the new mixtures before presenting them to potential new investors' or 'smoking pot that early in the morning for quality control purposes'.

Shaking his head at the all too familiar sight, the dark haired quarterback simply walked past the couch his father had been passed out on and entered inside the kitchen of the Marsh residence, eventually making himself a bowl of his favorite cereal and scrolling through the social media apps as he ate his breakfast in a relatively peaceful environment, at least up until his phone buzzed loudly against the kitchen table and made Stan widen his eyes at the sight of a new text message he had received.

Mel💖: 'Hey babe, pick me up at around 7:30? see you❤'

The red and blue poofball hat bearer smiled softly upon seeing his phone screen get lit up by the text message notification he had received from one person responsible for making him feel like he was on cloud nine for the past nine months or so.

Melissa Commerford.

Stan and the girl in question had met last September during detention, in which he had unfortunately found himself after Cartman and Kenny thought that pulling a prank on their Algebra teacher would definitely go without a single hitch and not have them face any responsibility for it, much to his dismay and even more to the dismay of his mother Sharon.

Initially, Stan wasn't even made aware of Melissa's presence in the same room as him, before she walked up to him and asked something about the Algebra homework they had been given earlier that day, since apparently they had that particular class together and her remembering that their teacher would often recommend Stan as someone to help his classmates out, so the teenage girl assumed that one of the students with an excellent grasp on the dreaded tenth grade Algebra material could be a perfect tutor for her – with them eventually getting in tune with each other and developing their relationship beyond the levels of something that could be deemed just a close friendship.

And nine months later, Stan and Melissa's relationship had still been going well, despite experiencing a rather rough patch during spring break and them getting back together after long and heartfelt talks on her front porch, followed by her adamant promises of never ever allowing herself to make the same mistake again and sharing several passionate kisses under the beautiful starry night.

But following that similar train of thought, the dark haired teenage boy had suddenly started to wonder how his current girlfriend was going to react once she would become aware of the fact that his former elementary school girlfriend was now back in South Park and was attending the same high school as them – especially given Melissa's tendency to get jealous whenever she would feel the presence of any other girl around Stan who wasn't either his mother or older sister.

Although he was initially very surprised to hear that his ex-girlfriend moved back from Florida to Colorado, Stan hadn't given it much thought afterwards and embraced the fact that he would see her much more often than he had during the six years she lived in another state.

After Wendy broke things off between them for good, Stan eventually accepted the fact that they would most likely never ever go back to being more than just friends, so deciding to move on from her for good seemed like the best possible option. It was incredibly tough at the beginning, but he eventually succeeded at doing so and opted to continue being on good terms with his ex-girlfriend.

Sure, she might've changed in terms of appearance and had certainly become prettier and prettier over the years, but that didn't seem to faze Stan at all, since he had much more important things in life to focus on and not let himself waste any of his precious time.

All in all, he was pretty content with his life – not having his sister around all that much anymore, being the quarterback on the school football team, having good grades and juggling relatively well between spending enough time with his long-time friends and girlfriend of nearly nine months.

Stan was simply one-hundred percent convinced that having his ex-girlfriend back in town wasn't going to have that much of an impact on his life – because to him, the sheer fact that things between him and Wendy hadn't changed for years and that they had been able to maintain a good friendship for so long, were solid enough reasons for the teenage boy to think that the status quo between them wasn't going to change in any way, shape or form.

Deciding that being done with his breakfast and leaving his house as soon as possible were far better things to do than having his ex-girlfriend on his mind, Stan finished his breakfast and grabbed his car keys and a spare house key. He shoved them safely into the back pocket of his jeans and walked out of his house, rolling his eyes yet again at the sight of his dad still snoring peacefully on the living room sofa.

The dark haired teenager then made a beeline for his metallic baby that was parked right outside the barn, before eventually roaring the engine into life and driving in the direction of the main road that lead towards South Park. He also turned on some random radio station and enjoyed the feeling of crisp, cool mountain air against his skin.

Luckily for Stan, all three of his closest friends lived in close proximity to each other, so it wasn't really a hassle to pick them up individually, although Kyle, Kenny and Cartman would almost always wait for Stan to pick them up at the same bus station they had waited at when they were attending elementary school and middle school.

"I thought you were going to pick up Melissa as well.", Kyle commented as climbed inside his best friend's car and called shotgun for the front seat, causing Stan to raise a curious eyebrow at him. ''You almost always pick her up first, then us.''

"Well, I'm gonna' because she texted me earlier about picking her up this morning. I actually thought that her mom would most likely drop her off at school, but she had to leave for work earlier than usual and told Melissa to catch a bus to school or ask someone else to drive her.'', Stan explained briefly, bright blue eyes focused on the road at all times and not wanting to get distracted by any nonsense. "So yeah guys, we have to pick her up as well. Oh and Kyle, can you maybe sit in the backseat this time?"

"I'm not switching seats just because she's your girlfriend, dude.", the gingerhead retorted.

"What? How did you know I was going to ask that?"

"You can be so oblivious sometimes. It's so obvious that you want her to sit at the front, while we all squeeze at the back.", Kyle argued further, before glancing over at a certain brunette sitting next to Kenny.

''So whipped.'', Cartman muttered under his breath, prompting both Kenny and Kyle to snort back in agreement and cause Stan to roll his eyes in pure annoyance, as he simply ignored the fatass' usual remarks about him being completely whipped and let that one slide instead.

Well, at least for now.

On a completely opposite end of South Park, and much further away from the Tegridy Farms' base of operations, Wendy Testaburger was now making her way towards the biggest high school in the Park County region, after being done with her own process of getting ready for her very first day as a Junior in high school.

The teenage girl frankly wasn't sure what to expect once she would step her foot inside South Park High School for the very first time, considering the fact that from the moment she woke up and even leading up to the moment she began driving towards her new high school, Wendy had felt nervous butterflies dancing inside her stomach.

Was it the feeling of pure excitement? Or maybe anxiety and nervousness due to coming into a completely new high school and new surroundings?

Wendy just wasn't one hundred percent sure with keeping her feelings in check when it came to her first day of being a Junior in high school. She, however, did look forward to finally spending time with her closest former elementary school and soon-to-be high school classmates, and was mostly excited to have a fresh start and have her close friends help her out with adapting to a completely new environment as much as they all possibly could.

Luckily for her, she only had two more years of high school to complete, before she would ship herself off to a good college – preferably an Ivy League college like Princeton, Columbia or Harvard.

And as she had sort of expected, most of Wendy's girlfriends were the ones most excited to have their friend back in South Park again, especially because she had missed out on so many things during the girls' time in middle school and the first two years of high school – she was just glad that she would finally get to see her friends in person every single day now, and not just exclusively during the holidays and school break.

Wendy's excitement only grew bigger as she was getting closer towards the high school campus, flicking on the left turn indicator and turning into the school's now almost full parking lot, which did lower her excitement just a little bit, but not enough to sour her mood for the rest of the day.

Well, not at least until she realized that one of the very few empty parking spots she had laid her eyes on, was now taken up by someone else and their own car.

The whole ordeal made her roll her chocolate brown eyes over the annoying fact that she would now have to drive around the parking lot in order to find another empty spot and hopefully park her mom's car there, but she certainly hadn't expected the person who took up her desired parking spot to be none other than her ex-boyfriend with his car.

But luckily for Wendy, she was at a far enough distance away from her ex-boyfriend and his car, so he wasn't immediately able to notice her looking in his direction. It didn't really surprise her that Stan's usual entourage of Kenny, Kyle and Cartman had come along with him, but what piqued her curiosity was the girl who her ex-boyfriend was holding hands with.

The girl, for whom Wendy definitely presumed to be Melissa, was stunning. She had shoulder-length wavy dark brown hair that gradually became lighter towards the ends, and was of a slightly shorter stature than Wendy, but a bit plumper and more curvaceous though. Her pale skin nearly illuminated in the early morning sun, as she held tightly onto her boyfriend's hand, practically tugging onto it and beckoning to him to follow her inside the school as soon as possible.

Snorting to herself and not wanting to waste any more time, Wendy unbuckled her seat belt and stepped outside her car, eventually locking it and making her own way towards the school's entrance. She tried to breeze past her ex-boyfriend and his friends relatively unnoticed, not really being in the mood for a small talk with any of them and simply wanting to meet up with her own friends before the school bell would ring.

However, it seemed like her ex-boyfriend was one step in front of her and greeted her as soon as she came into his line of sight, and earned what could easily be deemed a death glare from Melissa.

''Hey Wendy.''

Deciding to do the most obvious thing and act in a way she had acted towards Stan for the past six years, Wendy offered him a small wave and a friendly smile of her own.

''Hey Stan, hey guys.''

The first day of school hadn't been mundane as Stan first imagined it would be – getting his schedule for the winter semester, having introductory lessons from some classes he was going to take that semester, and most importantly, meeting up with his football coach in order to talk about the upcoming season and what were the goals the South Park Cows football team hoped to achieve that year.

Later that day, and much to his delight, Stan and Melissa headed down to a local burger joint for a cute little date, as well as making further plans about spending time together over at her place later that same afternoon, but not without dropping his friends off at their respective houses first, obviously.

Their date went on to be as pleasant as usual, but by the time they got to Melissa's place and made themselves comfortable in her living room, Stan just couldn't help himself but notice that his girlfriend had seemed to be more tense than usual, even when they were later cozied up against each other on the couch and watched the latest season of yet another show they had started watching together.

Wanting to find out what had been bugging his girlfriend since earlier in the day, Stan gently poked her in the ribs in order to get her attention, and when it seemed to have worked, Melissa turned her head towards him and raised a curious eyebrow.

Taking that as a cue to go ahead with his question, the teenage boy wrapped one arm around the brunette's shoulder.

''Babe, has something been bothering you?''

And as expected, Melissa's answer came almost right away, and right along the lines of what Stan usually expected her to answer whenever the topic of her jealous tendencies was brought up.

''No.''

Stan snorted in slight disbelief, although he had kind of expected his girlfriend to give him a negative answer almost right away. ''Come on, I can tell that something isn't right.''

''And what if I tell you? You're probably gonna' think it's something super dumb or whatever.''

''Depends on what it is.''

''Hmm, do you wanna' hear it?''

''That girl who greeted you this morning…'', Melissa began in a cautious tone, looking away from Stan for a brief moment. ''Her name is Wendy, right?''

''Yeah?'', Stan confirmed. ''What about her?''

''She's your ex, right?'', the brunette teenage girl asked in hopes of getting a negative answer, even though deep down she knew that the girl in question was definitely someone Stan had talked about dating back in elementary school and being absolutely head over heels in love with, so much so that just talking to her made him feel absolutely queasy whenever she was around. ''You know, the one you used to date back in elementary school?''

''Yeah, she is, but you really don't have to worry about her. She actually moved back a couple of weeks ago from Tampa.''

''Oh, okay.''

''Is something wrong?''

''Not really, but I know that I'm probably overreacting and that you're going to think I'm crazy for even thinking about this, but I just can't help myself and worry about her still being interested in you.''

''Seriously?'', Stan chuckled to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. ''What makes you think she's still even remotely interested in me, when she was the one who broke up with me for good.''

''Stan, baby…'', Melissa replied, sighing. ''I know you've told me about having a couple of girlfriends before me, but I've never expected one of them to go to our high school. Frankly, I wouldn't have any issues with it if it was someone else in question, but a lot of people have told me about how crazy you used to be about Wendy.''

''And? That's a thing of the past, and it has been for quite a while.'', the teenage boy explained calmly. ''Look, if I haven't had any feelings for her in the past six years since we broke up, what makes you think I would even have them now?''

''Besides, she was the one who broke things off between us, not me. So, I simply decided to move on from her for my own good and not hold onto something she clearly didn't want to exist between us anymore.'', he continued further, grabbing Melissa by her shoulders and planting a gentle kiss on her forehead.

''Oh, okay then.'', she smiled in an apologetic fashion. ''Sorry for this.''

Stan smiled back at his girlfriend, before grabbing the remote and turning on the TV again. He snuggled up against her and made himself more comfortable, trying to forget about their little bickering from before.

But suddenly, and much to his dismay, their bickering from before also made Stan think whether he could expect his girlfriend to return back to her old habits and having more of these jealous spats in the near future, because he just wasn't sure if he was ready to deal with them again.

And especially if they pertained to his ex-girlfriend now being back in town, as well as an even bigger part of his life than she had been over the course of the past six years.

So, I feel like I could've added a bit more things in this chapter, but I'm still satisfied with the way it turned out! This chapter was meant to focus more on Stan and what he's been up to, since it's certainly always fun when you get to write about your favorite South Park character for once. Also, I hope to put one more chapter out before the end of the year, so stay tuned for that.

Buuuuut, how are we all feeling about the new South Park movie coming out next week? I'm very excited about it and can't wait to see what Trey and Matt have been working on since the last special that aired all the way back in March. I won't be able to watch it right away though, since I'm not from the USA and because I don't feel like paying for Paramount+ just so that I can watch a freaking South Park movie, no matter how big of a fan of the show I am!

I personally don't expect Stan and Wendy to have any interactions in the movie, as my hopes for them having any screen time have been pretty much non-existent since the end of season twenty, but I do expect Creek to have at least some screen time together.

I'll see you all guys next time, xo!