Chapter 3
“Hey Amanda!” Nicole shouted into the phone. I scrunched my nose and pulled the phone away from my ear a bit because she was so loud.
“Hey! So, are you out of traffic or what?” I asked. I really hoped she was.
“Yeah, we are. Mom says we’ll be there in a matter of minutes,” Nicole replied.
“That’s great! I’ll go ahead and leave for the terminal and meet you there.”
“Sounds good, see you in a few.”
I shut my phone and dumped it into my purse and took off to the nearby terminal. Somehow I was nervous of seeing Nicole after so long. I was hoping she hadn’t changed too much. I knew she did after entering high school and all but I still wanted her to be the same Nicole I remembered.
I soon came to the terminal and found a bench by the glass sliding doors. I watched as numerous cars came in and out picking up people here and there. A small girl, about the age of five, came running towards what looked like her father. He smiled widely and scooped her up and spun her around as the little girl giggled. I smiled at the sight and looked down at the white framed sunglasses that I was twirling around. Examining them I couldn’t find any type of indication of the owner. I felt bad for taking them but what else could I really do? Leave them there for someone else to take? Now I was just making up pointless excuses.
As I was looking at them from every angle I noticed a shadow in front of me. Looking up, I saw Nicole’s smiling face. I grinned and jumped up and hugged her.
“Nicole!” I said hugging her tightly.
“Amanda!” she said mocking the way I said her name and laughing. We pulled apart and she smiled. She looked different then what I remembered. I mean after not seeing her for so long I expected that but I just felt like she was different if that made any sense at all.
“How have you been?” she asked. I nodded.
“Pretty good, especially since I graduated high school!” I exclaimed.
“I’m so happy for you. That’s why we’re all going out to eat tonight to celebrate,” Nicole announced.
“You don’t have to do that. Really,” I protested.
“No, my parents insisted we celebrate you coming and you graduating,” Nicole explained, “So let’s get your stuff in the car and get back so we can get ready to go out!”
Nicole and I lugged my two ginormous bags to the trunk of her parents’ car. I was really impressed with the car, it was obviously expensive.
“Wow, I bet your dad likes driving this around,” I said, still in awe by the car.
“Oh, well, my dad doesn’t drive it really all that much. We have someone drive it for us,” Nicole said. I looked at her questioningly. “Yep, you heard me right,” Nicole said answering the question I obviously had written all over my face. We stood there for a minute and then Nicole told me to get into the car and I nodded my head. Bossy much?
“Right,” I replied, climbing into the back seat. Nicole got in on the other side.
As we came from the airport to the heart of city not much was said between us. One would think that we would be chatting non-stop for a couple of best friends who haven’t seen each other in forever but, that just wasn’t the case. I sat there uncomfortably pretending to be interested in the view out of my window until Nicole spoke.
“Isn’t it amazing? The lights and everything?” Nicole asked obviously trying to strike up some small talk. I turned my head to face her and smiled slightly.
“Yeah, it is,” was all I could say. She smiled back and nodded. I wanted to say something so bad and act like everything wasn’t so awkward between us. I couldn’t understand how we could e-mail back and forth non-stop but in person we were silent.
“I don’t get it,” I said out of the blue. Nicole looked up at me questioningly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I come here and we act like we are complete strangers when we’ve been friends for so long. Why have you changed so much? I’ve missed my best friend you know,” I said examining my chipped fingernail polish. And also waiting for her response.
“Amanda, please don’t start this. Not now. You just got here and don’t you want to celebrate?” Nicole retorted. She was in no mood to deal with anything, it was pretty obvious.
“It’s going to come up sooner or later whether you like it or not. So why not now? Why not solve the problem now?” I returned. I didn’t want to spend the whole trip with holding back something like this. I knew if we talked about it long enough we would have a chance of getting to the bottom of it.
Nicole glared at me. “Let’s just talk about this later. Please,” she pleaded, “I don’t want to make the first night a bad one. I don’t think you want to either.” I turned back to face her and saw the expression on her face. She really meant what she was saying instead of coming up with something to make me shut up.
“Fine,” I said sighing.
I came to the conclusion she was right after a while. To change my annoyed mood I decided that taking pictures would cheer me up. I tossed the things around in my purse until I came across my camera case. Unzipping it, I pressed a button on the car door to roll down the thick glass window. A slight breeze caught my hair and whipped it across my face. The air felt pretty good considering how warm it was in the car.
“Your still into photography I see,” Nicole spoke up, breaking the silence between us.
“Yeah, I guess you can say it’s my one true love.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and hung out the window a little so I could take some good action shots. Photography wasn’t something I wanted to do with my life really. It was just something that kept me going and kept me grounded. Cliché, I know but isn’t a small part of everyone’s life that way? At least I think so.
In awe of the city, I couldn’t put down my camera. I was surprised that it hadn’t died yet. We drove by the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Chrysler Building and every standing landmark that you could think of in Manhattan. Seeing the remaining parts of the Twin Towers was heart wrenching. It was just, a large hole. And yet, it was filled with so much sadness, remembrance, and loss.
I was focusing my camera when a really cute guy caught my eye. He was standing with a small group of people around a hotel. Then I realized who that particular cute guy was. Joe Jonas. This ought to be interesting, good thing we were kind of stuck in traffic. I stuck my head out of the window and yelled at the top of my lungs.
“Joe!”
Before I was able to get the last part of his name out Nicole jerked on my arm and pulled me back into the car.
“What are you doing?!”
I smiled, she had no clue. “Oh, I was just trying to get the attention of Joe Jonas. Why?”
She nodded, “Okay, we- wait, JOE JONAS?! As in, Joseph Adam Jonas?!”
I grinned as much as my face would let me. “Bingo.”
If the trip started out this good, who knew what could happen. A Joe Jonas sighting, New York City… Possibly it reflected hope for the friendship between Nicole and me to eventually mend after so long. But then again, why did I ever think it was broken?
