What is the first thing that comes to your mind when friendship is mentioned?

To Dre, friendship was everything. A friend is someone that fights for you no matter what, someone who fights with you for no reason, someone who is always coming back no matter how much you push them away, someone that is beside you during hard times. An example of a good friend to Dre was Rachel.

Rachel was the perfect friend, the perfect best friend but she was also the worst girlfriend.

When Sophia kept insisting that Dre should talk to Rachel, he had a feeling something was wrong. He wanted to ask what was going, he wanted to ask both Sophie and Rachel, but decided not to.

Sophie is the best at keeping secrets, whatever she knows, he was pretty sure she was taking it to her grave. He couldn't ask Rachel that requires talking to her and that was the last thing on his list.

So here he was, during lunch break, sitting opposite two people he suspected knew something, Ray and Max. He would not be shocked if they knew something, Max was also good at keeping secrets, the good thing about it was that, if Max knew something then Ray does too but unlike Sophie and Max, Ray was going to meddle whilst Sophie and Max preferred letting nature take its course, Ray was going to do everything to make things faster, Max, of course, was going to support Ray to keep things to the minimum.

Last night, he laid on his bed trying to figure out what made them dare him in the first place. Ever since Rachel and Dre broke up, sure, they teased him but they never brought Rachel's name up nor have they ever called her hot. He knew something was up but he was not sure.

"Why are you looking at us like that?" Ray finally asked with his mouth full.

Dre adjusted in his seat, moved close to their faces, and continued staring at them.

"Stop acting like a creep," Ray said uncomfortably, Max on the other hand was unbothered. If anyone was going to break, it was clearly Ray.

"Why should I stop?" Dre said moving his face closer to Ray's face.

"Cause it's really weird," Ray said putting his palm on his Dre's face and pushing him back to his seat.

"What do you know about Rachel?" He finally asked looking at the both of them. Ray adjusted on his seat whilst Max was still eating.

"What are you talking about? We don't know anything. Who's Rachel?" Ray said laughing nervously and slapping Max's chest to which Max glared at him seizing his nervous laugh.

"Seriously guys, talk to me, what do you know?" He said looking intently at them.

Ray opened his mouth to speak but Max beat him to it. "We're not interfering in your relationship problems," he said rolling his
eyes and taking the last spoon in his food.

"We're not in a relationship. Again." Dre said glaring at him.

"Physically," Max said dabbing the sides of his mouth then telling Ray to get up so they could leave, leaving Dre alone at their table to glare at their backs.

~•~

"Dre!! What's up?!" Jade yelled from across the hall, Dre walked faster pretending he didn't notice nor hear her.

"Dre!" She continued yelling and running after him to which he walked faster.

"Didn't you hear me calling you?" She said slapping his back.

"I did, I just didn't feel like answering you," he said shrugging.

"Did I do anything to you?" she asked giving him a confused look.

" No, you were just yelling and attracting attention and I didn't like that so..."

"Oh really so I was attracting attention? wow I had no idea." she feigned.

Dre rolled his eyes and until he heard her horrible voice singing his name.

"What are you doing? Stop it!" He whisper-yelled at her.

"Nothing just singing, I was thinking about joining opera. So I'm just going to let these nice people decide for me, what do you think?" She said making Dre roll his eyes and walk faster.

"My looovvveee frrrooommm the staaaarrsss. Wait is that the title of the movie? My love from the stars? The stars are shining? I think that's it." She said stopping to think about it which made her loose Dre.

~•~

Rachel and Dre stood opposite themselves in the hallway. They stared at each other smiling until Dre noticed her hair, well the tip of her hair was dyed pink. Pink! The color they agreed to never have anything to do with because they hated it.

For a moment, Dre thought about the girl he met 3 years ago. That was not the girl he was looking at, the girl he knew would never cheat on her boyfriend, the girl he knew was not that quiet, she lit the room whenever she walked in. This person was quiet, she hardly smiled, as far as Dre knew the only person he has seen her talking to was her boyfriend. Now, she was dyeing her hair pink, the color she hated.

His face must have shown disapproval as she turned to her locker to scrabble on her post-it note. He waited for her, it was like old times, whenever they fought instead of talking, they'll spam each other's lockers with post-it notes. He smiled at the lucid memories.

' It's not pink, it is orchid. I see you still don't know your colors,:-! . I'm glad you still care. Hope you're good?'

He looked at the note as she stuck it on his locker. He opened his locker to pick his post-it note.

'Code LX: Afterschool, Fee's? '

He walked past her to paste it on her locker. He went back to his locker and waited for her reaction. He saw her take a deep breath before she turned to him with a small smile on her face and a nod.

He turned to his locker to hide his smile until he heard her voice.

"Dre!" He shut his eyes as he heard Jade's voice.

"Yes?" He said turning and resting his side on his locker.

"We'll talk on our way to class." She said dragging him with her.

They walked a few steps, Dre looked over his shoulder to see Rachel and her new boyfriend, laughing as they were fighting for something Rachel was trying to hide. He turned to stare at Jade's head as she was much shorter than him. He considered the dare for a second but shrugged the thought off.

"Are you ok?" Jade looked up to find him staring at her, he choked on spit and avoided her gaze muttering "what?" In his choking spree.

"I saw you looking at the girl whose name I'm not allowed to mention in front of you." She said ignoring his coughs.

"Who said you're not allowed to mention her name in front of me? " He replied after calming himself down.

"Tori, the day after detention, we talked don't be mad but we met in the toilet, and we kind of hit off. Then Tori entered the bathroom, glared at her, and dragged me out." She said shrugging.

"Then she told me she was your ex and I'm not supposed to be telling you this." She said ending the last part slowly.

"Holy fudge! I was not supposed to say that, that is the part of your life you want to forget. I'm a bad person. I'm so sorry." She said with her hand now on her mouth.

He placed his hands on her shoulders turning her to face him rolling his eyes.
"You have every right to talk to Rachel and you can mention her name, heck, so can i." He said chuckling.

"If you guys talked in the bathroom and you liked her, then you have every right to talk to her, ok?" He said smiling.

"Oh don't worry, I don't like her. She was fun to talk to but after listening to what Tori said, I'd rather maintain my distance." She said with a smiley wink.

"Ok?" Dre didn't bother asking what Tori told her. Tori and Rachel disliked themselves right from the first day they met. Listening to everything Tori must have told Jade was just something he couldn't deal with.

Classes went by fast, he spent most of them dealing with Jade who was either complaining about how boring the class was or making jest of the teachers. All was not ok until they met Tori and Carter in their next class.
Tori and Jade sat together and disturbed the teachers together while Dre struggled with trying to keep Carter awake.

After school, Dre should have been nervous about meeting with Rachel but that was the last thing about Code LX. Code LX was a childish game they made up when they were in middle school.
All they had to do was bring glasses, a notebook and a pen, one had to pretend to be a therapist for the other, which means they were total strangers.

They only did it twice cause they assumed it was stupid but none of them expected it to be their means of communication after their breakup. Mainly because they promised to always talk about their problems no matter how hard it was.

Alex got to Fee's seconds before Rachel did, he rushed out of school immediately the bell rang, the last thing he wanted to get there after she did, the first to get there was the patient. Judging by how fast Rachel walked in, he could tell she wanted to get there early too. He waved at her with a proud smile. This morning, talking to her was the last thing on his list but here he was feeling extra happy about talking to her.

"Mr Brown." She started with a small smile on her face, stretching her hands out.

"Miss Anderson." He said with a grim look, as practiced over the years, whilst shaking her hand.

"It's been so long, about a year?" She said taking her seat and using one of her pencils to wrap her hair.

"Yes ma'am."

"I've told you so many times, ma'am makes me feel so old, please call me Britney." She said putting her hand on her chest with a wide smile.

"You look so goofy," Alex said laughing.

"I've told you so many times, ma'am makes me feel so old, please call me Britney." He said waving his hands in an overly high pitched voice whilst laughing loudly attracting every single person in the shop attention.

Rachel sat back in her chair, sucking her cheeks with her arms folded, waiting for him to notice his audience.

"Are you done?" She asked when he calmed down.

"Yeah, I'm ok." He said smirking.

"Cool, Alex close your eyes." She said with a thinned lip. "Please?" She said when he raised his brows.

"Fine." He said taking a deep breath before closing his eyes.

"Stand up and turn." She said smiling and throwing a glance at the still curious crowd.

"Ok this is super weird."

"Please just do it." She said as he started turning.

"Now open your eyes as slowly as possible."

Dre opened his eyes to find his audience, some were trying hard to hold their laughs, some were glaring at him, others looked at him disappointedly.

"I'm so sorry." He said to the crowd bowing his head and taking his seat.

"Oh it's no problem. How did you not notice how the cafe suddenly became quiet?" She said eyeing him whilst Alex was still playfully glaring at her.

"I like your hair short." He suddenly said.

"And I like your head bald. Look at us not getting what we want." She said smirking.

He missed their banters, he missed her voice, he missed her smile, her laughs, he missed her. Missed was an understatement honestly, he wanted to tell her everything she missed when they stopped talking but most of them required telling her about girls he was with and that was not what he wanted to share right now.

"I missed you." The both of them suddenly blurted out before chuckling.

"I'm really sorry about everything, like everything." Rachel said with a small smile.

"If you're really sorry, then why did you do it?" He asked to which she shrugged and looked at her fingers.

"I don't-" She started.

"Why did you continue even when you got caught?" He asked cutting her off.

"Do you love him?" He asked as quietly as possible.

Finally!!! An update.

The movie Jade was trying to remember is actually THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.

Orchid is a bright rich purple color that is a representation of the color of the flower of some members of the plant family Orchidaceae.
~stolen from Google.

The Color of Orchid is the flower I posted in the media.
~also stolen from Google ;-)

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Song of the week: Simple things by MKTO.
Audio posted in the media too. This song matches when Alex and Rachel saw each other in the hallway.☺️