“Do they always do this?” Howie asked Brian who was walking next to him towards the bus.
“Only about every tour,” Brian laughed. “Their perfect for each other, I swear.”
“Has he talked to her about…well, you know?” Howie asked cautiously, making sure that Nick wasn’t in the area.
“Not yet. I swear, Nick is the biggest chicken. He’s been wanting to ask her for three months and he still hasn’t.”
“God, if he doesn’t ask her soon, I’m going to ask her for him,” Howie exclaimed.
“Ask who for who?” AJ said, coming up behind Howie and Brian, noisily eating potato chips. “Oh wait, Mackenzie. Right?”
Brian and Howie turned, giving AJ a nod. “Who else?” Brian said shrugging his shoulders.
Finally, ten minutes later almost everyone had re-boarded the bus and taken their seats. When Nick and Mackenzie stepped through the door, it was clear that their water fight had been completely unfair. Mackenzie was drenched from head to foot whereas Nick had escaped with only a couple spots of water. Mackenzie made it a point to ring out her T-shirt over Nick’s seat before sitting down in her own. Laughing, Nick just took a seat on Mackenzie’s lap. After some playful arguing, the bus finally pulled away from the rest station.
AJ and Mackenzie were laughing hysterically as Nick attempted to beat the fourth level on his new game, Jet Ski 2000 for Nintendo 64. This was the eighth time that Nick had hit the jump wrong and ended up kartwheeling off the side of his video game jet ski. The main reason that AJ and Mackenzie were laughing so hard was that fact that everytime Nick landed in the water, he was either eaten by a extremely stupid looking shark or run over by other jet skiers and every time, Nick’s temper would flare up and he would begin spilling out a long stream of cuss words.
“Calm down Carter,” Mackenzie said soothingly after another long fit of giggles. “Here, let me try. It’ll make you feel better.”
“How is you playing my game gonna make me feel better?” Nick said gruffly.
“It’s simple,” AJ began. “Mackenzie sucks at video games. She probably won’t even get to the first turn before she finds some way to kill herself.”
“I wouldn’t be talking Bone,” Mackenzie started. “I seem to remember a certain someone who “accidentally” jumped off the beanstalk in Mario when all you have to do to climb the damn thing was push the up arrow.”
“Shut up Mackenzie,” AJ said shortly.
“No, you shut up,” Mackenzie said, taking the controller from Nick and, still smiling, attempted to complete the fourth level. Almost magically, she was able to reach the finish line. She looked over at Nick who was giving her an annoyed look. “You okay there?” she asked.
“So you’re gonna what now? Loose?” Nick snapped angerly “You know, cause you did such a good job at that.”
“Jesus Nick,” Mackenzie started. “What the hell?”
Nick was quiet for a moment. Snapping at Mackenzie wasn’t exactly what he wished he had done just then, especially on their third year anniversary, but fact was fact. Something was wrong with her and Nick couldn’t figure it out and with every day, Nick was being eaten up inside. “Nothing,” he said curtly. “Nothing except for everything,” he went off. AJ became nervous as Nick continued. “Ever since this damn tour started, you’ve been acting differently and when I ask you about it, you just shrug it off like I’m the stupid one here. Well quite frankly Mackenzie, I’m sick of it.” By now, a couple people had turned in their seats to watch the commotion. Nick saw this and caught himself, ceasing conversation.
Tears were welling up in Mackenzie’s eyes. She and Nick almost never fought, especially over stupid things like video games, and she didn’t want to start anything now, but she felt like inside, she was going to blow up. She wanted to tell Nick there and now what was wrong with her and that it was basically just getting worse. But now that about 15 people’s attention was focused on the back of the bus, Mackenzie found herself just sitting in the stunned silence. “Sorry Nick,” she whispered, handing him her controller and scooting closer to AJ, allowing Nick his space. She watched Nick’s future attempts at winning the next level while holding back tears.
Chapter Ten
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