Until Forever Comes - Jerry Cole Page 0,1

tried to think of how to steer the conversation without crossing a line. “Honestly, Bryce, I'm surprised you’re not among... I mean -- I’ve seen you and Ms. Beniz talking in class... a little too much for my liking,” he chuckled and winked.

“She’s just a friend,” Bryce said quickly and dismissively.

“I see.” Mr. Scrivner nodded his understanding, but the look behind his eyes suggested he didn't believe it. Why would he? No one else ever seemed to.

Liana, or “Miss Beniz” as Mr. Scrivner liked to call her, was another close friend of Bryce’s, but that’s all she was. He told anyone who would listen that he didn’t see her like that, but few believed him. After all, the two got on well, enjoyed one another's company like best friends, and where Bryce was attractive, he was told on many occasions that Liana was too.

But the fact he didn’t even find her attractive should have been all the argument Bryce needed. And it wasn’t that she was ugly, because she wasn’t. She had dark curly hair that Alan fawned over. She had big green eyes that Cameron used to wax on about daily. And her ‘tits,’ as Zac called them, were the biggest in the year.

Bryce didn’t know why he wasn’t into Liana, but he wished that he did. If he was into her like he should have been, then he’d be sitting with her right now, holding her hand, maybe putting his other on her lap as he joked, she laughed and the two gushed. That was what all his friends were doing. Alan, Zac, Cameron and every other boy on the bus, just about, was seated next to their girlfriend having just the best time ever.

It had started about a year ago, when Zac began dating a girl called Imogen. When news broke of this, Zac was the big man on campus. Every other boy was beyond jealous that he got to kiss her whenever he wanted, touch her boobs, and ‘finger blast her’ as Zac lovingly referred to it. He was king.

Bryce never really got what all the fuss was about.

But soon all the other boys were pairing off with girls. Cameron started dating Sally Fitz, Alan began to go steady with Michelle Dent, and every other boy seemed to find himself a girl. Every boy but Bryce.

At first it wasn’t so bad. During school hours, the boys still hung with the boys and the girls with the girls. Every now and then one or two would sneak off for some lunchtime romance, but it was negligible. Weekends varied, and Bryce was always too busy after school anyway. So, the fact that Bryce wasn’t dating anyone, and all his friends were, had never been an issue.

And then this excursion happened.

This excursion to Sydney was to be the equivalent of a relationship adrenaline shot for the entire grade. All his mates, and their girlfriends, were using this trip to Sydney as an excuse to throw their relationship into overdrive. Where the girls thought it was going to be the height of romance, the boys prayed that it would lead to sex.

Bryce thought that his friends were a little too eager for this so called “sex,” to happen. Each friend to the last thought that Bryce was just jealous.

“It’s happening. It’s one hundred percent happening.” It was the night before the excursion, and Bryce, Alan, Cameron and Zac were camped out on Zac’s living room floor -- a mass of pillows, blankets and mattresses -- as they got ready for bed. The next morning was the trip to Sydney, which meant that sooner rather than later, this sex was going to occur. “She is so wet for it you would not believe it.” Zac had then thrust his hips into the air as if to show the boys how it was done.

“You’re right,” Cameron had responded apathetically from across the room. “We don’t believe it.”

“Go fu—

“Come on, Cam.” Alan had slapped Cameron excitedly across the arm. “Unless you think Sally isn’t going to put out? You said she was going to!”

“I said I hoped – still do. But I’m a realist.”

“A fucking pessimist,” Zac grumbled. “Yo, B. What about you?”

If this were a high school movie, Bryce Taylor would have been the ‘cool’ one in his group of friends. Not only was he the most athletically gifted – surfing mainly, and cricket when it was the right season – but he was also the smartest, and the tallest, and the