At least I don’t live with him.
All week I had been looking forward to going out to eat with Trevor. We had planned to eat at Boiling Crab in Rowland Heights and we had invited several other friends.
When I was inviting Derrick, he said that graduation was the same day and asked if I wanted to go. I realized Alyssa would be graduating and it would be nice to see her off. Trevor agreed, so the plan changed for us to meet first at graduation and then meet at Boiling Crab.
Steven was a little disheartened by this change of plans, for he had no means of acquiring a ticket to graduation and would be lonely all afternoon. He said not to worry, that he would go to Arcade Infinity in Rowland Heights and play DJ Max Technika while he waited for us.
Graduation itself was a little hectic. Derrick and I planned to go to graduation together in his car so that I wouldn’t kill myself finding parking. Being annoying, I woke up late as always and had to rush to his house, slightly inconveniencing him.
Graduation was the same as always. Too damn hot. The entire time, Steven had been texting me. He was having a terrible time, and it seemed like everything was going wrong for him. I tried to cheer him up and told him graduation would be over soon, and that we would soon be indulging in delicious crawfish with friends.
Afterward, the group that would be going to Boiling Crab got together. Brandon* (*name changed to protect privacy) suddenly joined the group last minute. I didn’t really mind so much, except that I knew Derrick hated Brandon. I thought it would be okay, though.
I thought it would be okay until Brandon started complaining, anyway.
“Why should we go to Rowland Heights?” he demanded, “The location in Garden Grove is way closer and more convenient for me! I’m out of gas and I can’t drive to Rowland Heights! I don’t want to fill up on gas either!”
I was a tiny bit annoyed. I said to him, “Plans were already made.” I couldn’t believe he had only just decided to come with us and was already trying to change the location to his convenience.
Brandon continued to argue. Others were getting uncomfortable. “I think if it’s more convenient, we should change it to Garden Grove,” someone said, trying to mitigate the situation.
I began to panic. “Let me call my boyfriend,” I said.
I was already in tears when I called. Steven said, “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault things turned out this way.”
“It’s okay?” I asked, feeling slightly relieved.
“Yeah,” he said, “I just won’t go.”
My stomach dropped.
He explained to me that since seniors were graduating that day, traffic was awful and took him two hours to get to Rowland Heights from his home. The entire time we had been at graduation, he had actually been stuck in traffic. He had only just arrived in Rowland Heights when I called to inform him that the location was changed to Garden Grove, thirty miles away.
“It wasn’t your fault. Please don’t cry,” he said, “I can just stay here and play games. Have fun at Boiling Crab, okay?”
I desperately looked for someone to help. Derrick just stared at me and tried to comfort me the best he could as I covered his shoulder in tears and mucus.
“Sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” I asked.
“No, I’m just trying to think.”
After a moment, Derrick offered to drive me to Rowland Heights so that Steven wouldn’t have a completely horrible day. I was really surprised since such an option hadn’t occurred to me. Not having my car limited my options and I never, ever thought to inconvenience Derrick like that. I couldn’t believe what a good friend he was.
I still wanted to avoid bothering him, so I tried calling the others another time. It turned out they thought I left so they were already on their way to Garden Grove.
I thought quickly and called Andrew. He was already hanging out with friends, but he kindly offered to hang out with us in Rowland Heights.
So the four of us, Steven, Derrick, Andrew, and I, ended up meeting at Arcade Infinity. We had the usual fun and headed over to Tenren’s for lunch. By that time I had (thankfully) calmed down and they were hurting my abs by making poop jokes the whole time.
We went over to Cue. I hadn’t been there with a group in forever. We had a great time, choosing hilariously inappropriate backgrounds. The purikura machines had really updated and were a lot more fun.
We headed over to Andrew’s house afterward for what was to be an awkward night of Jenga, LittleBigPlanet, and Twister, with a noisy trip to Jack in the Box somewhere in between. Don’t ask me why it was awkward; it just was. A lot of fun was had, though, and we didn’t go home until past 3AM.
Throughout the day, I had been thanking Derrick and Andrew profusely, especially Derrick. I told Andrew I was sorry he had to leave his friends, but he insisted it was okay, that he had already spent the entire afternoon with them. I told Derrick I was sorry that he had to drive and that he wasn’t able to go to Boiling Crab. He pointed out we were supposed to drive to Rowland Heights anyway (oh yeah, huh) and that he didn’t want to go to Boiling Crab if Brandon was going.
Well interestingly enough, I found out that after he caused a ruckus and inconvenienced everyone, Brandon ended up deciding to go with another group and didn’t even go to Boiling Crab. Bull fucking shit.
At least I don’t live with him.