Honest June

Lee Noel had been coming over to our house in Featherstone Creek since he was in first grade. We’re friends. Just friends. Though, if he decided we should be girlfriend and boyfriend and plan to go to the same colleges and then get married and live happily ever after, I would not object. But he had no idea how I felt. And I planned to keep it that way until he confessed his feelings for me. I couldn’t handle the rejection if he didn’t care about me that way. And I didn’t want to make things weird. Why mess up a good friendship between us with all those… feelings?
Lee and I had gone to different preschools, but we met when we both started going to kindergarten together. He moved in with his grandparents then, because his parents traveled so much – both his mom and dad were in the military. Our families figured out we both had summer houses on Lake Lanier, and since then we’ve tried to coordinate our weekends at the lake houses together. Lee and I always met up on early Saturday mornings to ride our bikes to the main boat ramp of the lake. We’d talk to fishermen and old locals and the woman who ran the local bakery, who sometimes gave us cinnamon rolls if we were lucky. We would walk along the lake picking flowers, debating music, pondering the seven wonders of the world (“But how does your dad know how to do the Renegade?” Lee asked one day. “You certainly didn’t teach him.” “Anyone can learn anything on the internet,” I replied.)
Even though we’d just seen each other a few day sago, Lee came over tonight before the first day of school – mostly because he hadn’t been at Sunday dinner and had missed out on my mom’s 7UP pound cake. He always had a slice whenever Mom made the cake. Sometimes he took two.
“Hi, Dr. Jackson,” Lee said as my mother opened the door.
“Hello, Lee. How are you doing?”
“Fine. Heard you had a barbecue with the girls last night.”
“Yes, we had Nia’s family and Olive’s family over. You know them, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” Lee said. Then he slowly rubbed his chin. “So, if there was a barbecue, then there’s gotta be some cake, right?”
“In the kitchen, Lee,” my mom said, cocking her head.
“June’s in there, too.”
Lee walked behind my mother toward the kitchen. He had on a tattered Atlanta Falcons T-shirt and oversized jeans. He’s just gotten a haircut – those were some sharp lines in that hair. “What’s going on, June?” he said.
“Hey,” i said. “That you school fade you rockin?”
“You know if,” he said. “Gotta be fresh to death for the first day. I heard there’s cake”
“You say that every time you come over.”