Bumblebee Pebbles – Chapter Four

Summer

“But what actually happened?” Jeanie asked as she leaned across the table. I shrugged, picking the seeds off the bun of my burger. 

“I don’t know, one minute we were fine and then she just started accusing me of all these things and we got into a massive argument,” I kept my gaze fixed on the bun and the little pile of seeds that I had been making.

“What was she accusing you of?”

“Cheating on her,” I looked up and met Jeanie’s gaze, “talking about her behind her back, not loving her,” I continued, dropping my gaze again.

“But none of that’s true, it’s so easy to see how much you love her,” Jeanie said, a hint of anger coming into her voice. “And how could she even think that you’d cheat on her, you wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone do anything like that.”

“Yes, thank you, Jeanie. I already know what I have and haven’t done, I don’t need to be reminded,” I snapped, before sighing and running my hands through my hair. In frustration, I grabbed the strands and pulled, but my hair was firmly stuck in my head, not that ripping it out would have solved anything.

“Sorry,” Jeanie mumbled and I immediately stopped her.

“You didn’t do anything, I shouldn’t take it out on you.” She nodded slightly, clearly having no idea what to say or do. 

I looked around at the other tables around us. Families, couples, friends, sitting around tables, laughing and enjoying their food. Then mine and Jeanie’s table, two lonely people who weren’t with the people they should be with.

Jeanie and Luke had a massive fight a couple of weeks ago. She had pointed out to him that a lot of the girls at school were still trying to get his attention, even though everyone knew that they were going out, and he had said that there was nothing he could do to stop them. Everything had escalated when she suggested that perhaps he stop winking at people and he had gone on the defence, saying that he wasn’t doing any harm, and she needn’t be so controlling. She had picked up her bag and walked out of the room, and they had barely spoken since. I should know, Grace and I had been the ones stuck in-between. With Luke’s past break-ups, we had made fun of the drama, but with this one we couldn’t. We liked Jeanie, she had joined our little group quickly, and fit into the gap.

The day after Grace and I broke up, I walked into the cafeteria and stood in the doorway, looking around. Grace had moved back to her corner, a book open in front of her, but it looked like she was just staring at the pages instead of reading it. Luke was sat in the middle, like usual, and waved me over, but I turned and walked the other way instead, to the table that Jeanie was sat at. Why sit with someone who would immediately try and set me up with someone else, who would say that it never would have worked out anyway in an attempt to console me, when I could sit with someone who understood instead? 

“Do you want to go somewhere? Do something?” Jeanie asked and I shrugged again, pushing around my little pile of seeds, the bun now devoid of them. “Come on, bring your burger,” she said, standing up and reaching across the table, picking up my food and packing it away in the little takeaway boxes it had come in.

“Where are we going?” I asked as Jeanie stacked the boxes and picked them up.

“I don’t know yet, just somewhere,” I followed her out of the restaurant and took the food from her so she could unlock her car. She was unlike Grace in every way. Grace’s car had been tidy, and she had always been ready to make a picnic from scratch. Jeanie? I had to push receipts off the passenger seat when I got in, and instead of little containers of fruit, we had boxes of fast food fries and burgers.

I sat quietly as Jeanie drove, staring out the window as her radio struggled to find a connection due to a faulty areal that she had known about for months but still hadn’t fixed. 

I looked around when the car rolled to a stop and Jeanie turned the engine off. 

“Where are we?” I opened the door and climbed out, bringing the food with me. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” She pointed towards the path leading from the car park, littered with leaves and branches, and overshadowed by tall trees. “We’re going to take a walk through the woods and we won’t be able to think about all the sad things in our lives because the birds are singing and the flowers are out and it’s not fair for us to give all our sadness to the happy things.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I told her and she shrugged.

“When does anything?” She reached for her boxes of food, and I let her take them because when they were stacked on top of mine they were at a high risk of sliding off and landing on the ground. 

I walked after her as she marched along the path, down a steep slope. I almost lost my footing at one point, my shoes skidding along the ground and causing the dried mud on the ground to rise up in a little cloud of dust.

“Don’t fall,” Jeanie said and I rolled my eyes.

“Wow, thanks, I won’t now that you’ve said that,” I said sarcastically and she threw me an equally sarcastic smile over her shoulder. 

“Come on, the food will be cold by the time we get there,” she picked up the pace and I struggled to keep up while feeling confident that I wouldn’t slip and roll down the entire hill, breaking every bone in my body.

“Where exactly is ‘there’?”

“You’ll see.”

I sighed and tried to keep up with her, breathing a sigh of relief when we reached the bottom of the hill, until I remembered that we would have to climb back up it to get to Jeanie’s car.

I followed Jeanie through a field of grass that was yellowing in the sun, feeling the rays starting to scald the top of my head, and over a small bridge, a small stream trickling under it. 

“We’re nearly there,” Jeanie stated, leading me off the trail and between the trees. Twigs snapped under my feet, as I blindly followed her, a faint sound of trickling in the distance. The sound only grew louder as we walked, and turned from a trickle to the sound of crashing water as I tried to dodge branches that Jeanie could just walk under. 

“Is there a river?” I asked and Jeanie turned to grin at me.

“There’s a waterfall,” she said, turning around again and speeding up.

“How have I never known about this place?” I asked and Jeanie shrugged.

“You spend too much time in that park, you probably never thought that there were any other bodies of water nearby.”

“Oh, of course,” I said, “I totally believed that the only place I could find water is in the park. You mean there is water in other places? Amazing,” I retorted and Jeanie snickered in front of me.

I was almost starting to believe the sound of the water was a recording and we would never actually find a river when the trees opened up into a clearing, the floor carpeted in old leaves centre pieced by a ring of rocks, presumably used as a barrier for campfires. A wide river was running directly across our path, and although it didn’t look too deep, I was sure if I wasn’t careful I would end up falling in. 

“Come on, come and look at the waterfall,” Jeanie turned and walked along the river, the water getting deeper as the sound of crashing water got louder. We reached a small pool, where a river higher up had met with a drop, and was falling directly down to join the pool. “Isn’t it pretty?” Jeanie asked and I nodded, dragging my eyes away from the splashes when I realised she wasn’t standing next to me anymore. 

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m sitting down,” I watched as she set her food down on the forest floor and sat next to it. “Are you going to join me?”

“On the ground? Isn’t there mud and insects?”

“It’s too hot for mud, and are you seriously scared of a few ants and flies?” She asked and I felt the words ‘are you a wuss’ coming on so I walked over to her.

“I’m not scared of ants, but I’m not welcoming any spiders to crawl up my back.” I said as I hesitantly sat down.

“See, it’s not so bad,” she said as she reached for her food.

“It’s not exactly comfortable,” I said but she had stopped listening. I looked up at the sunlight filtering through the leaves, creating patterns on the floor below, the birds sending messages back and forth as they flitted between branches. Grace would love it here. She would be walking in the river by now, or trying to climb up the rocks jutting out of the steep hill to stand at the top of the waterfall. 

“You’re thinking about her again, aren’t you?” Jeanie asked and I nodded absentmindedly as I imagined her laughter catching on the breeze as she looked down at the waterfall, disregarding my concerns about her falling.

“I don’t understand why she would think I would even look at another girl,” I mumbled, looking down at the ground and picking up a crispy brown leaf.

“I’m a girl,” Jeanie said, and I rolled my eyes as I started tearing the leaf to pieces.

“That’s different, you know what I mean,” I dropped the small pieces of leaf and picked up another one.

“I know,” Jeanie said quietly as she stared at the waterfall, eating her cold burger. “I know.” She repeated, putting the burger down as I turned to look at her, a frown coming to my face when I saw the look of realisation on hers. “I know!”

“What do you know?” I asked and she grinned up at me. 

“A couple of weeks ago, Luke told me that he had heard a rumour that someone had caught me and you kissing. By the way, I don’t appreciate the look of disgust,” she added and I tried to wipe the expression off my face. “Anyway, at the time, I didn’t think anything of it, things like that are usually mistakes or people trying to start some gossip, but Luke asked me if it was true and we got in our fight a couple of days later.”

“So?”

“Honestly, James, it’s a wonder Grace put up with you for so long. You’re so utterly clueless.”

“Just explain it, Jean!”

“Okay, okay. Whoever had been talking about it was clearly trying to start a rumour. Are you with me this far?” She asked, grinning, and I scowled at her. “They were clearly upset that Luke had a girlfriend–“

“How did you get to that conclusion?”

“Don’t interrupt me, James. Let me explain!” I held my hands up in surrender and gestured for her to continue. “Luke and I broke up days later and do you know who’s been hovering around him since?” I shook my head and she frowned. “Seriously? Do you pay no attention to what’s going on around you?”

“Jeanie!”

“Lucy has.”

“You mean the girl he broke up with about a year ago?”

“Yes! She’s been trying to get back with him for months–“

“How do you know this?”

“Because I pay attention. Anyway, she succeeded, obviously, with breaking me and him up, but her methods meant that she had to throw someone else under the bus. She went around telling people that me and you had been caught making out, which means that at some point, Grace must’ve heard that you had been kissing someone else and there was nothing to indicate that it wasn’t true.”

I closed my eyes and groaned. I felt like banging my head against a tree, but somehow I wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to help.

“I need to talk to her.” 

“Okay.” Jeanie stood up and brushed dirt and leaves off her shorts. “Let’s go then.”

And done!

I hope you enjoyed reading Bumblebee Pebbles. It's probably one of the most feel-good cutesy stories I've ever written. These characters were lucky enough to skip the trauma I normally hand out to my creations!

If you need to catch up on the previous chapters, you can do so HERE!

And if you have read all four chapters, thank you for humouring me and my writing, and I hope you enjoyed!

Anyway, that's all for now...

Bye!