Ted heaved a heavy sigh, knees bent to nearly his chest with freckle heavy arms sitting atop them. Eyes glanced to a tree to his left, in it the intials J.A., M.F., and T.T. were carved above a pot leaf with 4/20/99 written beneath it. He remembered that Easter Sunday. Janey had still been a relatively new friend, but a promising one who could roll blunts and smoke them. Matt had driven to the dead end street and parked before they hopped the fence at the back end of the Nature Center and found their way off the trail to this secluded boulder at the edge of the cliff.
The view was always beautiful, the cliff dropping off into a field and then a slowly rising hill littered with trees that were probably older than their great grandparents. It had been more simple then, Janey was just some pudgy tom boy in huge jeans and a t-shirt with hair too short for her features and all the obnoxious tendencies of a younger sister.
Ted's line of thought was broken by a twig snapping near by. Although the quiet of the woods was given to every small sound on the trails that wound through them, this one seemed to close for comfort. He sighed, turning for a moment before looking straight ahead again. Matt was just about the last person he wanted to see right now, but he knew there was no deterring him.
"Yo." Ted lifted a hand in a half wave in response.
"Yo." Matt stepped onto the boulder, settling beside him and assuming a similar pose to look out over the view as well.
"This place doesn't change, does it?"
"Nope." Matt was ready to turn and leave. He was in way over his head and Ted's monosyllabic responses weren't exactly boosting his confidence, either.
"Look," Matt let his head drop so he was looking down at the rock between his legs before they lifted again to stare out at the view, "you really need to talk to her. You know I've kept my nose out of this on both ends, but couldn't you guys just clear the air, for my sake?"
"We just talked."
"No, the shit just hit the fan." Ted laughed and shook his head. "Seriously, Ted. I don't know, man. I just can't stand to see her sad like this. I don't know. Things have changed. This isn't what it started out as."
Ted turned then to look at his friend. There was something in his eyes... mature emotion. This wasn't devil-may-care Matt who came up with plots to take over the world, or ran through the woods in the pitch black of midnight in all black with a paint ball gun. This was Matt who would soon don a suit and sit in traffic for two hours at 6:30 in the morning before spending a 12 hour day at the office. "Do you love her?"
Matt swallowed hard at the question. Any hope for looking Ted straight in the eye during this conversation was gone, and he quickly turned back to the woods. "Remember when we used to come up here all the time?"
"Yeah, you and I had a lot of good times up here."
