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inseparable ever since.
    Ben was like family.   A brother for him and another for Dev.   Maybe that’s why they had fought so much.
    It seemed to start after they’d turned fourteen, and Alex and Ben were out doing ‘guy’ stuff and Dev hadn’t wanted to go.   He figured it was a ‘girl thing,’ and she wanted to hang with other girls more.   Maybe she resented Ben for taking up a lot of Alex’s time, which didn’t make sense really.   He saw Dev every day at school, at home, and Ben even stayed over.   He even had his own room at their house!
    He’d asked Dev what was wrong between them, but she always replied with, ‘ he gets on my nerves’, ‘he irritates me’, or one of his favorites…’ He’s an overgrown ape and I’m allergic to his fur’.
    When asking Ben about it, he would say ‘ Dude; I have no idea why she’s pissed at me.   I try talking to her, but she jumps down my throat!’  
    Alex’s thoughts were interrupted when the teacher got the attention of the class.

    “We have a new student.” She said and Alex looked around for Holly.
    He didn’t see her when they went in, and he couldn’t see her then either.  
    “Everybody, this is Kate.   Kate is from Texas. Let’s make her feel welcome.”
    Alex’s heart sank that the teacher wasn’t talking about Holly.  
    Kate looked around the class with a big smile.  
    “Hi y’all”   she said in her southern drawl.
    She was about to say something else but stopped when she looked at him.   Her eyes widened, and her smile got bigger as she looked him up and down.  
    Oh no!
    He sank into his chair a little and looked to the front of the room, feeling self-conscious.

    “Another one bites the dust, huh?”   Dev whispered as she giggled.
    Alex didn’t like the way some girls looked at him.   He could see their eyes and expressions change when they saw him.   They would openly stare, wide eyed, and their mouths would either hang open or they would bite their lip and smile seductively at him.   As if that was supposed to entice him…it didn’t work.   It actually annoyed him because they were judging him on his looks.

    He knew he was considered good looking or ‘Hot,’ but he couldn’t see that.   He was just…him.   Alexandro Valencia.   Trying to get through High school in one piece.   He didn’t want to be ‘eye candy’ or ‘eligible’ as he’d heard girls say about him.   He wasn’t a piece of meat.
    ‘ Man, you sound like a girl .’ Ryan, one of their other friends had said when he was complaining about it.   He didn’t care.   Everybody had the right, guy or girl, to go about their day without having somebody drape themselves over them without permission.   He was sick of girls trying to touch him.
    Yeah he liked to work out but now that he was older and ‘mature’ it was getting worse.   He didn’t try to look a specific way to get attention either.  
    There was one exception though.   One that he’d met that day. He’d liked it when she looked at him.  

    She’d walked in his direction, her head down looking at the map in her hand. Her long dark hair, tied in a loose braid, hanging over her shoulder.   She’d worn a loose fitting, short sleeved, shirt but he could tell from the tone in her arms that she worked out regularly.
    He wondered what she was hiding under there.   His heart rate had picked up as soon as his eyes had spotted her.   Gradually increasing the closer she got.   He felt his pants tighten…a feeling no other girl had elicited in him before.   He wanted to talk to her, to look at her, he wanted…her.   Before he could halt his foreign thoughts, she seemed to tense up and stopped still…just before she almost walked into his chest.

    He would’ve moved out of the way, but his feet seemed to be glued to the spot.   He couldn’t have gone anywhere if he tried.   He didn’t want to.   In fact, he was cursing, in his head that she hadn’t walked into him,