Danny's POV

I smiled wide like a girly-girl, shaking my head as an overpowering amount of happiness overtook me. A week after I found Lucas's graduation letter to me, another had arrived to me via the mail. This one he wrote while at work, and he was complaining about being bored, and how his manager was probably hungover again. Basically, it was about his whole day up until the point of him writing the letter.

For some reason, Lucas always hated texting. Even though he has, like, the newest up-to-date phones and service plans, he only sent texts when it was an emergency. Telling me that he might be late for a date or something was usually the only "emergency" he texted me for. But he always made sure to send me at least one weekly letter. I've come to love them whole-heartedly.

I pulled out my cell phone, and knowing he'd never message back, sent: 'No wonder ur boss is always drunk. Ur his employee. ;P lol kidding. Love u!'

I heard Maggie's sweet southern drawl long before I saw her. "Gaaaaal! What's got you smilin' so big? I swear your white ass teeth can blind from a mile away!"

Laughing, I waved the folded letter and envelope up.

"Ah, I see Luke has sent you another one," she smirked as she neared me. "And here, I thought you were just excited to see me."

"Trust me, you'd feel that." I laughed at the saucy expression she gave me in response. With a shake of my head, I smiled at her, "It's too nice out to read letters inside. What are you doing here? Did you walk all the way from your house?"

Maggie nodded, her hands on her hips as she rocked slightly on her feet. "Like you said, 'it's a nice day out.' And don't make it sound like I live so far away from you. It's only a mile or so. Mapquest told me so."

"Oh, because everything you read on the internet is true, huh?"

She gave a quick retort, "Just like everything you get in the mail is true."

I shook my head at her implied tease, smiling. She was just jealous no one ever sent her a weekly letter filled with cheesy boy-ness. This is what I decided Lucas's letters were filled with, nothing but corny confessions of love and just his male thoughts. "Let me run this inside, and then we can walk to the mall, since it's so nice."

Maggie smacked the palm to her forehead, exclaiming, "I don't have any money!"

I looked at my best friend, taking her in from head to toe. Flip flops, tight shorts, and a tube top that fit her lanky frame perfectly. I knew her too well and arched a brow, saying, "You have at least five buck right between your boobs at the moment. That's not money?"

Her hand flew to her cleavage, obscuring it from my gaze. "Damn, how do you do that? And no, that's not money. Not mall money, anyway. It's DQ money."

Dairy Queen was about three blocks over and to the left from my house, en route to the mall. Anytime we went to the mall, Maggie made sure to have a couple dollars on her, somewhere, so she could get ice cream.

It was probably marked as a weakness.

Fortunately for her—very unfortunate for me—I fed her bad ice cream addiction.

"I don't got much. I'll give you twenty, so you can buy like a shirt or whatever," I told her before trotting up to my house.

Surprisingly, the mall wasn't that busy today. A few stragglers wandered in and out of shops, but that was about all. Maggie stood next to me, scarfing down her Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard. Honestly, the amount of chocolate in it could kill at least ten people and a couple dogs. I don't know how she was still alive, the girl all of 98 pounds.

She licked her lips and smiled at me. "Oh my god, I needed that!" Then she tossed her emptied cup into the nearest trash bin.

Random fact, no matter where you were in the mall, you were never more than five feet away from a trash can. Maybe I exaggerate that, but it's probably the closest estimate anyone's ever got.

"Okay, gal," Maggie turned to me, suddenly serious. "This is our game plan. We're gonna walk into Deb's and own that store! Find yourself something nice, but make it match mine. Or compliment. One or the other." She shrugged and turned her heel in the direction of Deb's.

I followed, helpless against her leadership, giving a little laugh at her pushiness. "It's always about you."

Maggie looked over her shoulder at me, grinning wide and her eyes alight with mystery. She always made it seem like someone was out of the loop on something. I learned a long time ago to dismiss this, because Maggie was usually the last girl in school to know anything. She just didn't care about the social life.

She was more of the drawn back, nerdy type, with low social skills and an even lower social life—somehow she got a killer fashion sense out of it. That didn't mean she didn't gossip. Her gossip just involved more of who burned what book or who broke what law or regulation rather than who was dating who or who knocked up who.

In Deb's, I let her manage all the clothes I was to try on. I was almost buried underneath all the clothes she was hurling at me. It's like she wanted me to try out the whole store! And then she got to shoes. . . I'm good in heels, but what she was holding up was not a heel! That was a platform.

"You want me to break my neck?" I exclaimed in horror in sight of the shoe under inspection.

She looked at me dubiously, scoffing. "Hell naw! They're on sale. I want these babies for myself." Her phone rang, the ringtone the remixed version to "Prom Night" by Jeffree Star. "You go try those clothes on, I have to take this."

While she walked off to talk to whoever was on the phone, I asked the clerk to unlock a dressing room for me.

"That's quite a pile there," she commented as she moved to unlock a room.

"Yeah, it is," I sighed, seeming burdened by the task ahead of me.

I didn't even try on many of the tops, just held them up to my body, looking in the mirror before hanging them on the rack of rejection. And the jeans were all size 1's. There was no way I was squeezing my fat thighs into those any time soon. It was like Maggie was shopping for herself when she selected these out. Pretty soon, all that were left were sundresses. While some were pretty, they just weren't my style, and some were just plain ugly.

The one I held up currently was a bright yellow with sickly-looking green flowers along the hem. I curled my lip, looking at it, then looked at it pressed against me in the mirror. What the hell was the designer thinking? The dress was just awful!

"Kill that with fire. . ." I muttered and hung it with the others on the rack of rejection. It was quite crowded there, that rack.

The final dress wasn't too bad, I decided. It was actually very pretty. I slipped into it, facing away from the mirror. Sucking in my slight tummy, I turned and looked at my reflection. The dress was the color of sunned lavender and spaghetti strap, and cut across my boobs, creating an appropriate about of cleavage. There was a leather belt clinched around the curves of my midsection.

"Wow, that dress is perfect for you!" Maggie sang out.

I jumped and whirled to see her peeking over the top of the dressing room door. "What the hell!"

"Sh, sh, sh. It's not nice to shout in public. You'll cause a scene," chastised Maggie, motherly.

I crossed my arms over my chest. "And you won't? Peeping Tom in your range of professions-to-be?"

She dismissed my surliness. "It's that dress. It's you. I knew it, so I already paid for it before you tried it on." She tossed a bag over the door. "Put the clothes you came here in, in that bag. We're done here."

I did as instructed and followed Maggie out the mall. To my surprise, Lucas was there, just outside the doors, in his beater truck. Through the windows, I met Lucas's eyes. He tried keeping some sort of emotion from them, but was failing miserably. I smiled and waved at him, lightly jogging to his truck.

"Bye, y'all!" Maggie called and disappeared back into the mall.

"Hey, beautiful. That dress wears you well," Luke gave a dopey grin after he rolled down his window.

I laughed, bubbling with sudden happiness at just seeing him. But before I could say anything, he said, "Hop in. I wanna take you somewhere. We gotta talk."