Different Roads

Chapter 2: Woo Get It

Before the girls.

Before the grief.

Before Kade was gone.

There was just me and Kade.

Well…

Me, Kade, and his extremely embarrassing friends.

I met Kade years before we became anything serious. Back then, he was just this tall, sarcastic guy with messy hair, a dangerous smile, and the kind of confidence that made people either love him immediately or want to fight him in a gas station parking lot.

There was never really an in-between.

The weird thing was, we spent years orbiting each other before we finally crashed into something real.

And once we did?

Everybody noticed.

Especially his brother, Kane.

Kane and Kade were six-foot-something brothers with matching chaos and the shared emotional maturity of raccoons fighting over a mozzarella stick.

I liked Kane immediately because he treated me like family before I was even officially part of the picture.

Unfortunately, that also meant he enjoyed making my life difficult.

One night, Kade was hanging out with Kane and their friends while texting me nonstop the entire time.

Apparently, after watching him grin at his phone for over an hour, one of the guys finally snapped.

“Bro,” his friend Tyler groaned, “just invite her over already. You’ve been talking to her all night.”

Kade leaned back in the truck bed with this stupid, smug grin on his face.

“Nah,” he said. “Me and her got plans later.”

The second he said it, every single grown man there started acting like middle school boys possessed by caffeine and bad decisions.

“If you leave with her again before we meet her,” Kane warned dramatically, “we’re driving by your house yelling ‘woo get it’ through the windows.”

Kade rolled his eyes.

“You guys are so embarrassing.”

“We mean it,” Tyler yelled after him.

And unfortunately for me, they absolutely did.

Later that night, Kade picked me up in his truck smelling like body spray, gasoline, and bad ideas.

“You look cute,” he said casually when I climbed in.

I immediately forgot every intelligent thought I’d ever had.

That was the problem with Kade.

He could say one stupid little thing and suddenly my entire personality dissolved.

The windows were down while we drove through Las Oleas, music playing low enough that we could still hear the ocean nearby.

Summer air rushed through the truck while Kade drove one-handed like he belonged in a country song written by someone with unresolved emotional issues.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Always.”

He laughed softly like he already knew that answer.

That became our thing after a while.

Late-night drives.

Gas station snacks.

Music.

Talking about absolutely everything and absolutely nothing.

Kade told stories with his whole body. Every joke became dramatic hand gestures and exaggerated voices until I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

And when he laughed too hard himself, he snorted.

The first time it happened, he looked horrified.

“Oh my God,” he groaned. “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”

I laughed harder.

“Nope. Too late. You snort.”

“I do not snort.”

“You absolutely snort.”

“Lyra,” he said seriously, “if you tell people I snort, I’ll deny it until the day I die.”

Ironically, years later, our daughter would inherit the exact same laugh.

At the time, though, we were still just two stupidly happy people driving nowhere at midnight.

That night eventually ended exactly the way his friends predicted.

Halfway through making out, headlights suddenly flashed past the house, followed by several grown men screaming at full volume:

“WOOOOOO!”

“GET IT!”

I buried my face against Kade’s shoulder, laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Kade looked genuinely offended.

“They’re so embarrassing.”

“Well,” I laughed, “I’m just glad all they saw was your naked butt and not mine.”

For two full seconds, he stared at me in shocked silence before laughing so hard he almost fell off the bed.

And somehow, that became us too.

Laughter.

Chaos.

Inside jokes.

Tiny moments that didn’t feel important at the time.

Back then, we weren’t thinking about the future.

We weren’t thinking about endings.

We were just happy.

We were young, stupid, in love, and convinced we had plenty of time.

I didn’t know then that those ordinary nights would eventually become some of the memories I’d hold onto the tightest.

I didn’t know that one day I’d wish I could go back.

Not to change anything.

Just to hear his laugh again.

To watch him grin at me.

To hear him snort and immediately deny that he had done it.

Back then, life was simple.

It was me and Kade.

And for a little while, that was enough.