house of Laine

I leave town for eight months and somehow she thinks distance means I stop hearing things.

Interesting.

What’s funny is this blog was never supposed to revolve around one person, yet somehow every story keeps circling back to the same girl with a talent for turning other people’s lives into mood boards for her own.

So if she’s going to keep appearing here, we might as well give her a name.

Audrey.

And honestly? I could ignore the weird competition.
I could even ignore the fact that she somehow turned senior year into a personal identity theft project.

But him?

That one almost made me laugh.

Because in the four years we were friends, there was only one boy I consistently liked. One. And Audrey always had something negative to say about him.

Too awkward.
Too weird.
Not attractive enough.
Not her type.

Mind you, I liked him before the glow-up. Before the confidence. Before everyone suddenly realized he was worth paying attention to.

I saw potential before it became socially approved to see it.

And Audrey knew that.

Which is why finding out she’s suddenly obsessed with him now feels less like coincidence and more like a pattern finally becoming impossible to ignore.

The dress should’ve been my first clue.

When we were fifteen, I showed Audrey the exact prom dress I dreamed of wearing one day. Not casually either, I mean the dress. The one attached to this fantasy version of senior year I’d been romanticizing since freshman year.

Fast forward a few years later.

Guess who shows up wearing the exact same dress…

And honestly, it wasn’t even about the dress itself. It was the realization that this kind of thing had been happening for years and I’d just been too loyal to notice.

The interests.
The opinions.
The people.

It’s actually kind of genius when you think about it- keeping a friend around long enough to let her pave the road before deciding you’d rather walk it yourself.

I should’ve known something was off when she started posting those painfully obvious yearning stories. You know the kind- dramatic little quotes clearly aimed at one specific person while pretending they’re “just aesthetic.”

But when I found out who they were actually about?

I genuinely had to laugh.

Because this is the same girl who once told me if a boy didn’t drive a BMW at sixteen, he wasn’t worth her time.

Which is funny considering a car paid for by daddy means absolutely nothing about whether a guy is actually valuable.

But I guess standards become flexible when attention gets involved.

Meanwhile, while Audrey is still treating our hometown like a social scene worth conquering, I’ve been busy learning how brutal becoming an adult actually is. I’m working for everything I have while she gets handed a brand-new car like it’s a party favor from her father.

And naturally, it happens to be my dream car.

Of course it is.

But unlike some people, I can’t exactly justify spending a year’s tuition on an accessory.

Still, none of that surprised me nearly as much as this.

Because after years of acting like he was somehow beneath her, suddenly deciding he’s worth wanting now feels a little too predictable.

First it ditching me at prom.
Then the dress.
Then the friends.
And now the boy I noticed before she ever looked twice at him.

At this point, I’m less offended and more fascinated.

Maybe some girls don’t actually know what they want until they see someone else loving it first.

Well played, Audrey.

I can’t wait to see what disappears next.

—

House of Laine
my girlhood, unfiltered