Blog Tour: First There Was Forever by Juliana Romano

Today I have Juliana Romano on the blog, author of FIRST THERE WAS FOREVER. She's here to talk about her own best friend experience in high school.

How did your relationship with your high school best friend change and evolve over those four years?

*name changed

Katie* and I met when we were eight years old, just weeks after she and her family moved to Santa Monica. I fell in love with her right away, with her angelic singing voice and her weird pet rat that only she thought was cute. Soon, we were having double sleepovers and spending our days rollerblading around our neighborhood. We were a perfect match: best friends forever.

Things between us began to change in middle school. Cool older kids were always taking Katie under their wings, and all I could do was try to hold on. By fifteen, Katie had turned into a rebel. She cut off all her hair and dyed it black. Long before she got her driver’s license, she would pick me up in her sister’s car, Led Zeppelin blasting from the stereo. It scared me to drive around with an unlicensed driver, but she never worried about getting caught. It annoyed her that I obeyed my parents so happily. We still called each other BFF’s, but we began to fight regularly. My diary from those years is full of transcripts of our conversations, as if I believed that if I studied our relationship hard enough, I could figure out what was wrong and fix it. What I didn’t know was that we were just growing up and that’s a force that can’t be stopped.

One night in eleventh grade, the coolest guy in our grade had people over at his mother’s downtown LA loft. There were people from other schools and no parents. I knew it was supposed to be fun, but I felt awkward and lonely and I wanted to go home. But Katie was my ride and she wanted to stay. I was mad that Katie wouldn’t go, and Katie was mad that I wanted to and we fought in the bathroom. Both of us cried. Wasn’t she supposed to love me enough to put my happiness above some stupid party? And wasn’t I supposed to love her enough to suck it up and deal even if I was uncomfortable? Maybe we had reached the limits of how far our love for each other could carry us.

Soon, Katie and I stopped spending weekends together. I went away the summer before senior year, and Katie got a new best friend. By the end of high school, we were no longer BFFs but just two friends. Being just regular-friends after having been best friends hurt a lot. Best friendship was exclusive and special, and I was sad that it was over.

But things got better for both of us once we let go of the best-friendship. I spent senior year making new friends who were a better match for the person I’d become. After we graduated, I went to college and Katie traveled the world alone, finally getting the adventure she had been seeking all along. Sometimes, you have to let go of something to make room for something new. 

About FIRST THERE WAS FOREVER:

Lima and Hailey have always been best friends: Lima shy and sensitive, Hailey funny and free-spirited. But Hailey abandons Lima to party with the popular kids and pursue Nate, her disinterested crush. As their friendship falters, Lima and Nate begin spending more time together. And before Lima knows what she’s feeling, she and Nate do something irreversible. Something that would hurt Hailey....if she knew it happened.

Lima thinks she’s saving her friendship by lying, but she’s only buying time. As the secrets stack up, Lima is forced to make a choice: between her best friend forever, and the boy who wasn’t meant to be hers.