love, maddie ✧ one tree hill

f i v e

"Who would've known that Dan Scott's basketball pedigree would be inherited by his two sons, Nathan Scott and Lucas?" Nathan reads from the paper making his dad scoff while his little sister rolled her eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me?" Dan Scott says taking the paper from the boys' hands to inspect it himself.

"Here we go." Maddie Scott mutters already over the discussion.

"No really, it's great, dad. We're all one big, happy family." Nathan said sarcastically feeding  his dad's anger.

"Watch it. I wonder what they're paying this reporter to support his crack habit."

"Oh, c'mon dad. He's a reporter, this is what they do. Don't read too much into it, I'm sure no one else is." Maddie tries to reason taking the paper from her father's hands and throwing it into the trash.

"Exactly. The boy exists Dan, he's on the team. None of that is actual headline news." Deb chimes in.

"No Deb, apparently it is." Dan argues.

"Well, how do you think Lucas and Karen feel about it." She quips back.

"Gosh, I don't know! Maybe we should invite them over for breakfast and find out." Dan says earning a scoff from his youngest child.

"Alright, look if you guys are going to argue, then I'm out of here. Let's go twerp." He calls to his sister who quickly grabs her bag following him to the door.

"We're not arguing and you two still need to eat breakfast." Deb says before they leave.

"We're just gonna grab something at school with our brother." Nate jokes causing Maddie to shove him with a glare.

"We'll see you guys later, bye." She doesn't waste anytime fully pushing past her brother to get to his car.

••

"Word has it that Peyton Sawyer is officially back on the market." Toby tells both his friends as they wait by Stella's locker before class starts.

"Yeah, turns out Nathan Scott is probably the biggest asshole in town. Who knew?" Maddie says.

The two siblings have yet to talk since their fight at the beach house and Maddie wasn't sure how to handle the anger she was feeling towards her brother not having felt quite this much at this capacity in a long time.

"So how high do you think my chances of getting her to date me next are?" Toby says moving Maddie out of the way to stare at himself in Stella's mirror on her locker door.

"Oh buddy, your chances are so low they don't even exist." Stella says pushing him out of the way and slamming her locker door shut making Maddie laugh.

"Yeah well, I asked Maddie not you."

"Get real Toby, the chances of her getting back with Nate are higher than her dating you. I mean, we're still like eighth graders to the upperclassmen. She will never see you like that." Stella explains with a shrug.

"I wouldn't say—"

"She's not gonna date you O'Donell, get over it." Stella says as they start to go back and forth.

Maddie had zoned her friends out aimlessly looking around the halls for a minute before catching Jake Jagielski's stare. He sent her a smile and she sent one back. She had thought a lot about the events that took place this past weekend and still hadn't fully grasped that everything that happened was real.

"Maddie! Maddie! Hello? Come back to Earth, maybe?" Stella says shaking her friend's arm.

"What?"

"The bell rang, we gotta get to biology before we're late. You know Mr. P hates it when we're late to his class." Stella says leading the way to their designated classroom.