The American // DNF

Five.

"Are you serious?" I ask in disbelief.

"Yeah, wet belongings doesn't stop me from teaching," he said obviously.

"Yeah but all of your textbooks are wet. You can't possibly be suggesting to use wet textbooks just to teach me something when this one day." I reasoned. How was his mind even able to focus on school with what happened?

"Why don't you just come to mine and we can just chill and relax? There'll be no one home," I continued. I didn't know why, but I really liked the idea of laying next to George on my bed and watching a movie or something. With snacks of course.

"I guess that could work..." George was considering it.

"Plus, you can use the tumble dryer and radiators for your stuff and we start immediately tomorrow on the school work, k?" I offered. I saw George's smile light up.

"What?"

"Nothing..." I was blushing though.

It was weird. I didn't know how someone was supposed to react to that happening to you but George seemed to have gotten over it by now. I kept the thought to myself.

"Alright, deal."

—
We got ourselves home eventually, and as I suspected, it was empty. I lugged the still very damp belongings to the utility room (his dad is a surgeon guys, mans rich) and took everything out of George's bag so I could load the tumble dryer with the clothes and the bag itself.

The room was small, the washing machine and dryer pressed next to each other against one wall, a basket of unwashed garments resting at another next to a cabinet that held the supplies.
The lighting was dim and the air was foggy with dust particles - it was clearly not cleaned often.

"Clay, your house is big," George gulped with wide eyes. I hadn't really stopped to think about it since our place in America had actually been bigger but I guessed to the average person it was big.

"Uhhh, thanks?" I didn't really know how to respond to that.

"Hey, I- um, thank you so much for this. You have no idea how helpful you're being right now," George smiled sadly up into my eyes with his mochas. My heart stuttered.

He only wants to get in your-
SHUT UP NO HE DOESN'T

"It's no issue," I said, pressing the buttons on the machine to start its whirring.

"Ugh, do you know what sucks?" he groaned abruptly. I gave him a concerned look.

"That drawing I was working on got destroyed, and all of my drawing paper," he looked down. "I mean, I can always re-do it but it just... sucks."

I patted him on the shoulder tentatively. He looked up with a smile. "Anyways, let's not worry about that right now," he said, cheerfully enough.

"Yeah, come," I said, returning the smile and walking out of the utility room, George following me upstairs. "So... what kind of movies do you like?"

"Honestly I'm good with most stuff, except those cheesy straight romances and horrors because they make me want to literally kill myself with how boring they are," he spoke so calmly I had to blink for a sec to process what he'd just said. But I definitely agreed. They were the worst.

"Oh my god, literally. Finally, someone who gets it!" I opened my door and perched on the edge of my bed. "Not gonna lie, I'm in a Back to the Future mood today?"

"I love that film! Marty is so hot in it and it's just so fun," his eyes were shining with passion and it ignited a small fire in my stomach. I'd never felt like that before and I wondered what it meant.