The Dare

Chapter 5

I get a taxi and go home. As I sat in the back seat of the car staring at the lit street lights going past me every millisecond, I recap the night I just had. I then remember how I just made a complete fool of myself at the spin the bottle. I put my head in my hands and rub my eyes. "God you are such an idiot".
The car stops in front of my house and I drag myself out. I go inside and head to bed.

I wake up the next day at around 11 and I go downstairs, mom was in the kitchen.
"There's my girl" she says happily. I smile while rubbing my eyes and sit down on a stool at the kitchen island. "So how was the party?" She asks as she scrambles eggs in a pan.
"Yeah it was fine. I wish Ellie came though." I replied.
Mom nods. "Do you want to do anything today?" She says turning back to me and putting the eggs into a plate with some other food.
"Um" I said thinking. "No I think I'll just go to the library"
Mom nods again. "Okay"
She slides the plate of food over to me. "Thank you"

A couple hours go by and I get ready to go to the library. I put on some beige coloured mom jeans with a forest green sweatshirt and my doc martens.

I like reading. It comforts me. I feel less lonely. A couple of years ago I got bullied pretty badly, and reading was the only thing that made me happy and not think about anything else. I kinda got attached and I haven't quite let go of it. But I don't care, I love it. I grab my bag and some headphones and I walk out the door. I plug in my headphones and put on some music. As I walk through my neighbourhood, I take everything in. It was so quiet, orange, red, yellow, and brown leaves drifting in the air as I kick them with my feet as I walk.

I step in the library and I look around. It was massive. It was way bigger than the library I had back at home. I start scanning through isles looking for my type of genre of books that I like. A few minutes go by and I'm still scanning up and down a bunch of shelves. As my eyes scan through bibles, and history books, I could see someone on the other side of the bookshelf and I finally recognised who is was.

Noah.

He gave a friendly wave through the little hole and came around into my aisle. "You stalking me?" I say jokingly.    "Yes, yes I am" he replies chuckling. There was a silence until he reached for a book in front of me.
A bible.
"I didn't know you read the bible." He sad waving it around in his hand.
I laugh "This is my first time in this library and I have no clue where anything is."
He nods. "What types do you read then."
"Romance mostly"
He nods again slowly while looking around.
"Ah, romance, here follow me"
He leads me to a whole shelf full of the books I was looking for.
"Thank you Noah" I say turning to him. "Yeah no problem" he says walking off. I take off a few books from the shelf and head over to read on these comfy looking couches in the corner of the library. Right next to the couches we're coffee machines and a vending machine. A small smile formed on my face knowing that I'm gonna spend most of my time here. Almost all of the spots were taken on the couch but the only space left was one next to Noah so I walk over.
"Can I sit here?"
He looks up from his book and says "Yeah sure." He scotches over and makes space for me.

"How are you finding the library, do you like it?" He says turning to me.
"I absolutely love it. My library back at home was a tiny little old library."

"Shhhh" the old receptionist says sitting at her desk. Noah turns and looks over his shoulder at her and turns back to me.
"Hey do you want me to show you other areas in town? You know, in case you get lost again."
"Ya sure that would be amazing." We get up and we scan our books to rent and walk out.  We walk through town but Noah didn't show me it really, we just talked which I didn't really mind. We stop outside the café, and Noah says "You wanna get something?" I nod and smirk. He nods agreeing with me and we walk inside.

An hour goes by and we're still in he cafe just talking. It turns out that we gave a lot in common. It feels like we've known each other for years. But I think to myself, why is he being so nice to me. All the way up to the party he never really talked to me. I quickly remembered what Ellie told me. I shrug it off.