ᴏᴀᴋʟᴇʏ ᴄᴀʀʀɪʟʟᴏ was discovered at fourteen years old, being praised as a musical prodigy by the media ever since. His fame had only increased until now. At nineteen old, he's the most remarkable musician of his age, and he's only getting started. At...
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ɴᴏʟᴀɴ ᴍᴜʟʟᴇɴ
We sat outside on the guest room's balcony as Oakley was chewing on his fifth cookie in the past five minutes. Apparently, they were the best thing he'd ever tasted in his almost twenty years of life (if I had to believe him on his word).
"How did you even start baking?" he asked me, taking a sip from a bottle of water I'd given him earlier.
"I needed a distraction," I told him with a shrug. Getting into the detail about the most fucked up period of my life would most likely kill the mood. "It's a long story."
"I get it," he said. "Life gets stressful. I don't think I have a distraction from the craziness anymore."
"We could find you one together," I suggested. "I also like reading. Watching movies or good tv shows."
"Way to brag, Nolan," he said as he picked another cookie off the plate. "I do not have that many hobbies."
"Didn't you mention stargazing once?"
"I can't do that unless my mind is completely empty. I end up doing stupid shit when I'm stressed." He was almost looking defeated when he said this.
"Stupid shit like?"
"Stupid shit like one when I was sixteen, I was just lying in my backyard, got distracted by a tree, and I went there to build a treehouse."
"Building a treehouse sounds fun," I said. I'd never had a treehouse, despite almost living in the woods. It sounded like the perfect place to sit down and read a book, without having to worry about the world around you.
"Yeah, except I had an exam the next morning. First period. I hadn't slept all night. Also dislocated a shoulder." He finished off the sixth cookie and was ready to bite onto another one, but the plate was now empty. I'd left the others downstairs for him to take home, and the frown on his face told me he wasn't happy with that.
"And that happens when you're stressed? You stay up all night doing things to distract you?"
He looked up, thinking about it for a few seconds, but then he shook his head. "I guess not necessarily. But I do think it depends on my mood or something. Either way, I'm not relaxed right now."
"Makes sense," I said. I couldn't fully understand it as baking was the one thing I did to de-stress, but I could see how being caught up in a bunch of shit could cause some sort of mental block.
"But a different question," he said, looking out at the forest behind the high, metal gates. If you paid too much attention to this place, it would start feeling like a prison. It was part of the reason why I used to spend so much time anywhere but here. "Less out of curiosity, more out of... because it would help me."
