Electric Touch ϟ 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙣 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙮

t w o - 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙣

𝙎𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝙄'𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙗𝙞𝙜 𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙮𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙜𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙖 𝙗𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙣

- Mean (Taylors Version) by Taylor Swift

【☆】★【☆】

2022

Charlie fidgeted with the collar of his thrifted tee shirt. Standing on the roof of his LA apartment building and watching the sunset, a cigarette in his hand, he felt extremely uneasy. He felt guilty that he was up here smoking when his roommate and friend Daniel was out somewhere getting them takeout. The guilt was mostly coming from the fact that Daniel had been nagging Charlie to quit for almost a year, but slowly had been giving up realizing it wasn't worth the arguments.

Charlie felt his eyes burn as he stared almost directly at the sun, running his long slender fingers through his thick dark brown hair absentmindedly with his free hand while his eyebrows knitted together, a concerned expression appearing on his face.

He was far from his bedroom in his parent's house in Rhode Island, having left the day he turned 18, turning his back on his trust fund and the expectations his parents and fleeing across the country to LA. There, he had thought, he'd finally be able to pursue his dreams of making music, unrestricted and uninhibited by his parent's distaste for his goals.

Oh, how wrong he was.

Becoming successful in LA was significantly harder than Charlie had anticipated, which is why at 22 years old instead of having the overnight success he had dreamed of at 18, he was now sharing a crummy apartment with Daniel, an aspiring actor of similar age to Charlie. The two of them were each struggling to reach their goals but trying their best, with Charlie posting his original music and covers on YouTube almost daily to his small following of a couple thousand people and Daniel attending as many auditions as he could physically could.

In order to make ends meet, Charlie had been spending his days working tirelessly at a small bakery, manning the cash register and chatting with customers. Of course this wasn't ideal, but the smell of the baked goods and the excuse to get up before dawn made him happy. It was alright for now.

"Baby you light up my world like nobody else" sang Charlie's phone, breaking him from his musing thoughts. His One Direction ringtone was shattering the silence of the roof that Charlie craved, so quickly accepted he the call with the hope he could to return to his anxious thoughts as soon as he could.

"This is Charlie." he replied in an upbeat tone, as if he hadn't just been questioning his entire life.

"I have dinner in the apartment. It's from the shitty Chinese place down the street with the old lady at the counter who has a crush on me. Where the hell are you, man? You said you'd be waiting for me when I got back and I'm STARVING." said Daniel, obviously eager for Charlie to join him as fast as possible.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm on the roof. I'll be down in a minute." replied Charlie, extinguishing his cigarette on the concrete barrier that sat between him and falling, taking one last look at the LA sunset.

The sunset wasn't a particularly beautiful one. It certainly didn't look anything like the sunset back in Rhode Island. Instead The LA sunset was mostly orange and hidden behind smog, but despite that Charlie loved to watch it. In a way, it reminded him that he had escaped and was working toward his dream.