𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧

A U T U M N ' S P O V

It's 11AM on a Saturday morning and the sun is shining into my room creating a cozy, warm aroma. Thank fuck it's Saturday and I didn't have to wake up early for school.

But, a whole day at home means a whole lot more abuse from my dad.

I reach over and grab my phone to see if I have any messages. To my surprise, I do. I see that it's a group chat with Grayson, Maya and a number I don't know. I soon identify that it's Luke and I add his name to my contacts.

To sum it up, he's currently at Maya's house hungover and said that Grayson and I should come over to be with them.

Grayson. I cannot believe he came over last night. I seriously have no words on what to say.

Whatever, I'll just see how things are at Maya's.

❥

Maya's front door opens and I'm greeted with her beautiful smile.

"Hey, how are you?" She smiles pulling me into a hug as I step inside.

"I'm good, how are you?" I smile back as I take my shoes off.

"Good now that you're here, Luke is just being grumpy and hungover." She says as we walk into the living room and see a hungover Luke sprawled out on the sofa.

No Grayson.

"Maya, you drink a whole bottle of vodka and tell me how you feel the next morning." He mumbles sitting up as he walks over to me, "Hi, Winter" he smiles, giving me a hug.

"Hi, Luke." I say hugging him back. I wonder if he knows about Grayson coming to mine?

"Do you guys want a drink?" Maya asks as I break away from my hug with Luke.

We both nod as we walk into the kitchen with her.

"Are any of your siblings here?" I ask as I sit on the kitchen stool.

"No, surprisingly, you'll think because I have 11 siblings they'll constantly all be home. But today, they're either at a friends house or at sport clubs." She says filling up two glasses of water and handing them to us. I thank her and take a sip. "Speaking of, I need to go text Aaron and talk about the arrangements with picking everyone up." She says leaving the room.

"Winter, come here." I hear Luke's voice from behind me. I turn and see him outside the pantry door.

I walk over to him and follow him into the pantry. "What are you doing?" I whisper. He holds out a plastic tupperware box.

"They have brownies Autumn. These are literally the cure to my hangover." He says opening the box.

"Luke, you can't just take them!" I whisper as he takes a bite out of one. He moans and closes his eyes.

"It's fine, there's only a few left and they were at the back on the bottom shelf. Maya seriously won't mind." He replies as he finishes his groaning and shoves the box to me. "Here, take one, these are so fucking good."

I hesitantly take one out the box and take a bite out of one. This has to be the first and last meal of the day because I've been eating too much recently.