A Thousand Tiny Wishes // Ed Sheeran

Chapter One - Begin

Her POV:

At sixteen years old, I thought I had everything I needed to lead a successful life, and while that may have been true, I hadn't realized that I was living by my parents expectations and not my own, doing my best to please them one perfect grade at a time. I didn't know the first thing about love or what it felt like to kiss a cute boy, or even hold his hand. I was too busy focusing on school to ever bother, and even though I had showed an interest in a select few, none of them ever reciprocated. The only attention I seemed to draw to myself from the opposite sex was when one of them needed to borrow a pen or pencil in class.

But then there was Ed.

He came into my life like a breath of fresh air, falling like an autumn leaf at my feet. Quite literally actually, since he'd tripped and landed flat on his hands and knees, spilling his schoolbooks across the concrete when his palms broke his fall.

The first thing I noticed was his wild orange hair, shaggy and sticking out at odd angles when he landed flat with a huff. I clutched his elbow when he scrambled to his feet, muttering a 'sorry' and a 'thanks' in the same sentence while he picked the pebbles from his palms.

It was no secret that he was embarrassed, but I found the blush rising to both his cheeks as he spoke inconceivably adorable, the hormones in my sixteen year old body hardly able to contain themselves at his innocence.

And then I saw his blue eyes staring back at me, shooting through me like a five below wind chill. Although I wanted what all the popular girls had in terms of male attention, I knew it couldn't be as simple as a ball of copper-haired testosterone plummeting to the ground.

Regardless of my brain and my heart fighting their own separate wars at the sight of him, I knew from that very moment, things wouldn't be the same.

I'd seen him around school a few times, but never had the courage to introduce myself, and even if I did I wouldn't know the right words to say. Do you greet a potential mate with a 'hello' or a more casual 'hi'? I was too afraid of rejection that I just fantasized saying hello from afar, imagining myself walking up to him and the two of us forming an instant bond, but of course, that's not how things go.

Here I was, an honor roll student with more extracurricular activities than a valedictorian could ever dream of, attracted to the red-haired freckled face boy who couldn't care any less about it all, finding it far more intriguing to skip class and vandalize property than to waste the day sat at a desk, listening to adults who thought they were better than us.

He escaped me that day he fell and skinned his knees, gathering his fallen books at his hip before giving me a gentle wave and a smirk, leaving the school grounds as I was going in. I went through the day keeping him in the back of my mind and rehearsing over and over what I'd say when I saw him again.

The next day, I spotted the top of his orange hair in the hallway, seeing it move as if he'd fallen again, and I had to double-take, knowing there wasn't any way one person could be that clumsy. But he hadn't fallen, instead, he was shoved by another boy almost twice his size. I didn't like what I witnessed, watching Ed fall back against the metal lockers in a huff when he was shoved by his chest, knocking the back of his head against the cold hard frame.

Somewhere between being shy and wanting to be friends with this newfound boy, I worked up the courage to approach the asshole shoving him, for no apparent reason it seemed, catching his attention when I hurried over.

"Hey," I called out, feeling tougher than I actually was, and certainly than I looked.

The kid had Ed's shirt balled in his fist, both of their gazes meeting mine once I took a few steps closer. The asshole, whose name I recalled as Nick suddenly let go with a laugh, walking away before I could interfere any further. Ed smoothed down his shirt just as I approached and suddenly every conversation I had with myself in the bathroom mirror evaporated into thin air.