Something to Dream About {Slow Updates}

Two

♪ Malachi ♪

I'd just finished explaining the difference between an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar for the seventieth time, but I couldn't care less.

An Arctic Monkeys song was streaming through the air of the music shop I worked at, and all it did was remind me of her.

Layla DuPont.

My eyes had been set on the girl since freshman year. It was the day I approached the girl sitting by herself in a pretty sweater. I'd asked if she wanted to work together for the group project in biology, and the second she looked up at me with her blue-ish, gray-ish eyes, it was over for me.

I was in her car yesterday. My arm was right next to hers. Her sweet, intoxicating perfume was in my nose. She asked me what music I like. She drove me home.

According to Ezra, she'd offered. Nobody told her to. She just did it.

She chose to drive me home.

I felt like a little kid again. I felt like a child being told I was gonna get McDonald's. I felt like a toddler holding a lollipop.

Granted, it was one interaction. But a drop of water is enough to satisfy a dehydrated man.

And leave him wanting more.

It was one interaction, but I replayed it in my head over and over until I fell asleep. It was one interaction. The first since a few weeks ago, when she'd smiled at me when the guys were hanging out at Lucas's and Indi's friends were there as well.

And here I was now, smiling to myself while at work. Happy for once, despite the fact that I found myself explaining the difference between an electric and an acoustic guitar nearly everyday.

‧₊˚♪𝄞࿐₊˚⊹

I walked into my apartment, greeted with the sweet sound of home. In the living room, my little sister Kiki was playing Taylor Swift from her phone as she drove around in Grand Theft Auto. My other little sister Lani was blaring Kolohe Kai from her CD player in their shared room.

I let out a sigh, shaking my head as I closed the door behind me.

"Can you make quesadillas?" Kiki asked. She was twelve—I was sure she could've made her own food. Yet she always asked me to do it.

And I always did.

That's how my sisters and I worked.

"If you turn down your phone," I said before walking towards the hall that held our rooms. Taylor Swift's voice faded as I pushed open the door to my sisters' room.

Lani turned to look at me from the bottom bunk. Her hair was messy—as it always was—and there was a new stain on her shirt.

"Turn it down," I told her.

Her expression instantly hardened. "No."

"Now."

"No."

"Noelani."

From the living room, Kiki shouted, "Ooh, he used your full name! Better listen!"

"Shut up!" Lani yelled back before turning to me. "It's not even that loud."

"I heard it from outside." That was a lie, but I didn't care. I was not gonna live in a house this noisy if I could help it.

She huffed out a sigh before reaching over to the CD player on the floor beside her bed and turning the music down by a decibel. One single decibel.

I let out a sigh as I left the room, heading towards my own. After setting my backpack down on my bed, I grabbed my old baseball bat and returned to Lani's room.

"Turn it down or the CD player gets it."

She narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't dare."

I lifted the bat ever-so-slightly and she instantly turned the music down. "Good. If it goes up again I'm destroying it."

With that, I left the room, put my bat back, and headed for the kitchen. There, I made us quesadillas and replayed my interaction with Layla from the previous day.

Just like during my shift at the shop, I was grinning to myself like an absolute fool.

Her smile was ingrained into my memory, along with everything else I knew about her. Which wasn't much, but it was enough. It also wasn't enough. I wanted to know more.

But I didn't have the charisma all my other friends had. I was cute or adorable. I was a puppy. Girls saw me and went aww not wow.

Except. After I got my hair cut, I played the guitar at one of Layla's parties. One on Halloween. More girls had started talking to me since then.

Either way, it was no use trying to get anywhere with Layla. She could have any guy in our whole school. She'd had plenty of them before. No way would I ever get lucky enough for her to choose me.

But hey.

A guy could dream, right?