Our Sandbox

twelve - piper

|| well, hello there hot stuff ^|| 

"Piper? Your phone has been ringing for the past three minutes, dear!" I hear Mrs. H calling from the house, and I stretch as I sweep myself out of the hammock. 

I turn back to Nolan who is stretched out on the hammock like a fat cat in the sun. 

"You coming?" I ask. 

"Go ahead, I'll be there soon." He mumbles, throwing his arm over his eyes. 

"Yeah right, fatass." 

"You know you love my ass." 

I roll my eyes and chuckle as I make my way to the back screen door, where Mrs. H is standing, holding my ringing phone out to me with a kind smile. 

"Thanks, Mrs. H." I smile at her and gently take the phone from her hand, looking down at the caller ID. I frown slightly, not recognizing it. But I accept it, settling down into a deck chair and placing the phone to my ear. 

"Hello?" I ask into the phone. 

"Hi, Piper, um, this is Mike." 

"Oh," I pause, sitting up a little straighter. A little flutter hits my stomach that is completely foreign to me. 

The first thought (and the automatic one) that comes to my mind is that this is some sort of elaborate prank. But why would it? Mike was the one who drove me home from the party, and was nice to me at lunch and in the hallway. 

But just to be safe, I make a mental note to choose my words carefully. Who knows, he might have the phone on speaker. 

"Hi, how did you get my number?" I ask slowly, selecting each word slowly. 

"A friend of a friend of a friend. It's kind of a long story. Anyway, you haven't been at school lately and the english project is due in two weeks. I was wondering if I could swing by today after practice so we could work on it?" 

Holy crap holy crap holy crap. 

Inhale. 

Exhale. 

Okay, I'm good. 

"Um, I've been staying at Nolan's for the past few days-" Quick think of a reasonable explanation. "My folks are out of town." 

"At Nolan's? His mom's chill with that?" There's a twinge in his voice that I can't place but I ignore it. 

"Yeah, family friends, the whole spiel." I ramble, twisting my ring around my finger out of force of habit. 

"Alright, so can I come by, say at six? We can start to plan for the project." 

"Sure, see you then, oh and Mike?"

"Yeah?" 

"Could you please grab any english notes that I missed over the past few days?" 

"Sure thing, see you at six." 

Click. And he's gone. 

What the heck just happened? 

Calm down, Piper. This isn't some cliche romance where the fancy ass football player sashays into the room with the glow of a thousand suns and grabs the girl of his dreams that he just noticed after she put on a little mascara and discovered Victoria's Secret. 

"Piper?" I look up to see the sun has been blocked by Nolan's body above me, and I stand up from the chair quickly. 

"Oh, yeah, what's up?" I mumble, running a hand through my hair.