Mercy • Shawn Mendes

One

May

I knew he'd be the one to ruin me, but I never knew it would only take four days to get the job done. All it took was a simple hello for him to grab hold of my heart and within the many hours that followed, squeeze it until all the love and happiness overflowed, spilling with every step I took away from him.

Shawn Mendes came crashing into my world one Friday in August. The world was sleeping, but in that Target we were both awoken to the existence of each other; I haven't been able to sleep since then.

My mom sent me to the store that night for paper plates for our family vacation I was a day late attending. I cruised up and down the grocery aisles on a mission, trying to waste as much time as possible before I had to drive an hour through the night and spend an entire week with my abnormally large, Irish family.

We spent one week together a year in Indiana. All 90 and counting family members swam in the pool, dove over waves at the beach, ate chicken legs, drank stale beer, and slept together in assorted rental houses in our vacation community. By day three I was ready to place a pillow over all of their faces while they slept and hold until the snoring came to a halt. But in all actuality, I wouldn't trade my crazy family for all the free pizza in the world.

My red cart skidded to a stop at the opening of aisle7: paper/plastic utensils and misc. I parked it in front off shelves overflowing with plastic spoons before marching down to find my prize. The plates were found in between Dixie cups and a ton of paper napkins which had designs of any animal you could fathom.

I pulled out three large packs of 200 count plain plates, lugging them back to my empty cart before turning around and heading towards the self checkout; people annoyed me to no end so I only went to stores which had a self checkout for time purposes.

The candy aisle called out to me with their chocolate cavity prone goodness, aka my weakness. Abandoning my cart, I ran down to the kit kat bags and pulled two off the shelf. As I tossed them towards my cart which sat in the middle of the deserted main aisle, a tall guy wearing black jeans and a plain white tshirt walked in front of me, getting smacked over the head with two flying bags of cavities.

"Oh shit, oh shit!" I exclaimed, covering my mouth with both hands. "Are you okay? I am so, so sorry! Oh my goodness please don't sue, I'll pay off your medical bills no problem."
My rambling always got the best of me in any and all situations, but fortunately he cut me off, "Hello." His laugh sounded from his gut, bellowing out through the empty store as he rubbed his head, messing up his short brown hair. "That's one heck of an arm you've got there."

"If you must know," I smiled. "I used to play on the Red Devils."

"If I knew what that was, I might be impressed." He spoke in a type of dialect no one from around this part of Illinois could be prone to, unless they moved or something.

"You're not from around here, are you, weird accent boy; that's your new nickname by the way." I picked up the kit kats and placed them in my cart which now contained two different items.

"Throwing a dinner party?" He wondered, avoiding my question. I mean if someone from around there who seemed to be about the same age as me didn't know the Red Devils aka the best softball team on the planet then they were for sure not from the same country.

"Not so fast, slick. Where are you from? And why do you look so goddamn familiar."

"You ask a lot of personal questions for just knowing someone for about a minute. I could be some serial killer or something and you're just pleading to get captured." His smirk should have sent me to the hospital from cardiac arrest, but I looked away before my heart jumped from my chest. "Kidding. I'm kidding. But you should have seen your face." Weird accent boy laughed. His laugh could have put all tiny precious baby laughs to shame. The pureness in his tone made me trust him even more than I already had thanks to his award winning smile.