Shattered Appearances ✓

f o r t y - t w o: Spray Painting

I'm bloody tired.

Who the hell plans a date at two o'clock in the morning? I stood outside my house and while everyone was sleeping soundly, I waited until Thomas arrived. I was too lazy to actually wear something nice so I wore a random pair of sweatpants and a white shirt.

I locked my phone inside one of my drawers so I only had my watch to tell the time.

2:04 AM.

I'm going to kill him if I don't fall asleep first.

Finally, a car pulled up and stopped in front of my house. Thomas appeared carrying a black bag filled with various items but I couldn't tell what they were. When he was close enough, he handed me a cup of coffee and I took it gratefully.

"What's in the bag?" I asked before taking a sip.

"Stuff."

I gave him a look and he chuckled before dumping the contents on the floor. There were various colors of spray paint, brushes, and stencils. I grabbed the blue spray paint off the floor and shook it.

"What you were you planning on doing with these?"

"Easy. We're going to graffiti a wall."

"Is that why you planned this at two in the morning? So we wouldn't get caught?" I thought about it for a moment and it seemed like fun so I said, "sure. This sounds fun. Aren't you afraid of getting caught?"

"Not really. I found a place where we could do it legally. Unless you want to do it illegally. I'm not judging."

I playfully rolled my eyes and started to put everything back into the bag. "Nah, I wouldn't want you to get in trouble."

After putting everything away, I grabbed one of the bags and stepped inside of the car. Although it was summer, it still got a bit cold at night, especially since we lived in the north. The heat of the car contrasted the chilly air outside and I sunk deeper into the seat. Thomas soon got backed in and started the ignition.

"How did you come up with this idea?"

"I wanted to do something fun and different. I then remembered a moment where Maya told me about doing graffiti with her friends. I freaked out because I was only ten and I didn't want her to go to jail for twenty years. I know I was being ridiculous. Anyway, she told me about the place and I researched it. I promised myself that I would go there someday. Today is that day."

"You sister has good taste then." I loved the fact that he finally managed to talk about his dead sister without becoming upset. Instead, he bore a smile and reminisced about the memories they shared together.

"She really did. She wasn't into the typical couple stuff either. She hated going to the movies. Movies bored her since you had to remain quiet for one plus hours."

"My sisters are the opposite. My family is obsessed with having a family game night at least once a month. I'm forced to watch boring movies and playing Monopoly games. It's fun, though."

I really enjoyed the fact that we could continue talking about the things that we always talked about and didn't have to focus on us. We already knew so much about each other so we could skip the introductions.

It was rather relaxing to be driving at night. There was barely any traffic and we could drive as slow or fast as we want. Eventually, we reached the wall and stepped outside.

There were barely any people there and it was extensive. Only one or two people were in my peripheral vision and they were far enough away not to bother us. Almost every part of the wall was covered with miscellaneous drawings, whether they be hearts that a couple drew or an angry form of expression. When we found an empty place, we started taking out all the supplies.

Thomas was wearing all black, whether it be his black vans through this t-shirt. He was taking this vandalism-not-vandalism thing seriously.

"Okay, so what do you want to draw?" I asked him and he shrugged in response.

"I don't know. I didn't that far."

I shook my head but a smile still remained on my face so he knew that I wasn't serious.

"Okay. Want to have a contest? Whoever has the best drawing at the end has to buy each other lunch."

"You're on. I am so going to win this."

I took all my needed supplies and began to paint. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning so when stepped out and looked back, it looked like a random mess of colors. It was then that I had an idea of what I should paint.

I took the grey spray paint and began drawing a cloud and filled it in.Thomas already had all the blue colored paints so I was forced to take an orange one. I created small orange raindrops along the wall until I was satisfied with what I had one. Lastly, grabbing the yellow paint I drew a sun coming out of the cloud.

Finally stepping back, I felt satisfied with my work and turned to see what Thomas was up to. He was still doing the finishing touches but was done five minutes later. We compared our works and I was pretty impressed by what he painted.

There was a shadowed area colored in grey and parts of black. It looked really dark so I struggled to see it in contrast to the grey wall. Coming out of that shadow was a colored silhouette. I could've guessed that it was a girl. Instead of being grey, she was blue and yellow, and orange all swirling around. It looked like a rainbow. He really outdid himself.

"Yours looks great. Much better than my shitty cloud anyway."

My drawing looked like a kindergartener's artwork compared to his.

He continued to study mine and I felt a bit self-conscious even though he wasn't looking at me. Finally, he said, "I like the message behind yours. You could be down for a long time but eventually, the sun has to come out. Inspirational. You should win an award."

"Thanks, but you should still win. I'll but you dinner."

"How about McDonald's? I'm pretty hungry right now."

"Now you're speaking my language."

We packed everything, took pictures of our work and went to the nearest McDonalds. Like I promised, I paid for everything and we sat down.

I continued to eat my chicken nuggets and fries, I'm still a kid at heart, while Thomas ate a Big Mac. I particularly didn't like the burgers here and thought the kid's meal was much better.

"I think this was a successful date." He said in between bites.

"Yeah, we should always hang out at 2 AM."

We ate in a comfortable silence until both of finished and we sat in the car doing nothing. By now it was almost 5 am and hints of the sun started to come up.

"We just pulled an all-nighter," I commented as I watched the sky turn a lighter shade of blue.

"Do you want to do anything else?"

I couldn't think of anything else so I shrugged, "I just want to stay here and enjoy the moment."

And so we stayed in the car and watched the sun rose an hour later. Mixtures of red, yellow, and orange hues adorned the sky until it all settled in the regular blue that we see every day.

In the midst of everything, I didn't notice that he was holding my hand while looking at the sun.

This was the perfect ending-beginning to the day.

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A/N- I have to admit, this chapter was really hard to write. I feel asleep before I had a chance to write the chapter yesterday and I spend all day today deciding what they were going to do. I spend nearly five hours on this short 1,300-word chapter. I still like the way it turned out, though. This might be the last completely fluffy chapter that there will be until the end of the climax. The next three chapters are complete drama so put on your seatbelts.

Don't forget to comment and vote if you like the chapter. I always see votes but no comments. I really want to see your reactions until this point. I love you all and see you on Monday.