Sleepwalker

Chapter Eighteen

"Let's sleep like babies all night long together."

CLAYTON

I tried really hard not to overthink what Lucy had told me. Really, really hard. But it still repeated in my head over and over. Maybe I can see if J.K. and Abby can tag along? Then it would be one awesome friend hang out. Friend, friend, friend. Although it sounded arrogant, I had never been friendzoned by a girl I was interested in before. I was typically the one doing the friendzoning, but as polite as I could. I never wanted to hurt girls' feelings after all.

So there I was, tapping a pencil on my chin as my teacher droned about yet another boring lecture, thinking about it again.

In the end Lucy had texted me saying J.K. and Abby couldn't make it, but that only made me so happy. I would have been ecstatic if she hadn't of asked them in the first place to come. Maybe my intentions weren't clear enough with the matching t-shirts or wanting to spend as much time during the day with her, but I thought it was noticeable something had changed with how I felt about her.

What else did I have to do?

Of course there was the obvious option: I could confess my profound liking for her. Normally I wouldn't be so timid with my feelings about a girl. However, Lucy was different than any other girl I had met. She was quite the opposite of all the American girls I either hooked up with or tried to go on a date with. Granted, I never had good taste in seeking out a girl who was actual girlfriend material. But then I thought my luck had changed. Lucy was the type of girl any guy would want to snatch up and call his.

Yet the idea of telling her all of this shook me to no end.

I was too nervous about telling her in the fear of being rejected and harming our still forming friendship.

"Clayton, what do you think about the quote?"

My teacher snapped me out of my head and back to Earth I crashed.

When I couldn't give a response of any kind (not even a simple "uhhhh"), she shook her head and moved on to someone else. Whoops.

Luckily it was my last class of the day, and I only had to sit through another fifteen minutes. Of course that time felt infinitely longer, but somehow I pulled through without losing my head. The bell rang and I instantly flew out of the room just like that. I was supposed to have baseball practice that day since it was a Thursday, but I had told Coach Carter that I had some family matters to attend to.

"Hey, Lucy!"

Okay, maybe I had lied.

I was out of breath from running down the set of stairs to the front entrance. Lucy's last period was as a librarian assistant and she is normally one of the first people to exit the school. But not that day; I had to see her.

A smile graced her face which made me hold my own.

She had such a pretty smile. . .

"Clayton, hey." She sounded surprised, and I didn't blame her. She knew I was supposed to be heading out to the field by then.

I opened the door for her. "So it turns out I'm not practicing today. Did you maybe want to catch that movie tonight?" My face was beginning to get hot. "Just us though."

Lucy's gaze at her phone snapped to me, and for a moment it felt like déjà vu to when we first officially met outside of school at that record store.