Broken

Chapter Nine - First Date

-Elizabeth's POV-

By the end of the night, Adrien had returned to his room and laid down beside me in the bed. He had gotten his laptop out and was working on something, presumably homework, and had turned the lights off, attempting to keep it quiet for me.

When I woke up again at midnight, he was still typing away, the soft clacking noise droning on and on.

Sitting up, I turn to him. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"I have to finish this paper. I forgot about it."

Nodding, I moved closer to him on the bed, resting my head against his chest and closing my eyes.

When morning rolled around, I was woken up by Adrien attempting to be quiet and not wake me up. Needless to say, he wasn't very good at it. Rolling over, I began to stretch, rubbing my eyes and getting to my feet.

"Good morning, sunshine." Adrien's voice portrayed pure happiness.

"Good morning." I, on the other hand, portrayed tiredness.

Adrien began his morning routine while I tried to find one. I picked out clothes from the backpack Adrien had grabbed. It appeared he had just stuffed as much as he could into it, creating a mess of clothes for me to dig through. In the end, I'd gone with blue skinny jeans and a tank top, choosing to pull a sweatshirt over top.

When I went to grab one, I realized Adrien hadn't packed one.

I sat for a moment, contemplating my options. It was fall, we were next to the Appalachian mountains and today the high was 40°. I could just wear a normal long sleeve shirt and freeze to death, or I could man up and ask Adrien if he had a sweatshirt I could borrow. Before I could grab a long sleeve shirt from my bag, Adrien re-entered the room with nothing but a towel hanging low on his hips.

Immediately, my mouth dropped.

Before he could see the drool coming out of my mouth, I turned my head and started digging through my bag for something I knew wasn't there.

"Are you just gonna wear a tank top to school? It's a little cold for that, isn't it?"

With a frown, I kept my attention focused on my bag. "You didn't pack a sweatshirt."

A soft lump hit my back, causing me to turn around and pick up a grey mass of cloth.

"You can wear that one."

I tried to keep the smile from my face, but I'd seen him wear this sweater many times. It was one of his favorites.

"Thank you."

"It's no problem. I mean, it'd be kind of reckless of me to save you and then just let you freeze to death."

Laughing, I pulled the sweater over my head. It was much bigger than I was.

"We need to leave in ten minutes. There's a toothbrush in the bathroom for you, it's purple, and there's a hair brush in the drawer. After school today, I can take you to get anything else you need."

Nodding, I made my way into his bathroom and did what I needed to do. When I finished, Adrien was waiting outside for me.

"Lauren, Reed and Elliot ride with me. Jake drives Casey, Diana and Amanda and Andrew drives Jackson. It gets super out of whack when one of us can't drive them. You can help offset that a little, though." He throws me a smile, opening the door for me and explaining just a little more of his family. It made me happy that he wanted to include me.

By the time Elliot, Reed and Lauren had made it to the car, Adrien and I had a pretty good conversation going.

Jake drove Casey, Diana and Amanda because he had to be at school earlier, so leaving early to get them to middle and elementary school on time wasn't an issue. He had football after school and before school he tutored a freshman. Andrew drove Jackson so that he could pick up the three girls after school. Neither Jackson nor Andrew had any before or after school activities. Lauren was a cheerleader so she had to stay after school and Adrien, Jake, Reed and Elliot were football players so after school Jake drove Reed and Elliot and Adrien drove Lauren. Cheerleading went almost an hour after football, so waiting on her was a chore. Today, Jake and the boys would wait on Lauren and Adrien would take me to the mall. They really had this whole thing down.