Sugarcoated (BoyXBoy)

Sugarcoated {3}

AIDEN

My phone dinged just as I had finished drawing on my eyeliner. I grinned at the text from Noah saying he was on the way. I replied that I would be waiting, and I went down to check on my dad. He had once again fallen asleep on the couch, but I was glad to see that there were only a few beer cans on the coffee table today. I went in and pulled the blanket off the back of the couch covering him up before leaving.

Just as I had walked out, Noah had pulled into my driveway in a car that was far nicer than any car anyone at school could afford. As I walked towards his car, the bus was pulling past my house, slowing down. I waved the driver off and I hopped into the front seat of Noah's car.

"Ready for school?" Noah asked as I buckled myself in.

I smiled sheepishly, "Yeah. Always."

He offered a quizzed look as he pulled out of the driveway towards the school, "No you're not," He glanced at me quickly before returning his gaze to the road.

My smile faltered, "W-what do you mean?" I stuttered. Oh god, what if he had found out something about me? But that was ridiculous, right? I mean, he had said that he hadn't spoken to anyone but, I wasn't so sure...

He snickered, "No one is always ready for school," I tried not to let out a sigh of relief at this. I was far too paranoid.

He glanced back at me, grabbing his phone from the cupholder and brought a knee up to the wheel to drive and used both hands to unlock his phone and pick a song, glancing up at the road every two seconds. After he had both hands back on the wheel, he glanced at me before looking back at the road, "I hope that doesn't make you uncomfortable," He said, slowing down once we entered the school zone, "I have a habit of forgetting to start up my music before I get in the car, I guess somewhere along the line I got really good to driving with my knees."

"It's fine," I said as he pulled into student parking. I glanced at the time as we got out of the car, "Wow, that was fast, it takes the bus an hour to get here, it only took you like ten minutes."

"To be fair, I don't have to drive through a bunch of neighborhoods and I don't have to do all the extra stopping," He grabbed his bag out of the front seat and we made our way into the school.

I was a strange feeling to see everything as it should be. For the longest time, I would walk into the school, and I felt like I was in slow motion and everyone else was going ultra-speed; But today it was like the universes had finally aligned and everything was moving the same speed again. I looked at Noah as we walked. He didn't notice that I was looking, but it didn't matter; I was just glad that he was real, that all of this was real. It had been so long since I had been able to clearly decipher reality, and I was glad that Noah was it. I smiled at him. My first genuine smile at school in a long, long time.

I turned my attention back to the hallway in front of me, quickly losing my smile when I ran into the back of someone, falling backwards. Noah was quick to pull me up off the floor, but after standing up, I had never felt lower once the person I ran into turned around.

The person had a concerned expression as if to help whoever had bumped into him, but the second his eyes locked with mine, that concern melted into a cold, hardened expression, making my heart drop. I expected him to be the one to speak, but it was the girl beside him who spoke first.

"Stratton," she said with a clenched jaw speaking in a bittersweet tone, "What do you think you're doing?"

My mouth was moving but I couldn't make words come out. My face heated up in embarrassment as the boy tightened his grip on her hand, I cast my gaze to the floor, unsure of what to say.