Desire | Shawn Mendes

THIRTY ONE

- Shawn's View -

Song of the Chapter: Thinking of You - Katy Perry

"Comparisons are easily done / Once you've had a taste of perfection..."

- s -

Jack pulls the key out of his pocket and we walk up the staircase to Jasmine's new apartment. "Alright, so," Jack begins, "I know that she's still upset deep down, so we're gonna paint her apartment for her."

"Is that why you told me to dress ugly?" I ask.

"Mm hm." He replies. "Which you did a really good job of doing so."

"If my hands weren't registered weapons I'd be kicking you ass right now."

"Hey I used to train you, don't forget that I know your moves."

"Alright, game of monopoly then."

"We're gonna play with big boy money for that." Jack says. I laugh and he opens the door to her apartment and I feel sad as the door opens.

There are boxes and cans of paint around the floor and her windows are exposed with no curtains to block the view. Jack starts to talk, but I simply just walk around the apartment and think of her. For a new apartment it sure smells nice and calming.

Wait a minute, does it smell like -

"Yo!" Jack calls from the living room. "Check her storage and see if she has plastic in there so we can lay it down on the floor?"

"Yeah. What's the storage garage number?" I ask as I walk over to him.

"Fourteen. Oh, here's the key." Jack tosses me the keys and I walk down the stairs, out the complex, and around the corner to where the garages were. I stop at 14 and unlock it, then lift up the door.

There's a few shelves with boxes and the garage is big enough to fit a car, but I know that Jasmine doesn't believe in cars when she lives in a city of walking distance.

"Why Chicago, anyways?" I ask her. We've skipped my congrats party on winning the fight and are on the beach collecting sea shells. Actually, the collecting stopped and it became us sitting close enough to the shore for our feet to get wet as we watched the moon touch the water.

"It's walking distance from everywhere downtown. But this one time my grandpa had this idea to do Christmas in Chicago when I was twelve and it was the most beautiful thing ever. Chandler and I walked to a Chinese grocery shop that was around the corner, and we took thirty minutes bringing up Chinese cheesecake because we were so in love with the city." She explains. "It's so close, you don't need a car."

"Why Northwestern?"

"My dad has a buddy who has a practice in Evanston so he had my dad come down there to help him with this deposition on a case and my dad took Chandler and I with him since it was around the time my mom would go to Colombia and help teach some of the local kids English over there..."

"She does that?" I ask, interrupting her story.

"Yeah. Well, she used to. But anyways, he didn't wanna leave Chandler and I alone for a week so he bought us with him and this Sunday morning the university had a football game and we went with his friend and it was amazing. The campus is by this water and i's so amazing."

"Does your dorm have a view of it?"

"Yeah," she nods. "We can stop talking about Chicago if you want."