Sanity || j.d

43

“What are you doing?” Josh asked, coming over to where I was frantically writing  out the last of my English Essay.

“Finishing this stupid thing. It was due in today, but I’m not there so I can’t exactly hand it in.” I explained, beginning the conclusion.

Josh laughed slowly, wrapping his arms around my waist limply hugging me from behind. “You really don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing when ditching do you?”

“And you would know?” I snapped, not bothering to push him off me as I finished my work.

“You’re not supposed to work while ditching. Rule one.” He pulled the paper from beneath my pen, causing it to draw a line through the page. I scowled at him while he folded it up and tucked it into his pocket. “Rule two,” he announced, folding his arms. “Ice cream.”

“Ice cream?”

He nodded. “Come on. There’s a place down the street and it’s cheap. You’ll like it.”

I just nodded and followed like a puppy dog.

“What’s rule three?” With half a mouth full of ice cream, I rudely asked as I went to put in another.

“Three,” he winced and I wondered why until I started flailing my arms around like an idiot. “Be cool a.k.a. don’t give yourself a brain freeze.”

Once I’d finished the mouth full, I glared at him while he laughed. “You could have told me.”

He just shrugged, scooping the tiniest bit off the top of his. “Not as amusing.”

I rolled my eyes, ignoring his previous comment. “Rule three: be cool. Aren’t I cool enough? I mean, yeah, I’ not modest or anything, but aren’t I cool?”

Josh stared at me for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “No Sarah, you aren’t cool.”

I feigned shock and reached across the table belting him in the side of the head. He smirked at me and brushed over where I’d hit him. “But stop drawing attention to yourself. You’re skipping school, for one. You’re the Goody Two-Shoes for another. You really don’t need the attention on you at all really.” He explained.

“Fine then, what’s next?”

He shrugged. “You wanna go home, watch a movie?”

I glanced down at my watch, it was only just past ten. “Sure, why not?”

Only thing was, when Josh said “home” he meant the Little Towns rehearsal rooms. I didn’t comment on it, nor complain as he set up a movie on his laptop as no one there could fund for an actual working television set, and were struggling with electricity bills as it was. Then he awkwardly sat down next to me and I remembered back to the last time we saw a movie together, it didn’t end well as I recalled it. 

I asked him what he’d put on, but he wouldn’t tell me, and I prayed (for his sake) that it wasn’t a scary movie. He didn’t do sappy girl’s movies with beach houses and sad, rainy, loveless days that, until the end of the movie thinks that love’s on the other side of the world then realised that they were always there. He was manly when it came to these kind of things. 

“Tell me.” I complained shaking his arm while throwing a tantrum. I was just being childish about the whole thing. “You’re so mean.” I pouted, folding my arms and flopping onto the couch next to him.

“But you love it.” He teased.

“Yeah right.” I scoffed.

Two could play at the game of love and hate, but there was only so much we could both take.