a long way from home ; g.d.

t h r e e

6 HOURS LATER
I opened up my duffel bag and pulled back the flap. I had absolutely no clothes in it, besides a few pairs of jeans, a couple of hoodies, and some t-shirts. I sighed and closed it back, then reached beside it and grabbed my backpack. I pulled out my wallet, and counted my money. I had about 800 in cash and another thousand on my credit card.

My mom and dad had made a bank account for me when I was born, and have been adding money to it at random times. They said it was supposed to pay for a car, college, emergencies, etc. I found the code for it in one of their desk drawers and wrote it down the night before I left.

I put the wallet in my back pocket along with my key card, and threw my backpack over my shoulder. I turned off all the lights, and slipped out the door. In my head, I began planning out a list of clothing items I needed and where I was even going.

I knew I didn't really have the money to be shopping, considering I already spent about 300 on my room, but there was no way I was going to make it on what was in my duffel. I'm resourceful, but I'm still a teenage girl, who needs more clothes than what's necessary. The elevator doors opened, and I was back in the main lobby.

The sky was dark, and the sidewalks were now extremely crowded. I bumped into someone every time I took a step, and had to force my way past people who refused to move. After a long time of walking, I finally came across a Forever 21. Probably not my first pick, but it'll work.

It was pretty much empty, except for a few women with younger girls at the check-out line and two guys across the store in the women's section.

I tried to avoid going in their direction, so I wandered around the store for a while and waited for them to move to a different section, but they didn't. One of them was sitting on a bench, staring at his phone and the other was standing, holding two shirts up next to each other, comparing them carefully.

I turned my attention back to a sunglass rack in front of me, until I heard one of the guys let out a long and loud groan. He turned around to face the one on the bench, and I realized that they looked exactly alike. "Man, this is impossible! She's gonna hate every one of these!"

The one that was sitting down suddenly looked up, and my heart jumped. Like a "your mom just walked in on you watching porn" jumped. He was insanely attractive. They obviously both were, since they were clearly twins, but there was just something so striking about the one on the bench. He was unreal.

"Maybe get her sunglasses! She's always talking about wanting a pair of red ones or something."

"I already checked over there, dude. No red ones. But see! You kind of know what she likes."

I scolded myself for being a creep and listening to them, and forced myself to pay attention to the rack in front of me. I scrolled the whole thing all the way to the bottom, and low and behold, a pair of red sunglasses had fallen under the rack. I picked them up and examined them. What a coincidence, right? Right.

Now, Chavelle, are you really gonna walk over to a pair of extremely hot twin brothers that are complete strangers and offer them a pair of sunglasses? Because then they will know you were listening and then you'll look weird. I thought to myself. I sighed. "When in New York," I whispered to myself.

I took slow steps over to the section they were in. They looked pretty intimidating now that I was closer. Maybe this was a stupid idea. "Hey," I said, a little louder than necessary. They both turned their heads to look at me and I felt my breath get caught in my throat. "Sorry, not that I was listening or anything, I just overheard that you were looking for a pair of red sunglasses?" I said, making it sound like a question. I held them out, and took a few steps closer.

The one who was standing walked over to me and took them out of my hand. "How did I not see these? These are perfect, Gray!" He said, turning around to show his brother. He then turned back to look at me. "Wow, thank you so much, where did you find these?"

"Oh, they were under the rack. Must've fallen off."

"Well, thank you, they're just what I was looking for."

"No problem. Last-minute gift?"

"Yeah, for my girlfriend. She's loves sunglasses and she's wanted a pair of red ones for a long time now to add to her unnecessarily huge collection."

I laughed. "Well I'll bet she loves them."

He let out a small laugh. "Yeah, I hope. So what's your name?"

I was slightly surprised, considering I thought our conversation was over. "Oh, I'm Chavelle."

"Chavelle?" The one sitting down asked. "That's a really cool name." His voice was a little more nasaly than his brother's, and after he spoke, he stood up to stand next to him. "I'm Grayson."

"Thanks, man. I always kind of hated it." "Man?" What are you doing, like seriously.

"I'm Ethan," said the other one.

"Well, nice to meet both of you. Anything else either of you need me to sniff out in here?"