Skater Boy 《scomark》

CHAPTER SIX

Comment throughout the chapter! It makes me feel good.
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The past few days have traveled in a blur for me. I've been evenly splitting my time between skating alone and with friends, doing school work, working on my music, and texting Mark. I messaged him on Friday night to let him know what my number was but also because Mitch spent the night and forced me to do. It was a good thing he had too or I might have over thought everything and never messaged him.

Mark might just be the sweetest human I've ever met. He's funny and caring and always knows the right things to say. I'm hooked. I just hope he's hooked on me as well.

"Scott, can you take out the trash on your way out?" My dad's voice comes from the floor. I can imagine him sitting on the couch, too invested in whatever sport is playing to take the trash out as my mom asked him to. I can then imagine my mom giving him a dirty look.

I stand from my bed, looking over my appearance in the body length mirror next to my dresser. I will never understand how my parents got so much stuff into such a tiny entry point. After all, I have a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a desk, and a keyboard. None of those are small items.

"Sure thing, Dad!"

"Thank you, Scott."

I head down the ladder after grabbing a random hoodie. It's getting closer to November which means to things; the weather is switching from chilly to cold and Halloween is right around the corner. I'm much more excited about Halloween than I am about the weather. Cold weather has never stopped me before and it won't stop me this year either.

Grabbing my skateboard and the bag of trash placed by the front door, I head out of the house. My knee is finally all better and my mom has given me the go-ahead to start skating. It's a good thing too because not skating was really starting to put a damper on my mood. Talking to Mark seemed to be the only thing keeping me from going completely sour.

I throw the trash into our trash can before setting my board on the ground and taking off towards the skatepark. I've already been there once today, but now it's about the time school gets out for my friends. A typical day includes me going to the park twice, so not going any felt alien. It's good to be back on my board and doing something with my day again.

It takes me my usual five minutes to reach the skatepark. Hot Guy is doing push-ups in his front yard again but all I can think about it Mark and I easily skate past. I don't even know if Mark likes me in that sort of way, but I can't stop thinking about him as if he does. I know that I do. I can't seem to ignore my growing crush on him. After all, I'm not sure I really want to.

"Hey, Matt." I smile as I come to a stop in front of him. It seems like he's the first one here today. It makes sense since his school is the closest to the park.

He smiles, waving at me. "Hey, Scott! How has your day been?"

"Pretty good for a random Wednesday afternoon. Better now that I'm out of the house and away from schoolwork."

Matt nods. "Yeah, I get that."

"How was school?"

"As good as sitting in a stuffy building for seven hours can be." He shrugs but the smile on his face never lessens or drops. Matt has the kind of smile that makes everyone around him smile as well. His happiness is contagious. "I've had worse days."

"Do you want to talk?"

Matt shakes his head. Maybe even balls if sunshine can have bad days. "Not really. I kind of just want to skate and forget about it."

"Well, we can definitely make that happen."

"Thanks, Scott."

I don't respond, instead of clapping him on the back once as a sign of being there for him. Somehow we end up hugging. I'm not sure which one of us initiates the hug, but once it starts we have a hard time pulling away. Matt doesn't talk about his problems much so it's easy to forget that he has them. He can have a bad day and not tell us about it and I never know.