Starr-Crossed

Chapter One

A/N -- I haven't written teen romance in a long time. I started this when i was just at the end of high school and made a good number of changes. It's still the same plot just better written. Hope you enjoy! Byyyeeee !!
-A.W. ;)

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The tea was always peppermint. Not because it was anyone's favorite, but because it reminded them of winter, and winter reminded them of the warmth only her grandmother could give. The old woman's hands, worn from years of gardening and grief, held the delicate porcelain cup as if it carried something sacred. Paisley remembered how those hands trembled, even when her voice didn't. She remembered the crackle of the old radio in the kitchen, the creak of the rocking chair, and the way light filtered through the thin curtains, painting faded gold onto everything. It was a softness, a quiet grace she could still feel in her bones.

Danielle had sat on the floor back then, drawing flowers in the margins of her homework. She always drew flowers, even though they hadn't grown in the yard since the last real spring. Back when their grandmother still went outside. Back when there was music in the house—not the kind from the radio, but the soft hum of hope. Danielle had always been the one who could capture beauty in the smallest things—a petal, a leaf, a breeze—and make it feel like the entire world was alive with possibility.

Those days seemed like a lifetime ago.

It was the last good memory. Before the hospital visits. Before the silence. Before the world expected two broken girls to stand on their own. Before their grandmother's illness twisted the laughter in their home into something hollow.

Now, at sixteen, the yellow house was small and cold. The walls seemed too thin, the heater too old, and the silence too loud. The hum of the city outside barely filled the void of the rooms—just cars honking, people shouting, and the occasional sound of someone else's laughter. But it didn't reach them. The silence in their house was a different kind of quiet—one that weighed down their hearts like a thick blanket. Sometimes it felt like the world had moved on without them, leaving them to figure it out on their own, like two lost souls still clinging to the last remnants of something they couldn't even name.

Paisley stood at the cracked kitchen counter, pouring tap water into a chipped mug. No peppermint tea today—just hot water with a plain tea and a quiet ache. The kind of ache that settled deep into your bones and never left. She didn't bother to add sugar. It didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. Some days, it was hard to believe they'd ever been anything more than just two girls left behind. Paisley's fingers tightened around the mug, her reflection staring back at her in the steam.

Danielle sat curled on the couch in one of their grandmother's old sweaters, knees tucked up, sketchbook resting against her legs. The flowers were darker now. Thorns on every stem. Her pencil moved quickly across the paper, sketching out the shapes of flowers she could never grow—just as the two of them had once tried to grow roots in a place that never seemed to offer any. A few stray strands of Danielle's hair hung loose, the soft waves falling into her face as she focused, as if trying to hide behind the pages of her sketchbook. She didn't want to see the world anymore. Didn't want to see the space where their grandmother had once been.

She felt tears beginning to form, so she replaced the sketchbook with a poetry book. One their grandmother gave her back when the girls were ten and loving Shakespeare.

The house felt even smaller when they were together, in a way that almost suffocated them. The emptiness that lingered from the loss of their grandmother's steady presence still pressed down on them like a weight. No parents. No warmth. Just each other.

They had learned to make do with what they had. And that was all they had left.

Rain whispered against the roof of the house that once belonged to the sweet old lady that raised them, soft but steady—like it had something to say they weren't ready to hear.