White as Snow | Paul Lahote

4. Meet Paul, the Hothead

The next day Sarah woke up with a sense of a new purpose. To find out as much as she could about Paul the brown eyed jock from Homeroom.

She looked through her contacts and remembered that Kim had offered her a ride to school the night prior and decided to take her up on the offer. "Hey Kim! It's Sarah :) I was just wondering if you were serious about the ride to school? My dad has work later and I don't wanna bother him, would it be okay if you picked me up?" Sarah sent the message then began getting ready.

As she was brushing her teeth, she heard the sound of her ringtone go off, Kim had sent her a message. "Hey girly! Of course, not a problem at all! I'll be outside at 8:30 :)", Sarah smiled then replied, "Sounds good, I'll be ready :)" she sent the text then went back to getting ready.

***

At exactly 8:30 a.m. she went outside, and there was Kim, as promised, in Jared's pick-up waiting to take Sarah to school.

"Where are the guys?" Sarah asked as she climbed into the front seat of the truck, "Don't worry, they'll probably just meet us at school, let's go" Kim replied. And off they went. "So, what can you tell me about Paul?", "What do you wanna know?". "How long have you known him? We were talking yesterday and all of a sudden, he kind of stormed off, I'm trying to figure out if it was something I said or did to make him upset"...

Hmm... Kim mumbled under her breath, "Honestly, he has kind of an attitude problem but it'll show once you know him better haha. He gets upset quickly. He had a bit of a rough childhood growing up so he's not the type to open up to someone right away. It takes him time, but it's definitely worth the wait." Sarah just nodded, then the two made small talk till they reached the school.

***

When Sarah reached homeroom, all she could do was watch the clock. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick. No Paul.

An hour passed. Still no Paul.

The rest of the day seemed to have dragged on longer than expected. In each class, she would hope to hear his name being called in attendance and him answering back with a snarky comment. Sarah was beyond excited when the day came to an end, she couldn't wait to go back home, change and try to do something that would keep her mind off of Paul.

***

When Sarah reached home, she didn't know how to feel. She was confused as to why she cared so much about the wellbeing of someone she'd met less than 24 hours ago. Yet, she couldn't stop thinking about him. Wondering where he was. If he was hurt. She was worried. And she did what she knew always helped when she felt this way. She ran.

Sarah changed out of her school clothes and put on some jogging clothes. She left her house and ran down to the forest, through the clearing she had seen Paul use, the day before. She saw a paved trail, with signs pointing to the beach. She followed the trail until she finally hit the beach. She sat down for a moment to gather her thoughts, and let her pulse rest. Afterwards, she ran along the shore for what felt like miles until she saw signs for a trail that lead up the large cliff facing the water.

She followed it all the way to the top of the cliff. Once she reached the top, she saw a clearing, where you could see the entire beach below. As she was heading towards the clearing she heard the rustling sounds of people coming. And fast. She started hearing hollering sounds get closer and closer. She ducked behind a tree so as to not be seen by whoever was making their way up.

It was a group of boys, who looked nothing short of models. All of them were suspiciously tall and buff, with short-cropped hair, russet skin, and similar-looking tattoos on their right arm- wearing nothing but shorts.