the bucket list | lrh

10 - will i see you soon?

Calum was beyond relieved when his father agreed to pick him up from Valentine's house. It's not that he wasn't enjoying himself there, he just felt like he was intruding on a moment that deserved to be shared with the other two people in the room alone. He simply felt out of place as they revised and revamped the song ten times over. He'd done his part, and he figured he'd contributed to the melody enough to excuse himself from the situation.

Valentine was both relieved and nervous when Calum announced that his father had arrived. Nervous because that meant the guitar would no longer act as the task keeping the girl from sitting in silence with Luke, and relieved because she felt the same way about Calum. It's not that she didn't want him there—she was much too nice to ever wish that he'd leave, she just thought she'd rather have some time to hang out with Luke and not have the pressure of someone else's eyes on them.

"I'll see you around?" The girl asked, walking the tanned boy to the front door as his father pulled into her driveway. Luke watched through the window from the couch, noting the big shiny silver truck that nearly skimmed his own red one.

"Yeah, for sure. Let me know if you need any more help," Calum responded before finding his way out of the house and into his fathers truck.

"Thank you," the boy mumbled, climbing into the passenger seat after carefully placing his guitar in the back. David was a little surprised when he received a phone call from the frazzled boy from Valentine's bathroom, but he rushed to pick him up nonetheless.

"What was that all about?" He asked, curious as to why his son was hanging out with the younger sister of Adeline Leonard.

"Nothing much, she wanted help with a song," Calum shrugged, trying to downplay the strange occurance. He knew it was weird, he just didn't want his father butting in with his excessive questions.

"Was it just the two of you?" David asked, genuine concern in his tone. The idea of Calum falling for another Leonard sister—this one being only eighteen years old—worried the man to extreme ends. He'd seen the way Calum pined over Adeline for all those years, and he was just trying to show his concern as the boys dad.

"No, Luke Hemmings was there as well." This caught David by surprise, and he nearly slammed on his breaks when the name came out of Calum's mouth. "Now they're there alone?" He asked, genuinely interested in the teenage drama his son had been caught in the middle of.

"I guess so," Calum shrugged once more, still not wanting to engage in any spreading of rumors amongst the parents of Elgin. They had a tendency to put their opinion in where it wasn't necessary, and Calum felt a little sympathy for the girl who had already been through so much.

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Mary had been hopelessly trying to convince her mother that nothing was even remotely going on between the two kids who were—unbeknownst to them—alone at Valentine's house. The blonde girl didn't want to get her friend into any trouble, but Valentine's father was putting up a hell of a fight in trying to figure their strange new friendship out.

It was well past dinner time now, and Mary was almost certain that she was just buying time for Valentine to be alone with the two boys. She was almost a hundred percent sure of the fact that Valentine wasn't up to no good, but that she'd been giving her an excuse to make bad decisions while stalling her father. It had been hours since the man first arrived, and she was still rambling on about how the two snooping parents should put a little faith in the brunette girl.

"I'm telling you, I don't know why they're hanging out. She doesn't like him like that," she shrugged, finally plopping back down on to the chair across from her mother after shooting up with copious amounts of force due to the passion of their debate about Valentine and Luke.