Behind the Clouds

Chapter 8 10/24/14

Days were already speeding by. I was already counting the days that I didn’t blow up at him, and now I can count two. Most of the time we asked each other simple questions like what our favorite color was or favorite food, and now I knew a few more things about him. He had a sister named Amelia that was twenty-five and moved to Australia with her husband. His favorite color was grey, favorite food was fish and chips (made sense), and favorite band was Imagine Dragons. I had to say that those were pretty good favorites because I liked those, too.

            We even asked each other about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Funny enough we both ended up with the same answer: we both didn’t know what we wanted. I thought that every rich kid had a whole dream occupation in mind and their whole lives planned out, but he didn’t. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but he rejected the idea multiple times, and I supported that because he didn’t exactly look like the doctor type.

He was gonna go to college. He didn’t know where or what he was going to major in, but at least he wanted to go to college. I guess that was a good start. All I had was the dozens of brochures from a college fair my mom made me go to. It wasn’t really helpful when I was still in the process of finding out what to do with my life. Luckily, I already took the PSAT two weeks ago. At least I had something done.

            Today was our last day together where I had to “make him feel welcome” here. We were getting around comfortably, and he was familiar with all of his classes, so I had to say that I’m glad we survived. We were walking out of seventh period and to the parking lot when he asked me a question.

            “So did you ever think about my offer to go exploring? Maybe instead you can show me around Santa Monica because I’ve literally just been driving around town and don’t even know what I’m looking at most of the time,” He chuckled. I remembered when he suggested that on Tuesday. I forgot about that until now and then I started thinking again.

            Are you gonna open up, Ellie? Just keep it together and try. Maybe this’ll be fun.

            “You know what?” I said. “I’ll do it. We can have one day to just go places in Santa Monica or even expand a little bit and go to LA since it’s not far. Is tomorrow good?” I could do this. I needed this. He looked shocked looking at me with wide eyes like I just grew another head. “What? I said I’d take you.”

            He shook his head like he was waking himself up. “No um…nu…nothing I was just…I’m sorry I was just surprised that you actually said yes,” he said with a laugh.

            “Why would you be surprised?”

            “Because I thought you hated me,” he admitted.

            “Well before, I thought you hated me.”

            “Well things are different now. I want you to take me. It’ll be fun,” he smiled.

            “Alright. Cool…so…um…,” I said awkwardly. For some reason I didn’t know what to say. Wait.

            What did he mean when he said, “Things are different now?”

I started shoving my hand in my hair. Nervous habit. I can’t control it. “So I’ll pick you up at nine tomorrow?”

            “Ugh, why so early?” He whined.

            “Because there’s only twenty-four hours in a day, and there’s a lot to see in so little time, so we’re getting up early got it?” Oh yeah, Ellie. Get a little demanding.