Nomads

Chapter 31

Clara Henderson's backyard was slowly becoming Luca's favorite place in Fallston, Rhode Island.

The smell of nature, the beautiful garden, the feeling of the breeze, the sound of the birds chirping and the leaves rustling with the wind; it always felt like he was existing outside of time when he was laying in the grass beside Mara.

Well, Mara was technically sitting up straight and doing homework like he should've been doing. But the breeze felt so nice, and Mara was still working on the chemistry problem he had asked for her help with.

With a sigh, he sat up and scooted closer, peering over her shoulder from behind to look at his homework.

"Hey, you're doing all the problems?!" He yelped, shocked.

Mara lowered her pencil and looked back at him to give him a funny look. "Well, yeah. You asked me to do your Chemistry homework for you."

"No, I asked you if you could make any sense of this one problem. Not if you could do all the work for me!" He snatched the paper from her hands, looking over her work. "I wanted to do this myself, because, you know, I want to actually know how it works for the exam on Friday."

Mara blushed, turning back around and looking at her French homework that had been under his Chemistry paper. "Well, I thought you wanted the answers."

"No," he chuckled, "I wanted your help on just the one."

Mara tucked an unruly curl behind her ear thoughtfully, skillfully avoiding eye contact. "Well, do you want me to walk you through that one problem? Since I figured it out for you?"

He flashed her an amused smile, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. "That would be great, could you?" he murmured sweetly, resting his chin on her shoulder.

Her blush deepened. "Okay, get off!" She giggled, gently pushing him away. "I can't focus when you're trying to snuggle me!"

"Snuggle you? I just put my chin on your shoulder!"

"It was very snuggly," she replied, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Snuggle-spicious."

Luca fell onto his back as he burst into laughter, the stoic look on her face sending him over the edge. "W-what? Naomi, you-" He paused to laugh some more. "Why? Why do you do this to me?"

"Do what? You're the one who got all cozy on my shoulder, to-to distract me from this homework! All sneaky like!" She wiggled her finger at him, barely fighting back a smile of her own at the sight of him laughing.

He burst into another fit of laughter at her weak comeback before barely reigning it in and sitting up. "Okay, Naomi, you win. I'll pretend that made sense. For you."

Mara grinned back at him despite herself. "Shut up," she giggled, snatching the Chemistry paper from his hand to look at it.

"So you just-"

The snap of a twig caused both of their heads to snap in the direction of the corner of the house, where all of Luca's friends stood wide eyed at being discovered.

"Uh, hey guys," Amir called out awkwardly.

Mara could feel her walls building up at the speed of light. She was wearing a tank top and athletic shorts because it was oddly warm for mid-October. They were going to see her scars, and it took everything in her not to bolt into the forest just beyond the backyard.

Brows furrowed, she stood up, brushing off her shorts. "H-hey," She started uncertainly. "Hey, guys. What, um, what are you all doing here?"

Amir looked back at his friends and nodded his head for them to explain themselves.