A Beginners Guide To Falling In Love

01

"Hey, we're the new neighbours." My mum introduces us to the family that occupies the house next door to us.

Honestly I don't think she really needs to introduce all of us since we're not really going to have to talk to them. They're house is about five metres further down the street, or if you want to be specific "country lane".

"What's your name?" The woman my mums talking to asks me.

"Hannah-Mae." I say and eventually shake her hand after she's been holding it out for a while.

I'm not usually this grumpy, I just didn't want to move. I mean would you rather live in a townhouse in London or a country house thing in the middle of nowhere? You see my delusional family thought it would be a nice change of scenery. I disagree.

"This is my son Bradley and daughter Natalie." She tells me.

"I'm Hannah-Mae." I say as I shake each of their hand.

I can't keep my eyes off Bradley, until he catches me looking at him.

"You want some help carrying those?" He asks my mum as she lifts some boxes.

"Why don't you help Hannah carry some of her stuff," My mum replies.

"Sure," he says and flashes me a smile.

"Okay, well you can take those then." I pretend to not be affected by his smile and shrug it off.

"Where do you want me to put it?" He asks when we enter the house.

"Upstairs second room." My mum answers for me shouting up the stairs.

I follow him in and dump two boxes on the floor. I quickly glance out the window and all there is, is fields.

"Is there not a town near here?" I ask.

"Well yeah, about half an hour away." He tells me. "But you see all this land here, it's all mine and yours. Unless you want a fence put up." Brad says.

I don't know why, but when he says mine and yours it makes my insides tingle a little. It's cool that we have all this land and stuff, but I'd rather be living back in London.

"Where did you live before you moved over here?" He asks me.

"London, well Chelsea, but that's in London." I tell him.

"Gated community?" He asks raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah." I sigh missing it already.

"Honestly Birmingham is better, you just have to get used to it." He tells me.

I guess I could get used to it if brads here everyday.

"Come on let's carry up more boxes." He says and I follow him back down out to the van.

***********
We finish getting all the boxes in and already my Mum and Brads Mum are talking about going out for dinner. I'm not complaining as long as I get to sit next to Brad. I shouldn't be thinking like that already, especially when I've just met him, for all I know he could be a total douche.

"Hannah, wouldn't that be nice." My mum says looking over at me as if I'm a part of this conversation.

"Yeah lovely," I say even though I have no idea what she's going on about.

"Why don't you come in and help your dad unpack the rest then we can get ready." My mum says, are we going for dinner tonight? Surely it would take a long time to unpack everything.

No, it doesn't take long to unpack everything, especially when your family have just decided to buy all new furniture. I don't understand what the point in that is, but my family is weird.

I look through my clothes that are thrown all over my bed, which is the only piece of furniture that I now have in my room. So I'm basically standing in a large empty room with a large window and bed. Everything needs decorating in here especially the walls that are some horrible yellow colour.

"Are you ready yet Hannah?" I hear my mum shout.

"No give me five minutes," I shout back actually meaning double that.

I quickly grab a black bodycon crop top and my black skinny jeans with knee holes. I walk downstairs and see my mum and dad waiting for me.

I slip my shoes on and then go to the door.

"Aren't you going to get cold?" My mum says.

"Right." I say and grab my parka out of the closet, which is already full of all our shoes and coats.

"Okay, well the Simpsons are going to meet us at the restaurant at 6:30 so we have twenty minutes to get there." My mum says.

"Simpsons?" I ask confused.

"Our neighbours that we met this morning." My mum tells me and opens the front door locking it behind us.

*************

We arrive at some restaurant that made me feel underdressed. It was called salt yard or something, but it was surprisingly fancy.

We make our way over to the table where the whole Simpson family sits, which is basically just four people I don't really know. I sit opposite Brad, which is sort of awkward because he doesn't seem as attractive anymore. Probably because he ignored me, but I'll show him.

A while later and each other's parents are asking us what we want to do when we leave school and stuff.

"Hannah, what do you want to do?" Mrs Simpson asks me.

"Umm probably get into journalism or do something based around English, but not like writing books." I tell them.

"What do you want to do brad? If you don't mind me asking." My dad asks him.

"Well I wanted to be a singer/songwriter, but this person called James called me up and asked me if I wanted to-"

"Brad please enough about that you'd never make it." Brads mum interrupts him sighing.

After about five minutes of an exceptionally awkward silence everyone goes into there own conversation, which sort of leaves me left out. I don't really mind though I just fiddle with my fork and twirl it through my pasta.

"What's the deal with you?" Brad asks me.

"What?" I reply shocked from his comment and feeling a little bit hurt as if he just called me a freak.

"Well I first meet you and you keep to yourself and are all grumpy, in fact you still are now. You also seem to have an obsession with the colour black, are you some sort of emo or something." Brad says while his sister sits beside him and tries to hide her face as she laughs.

"You know maybe you should make an effort to get to know me rather than judge me so quickly. I haven't judged you and well if I were to now you probably wouldn't like it." I tell him and catch him off guard and look over to his sister. "Same for you bitch." I say trying to sound as intimidating as I can, which to my surprise works.

"Don't say that to my sister." Brad says angrily.

"Well at least you know how I feel now. I think you should keep some things to yourself, or you'll get shown up." I warn him and get up from my seat. And escape from this scenario by going to the toilet.

************

We leave the restaurant once everyone's finished eating and Brad grabs my arm. My thoughts shout 'get off me' but I just turn and face him.