Hard Boy ✔️

14

- Carry Your Throne; Jon Bellion - 
- Are You Bored Yet?; Wallows ft. Clairo - 
- Dollhouse; Melanie Martinez - 

Aurora Holland

"I don't know where we're going, but I'd like to be by your side," I sang to myself, the music blaring through my earbuds loudly. I know I probably sounded like a dying cow as I couldn't even hear myself, but I didn't care.

I was the only one home. My mother and father were at work, and I guess Jason was at a friend's house.

Pretty sad my twelve-year-old brother made friends on his first day of school, yet I don't have anyone I could consider my friend. Not to mention my only 'friend' was angry at me for telling her she was overthinking her little schoolgirl crush, so I really was all alone.

"If you could tell me how you're feelin', maybe we'd get through this undefeated," I continued, watching as the paintbrush bristles moved along perfectly across the paper.

My head bobbed up and down as I went along with the beat of the music, too caught up in my painting to give thought to anything else.

I was glad to finally be at home, considering today has felt like a hundred years long. The mall couldn't have gone by any slower, and now that I'm sitting alone in my bedroom I felt like I was at peace.

My eyes never left the paper, focused on the pretty colors of the sunset I was painting. It wasn't my best work, but it definitely wasn't my worst. I think the colors meshed well together, it was just the way I'd laid out the painting itself.

I pressed the wooden top to my lips, looking at the painting with my brows pushed together. I was torn between choosing a purple or a blue. My teeth gripped the end lightly as I brought the end in my mouth, contemplating. I ignored the change of song in my ears, my eyes bouncing between the two colors on my color palette.

The sudden feeling of someone touching my shoulder caused me to jump up. My earbuds got yanked out of my ears as my phone fell to the floor, my body flying out of the chair and away from whoever it was that touched me.

"Whoa, calm down." I stared at Logan in shock, my eyes jumping around in confusion. He had a small smile on his face, one of guilt from scaring me the way he had.

"What are you doing here?"

"You forgot this in my car earlier, but because I had to rush home to dinner I couldn't come right back." He held one of my shopping bags from the mall in his hand, the one that didn't touch my shoulder. "Your little brother had just gotten home I guess and just told me to come straight up. I didn't mean to scare you."

"It-it's okay," I told him, rubbing my chest where my heart was pounding in my chest.

"I tried to knock first, and even called your name a few times but you didn't hear me. Now I know why," He said as he pointed down at my abandoned phone on the floor.

"Yeah, sorry," I mumbled, crouching to grab my phone.

Logan beat me to it, however, swiftly grabbing the device in one motion. I stood up straight again as he held it out to me, along with my long-abandoned paintbrush and the shopping bag I'd left in his car.

I hadn't even noticed that I left it in his car, but it was probably because I had two shopping bags and my backpack to carry. It must've slipped from my grip as I got out and he didn't see it till he got back to his house.

Grabbing the bag and phone from his hand, I walked over and sat them on my bed. I rubbed the back of my neck, still caught off guard by the sudden interaction.