Our Little Love Story *NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON KINDLE!!*

chapter twelve

I was laying on my bed. It was well after midnight, and the storm outside raged with such intensity it rattled my bedroom windows. I wasn’t scared of storms. In fact, they usually lulled me to sleep like the sweetest mother’s lullaby. I was thinking of Jared, of course. I thought of his ‘secret place’ that he had taken me to hours before, and that he had never taken anyone else there. So, that kind of made it ‘our’ secret place. I liked that idea. A place in this world that only him and I knew about. A place that we could retreat to, leaving the world and all of its cares and worries behind, if only for a short amount of time.

I sighed, rolling over to look at my alarm clock. The red numbers blared in the dark. 12:46. Sighing again, I rolled back over and faced the wall. I shut my eyes and thought only of sleep. I needed to rest; I had to be up in a little over five hours to get ready for my trip with the church. 

Sleep eluded me. I tossed and turned. Kicked the covers off, then pulled them back up to my chin. Sighing, I turned over on my back and stared at the dark ceiling overhead. My eyes played tricks, making the shadows dance on the ceiling. I let my imagination roam, and pictured a scene of me and Jared, running through the fields near our secret place, hand-in-hand, laughing. Not a care in the world. That’s the way I wanted it to always be. Him and I, me and him.

I must have eventually drifted off to sleep, because the next thing that I remembered, my alarm clock was buzzing violently.

“Ugh, I’m up, I’m up. Geez,” I mumbled groggily, slapping the top of the alarm clock with annoyed vehemence. 

“You up, Tiff? It’s already after six.” It was my mom on the other side of my bedroom door.

“Yeah,” I said, still half asleep. “I’m up.” Well, my eyes were open, anyway.

“Do you want me to make you some breakfast?” she called.

“No,” I said, “No, that’s alright. I’ll just get cereal or something,” I rubbed my eyes sleepily and flopped my head down on the pillow. 

“Well, alright. Your father and I are leaving here in a few minutes. We both have to be in to work early. Don’t you lay in there and go back to sleep, Tiffany,” my mother said. I could hear her rummaging around outside my door, in the bathroom. 

“Okay,” I called, not sure that it was even loud enough for her to hear. Another several minutes went by, and the house fell quiet outside my door. I looked over to my clock, it read 6:28. ‘Ugh, better get up soon,’ I thought to myself. But I didn’t. Instead, my heavy eyelids fluttered closed, and I was instantly asleep.

****

“Hey, hey, sleepyhead. You’re gonna be late.” My eyes started to open, and I blinked against the bright sunlight that was flooding into my room.

“Huh? Wh-what?” I blinked several more times, fighting the grogginess and sleep away. “Wh-who?” And then my brain woke up enough to realize that Jared was in my room, trying to wake me up. “Oh, oh!” I said, jolting up to a sitting position.

“Hey,” he said laughing, “you’re going to be late. Get up. It’s a quarter after seven.” He had been leaning over me and my bed, and he went and sat down at my desk. 

“Oh. Crap!” I was suddenly wide awake, realizing that I had fell back to sleep after my parents had left for work. And I was about to be late to leave for the church retreat. “Dang!” I exclaimed, jumping out of bed and across the soft carpeted floor of my room and into the bathroom. I could hear Jared chuckling behind me. “Sorry! Just give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll be ready!” I called from the bathroom. I grabbed a brush and yanked it through my hair a few times, and threw it up in a messy ponytail. I snatched a spare toothbrush from a drawer and hurriedly brushed my teeth. Wiping my face off with a hand towel, I ran back into my room to grab the clothes that I had --thankfully-- laid out the night before.