New York, New Ariana (Ariana Grande, Nathan Sykes, & Jai Brooks)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

        Nathan’s POV

    “Bye,” Ariana smiled, catching me off guard by hugging me.  She didn’t seem to think anything of it, aside from a friendly way, so I hugged her back for a second.  It was definitely strange to have a girl from school not rolling her eyes at  me, or ignoring me so I had to do all of the work. She was new, and sitting with Jai whenever he was in the class, so I shouldn’t get used to it. Ariana was so sweet, but I knew she would do exactly what Jai did  so it wasn’t  that I shouldn’t get used to it; I couldn’t get used to it. I wasn’t going to let them hurt me again.

    “See ya in school,” I stepped back and turned to leave. She waved as I closed the door and I all but sprinted out of the building.  The Brooks lived here, which everyone knew, and most people avoided it.

    It was already after four and I didn’t have any homework done; which I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to have spent that long with Ariana.  I actually liked talking to her, she wasn’t just another carbon copy of all the other girls wanting to sing Justin Bieber or One Direction, but that’s what I had thought with Jai. When I moved to the performing arts school in sixth grade from Glouster in England, all of the guys seemed to be obsessed with playing football and I had “actually liked” talking to Jai too. He liked soccer, or footy, over American football too and we used to hang out on saturdays watching the games and talking about players; sometimes going over to the regular high school to watch their games.

Until I woke up one day and his brothers and their friends started giving me crap, like they’re still doing today. He just laughed along, not defending me like friends were supposed to.  I kind of crawled up in my shell after that.  It was inevitable that Ariana would do the same; side with them, I mean. I didn’t want to have to take that again, especially from someone I… might as well just admit it,  I liked Ariana. Like liked, if we’re still five.

I should just finish the project with her, then go back to the way things were before she even came.  Should is different from would, though. I tried and I couldn’t do it.  The hurt mixed with confusion in those big brown eyes when I ignored her in the first  music class, I just couldn’t keep it up today.  Her smile, with those adorable dimples, was just reason enough to make talking to her a thousand times easier than ignoring her.

Now I’m just gushing about how beautiful she is, good job Nathan.   I trudged up my apartment building’s steps and hiked up the indoor stairs to the third floor, opening my family’s apartment’s door and greeting my grandma.

“Ah, Nathan. Finally home,” She smiled, pushing something around in a frying pan on the stove that sizzled.  “Andy told me you checked in on him, where were you?” Andy, my younger cousin who’s parents traveled so much that he lived with us now, was running through the kitchen at that moment with a toy airplane and looked up at his name.

“Working on a school project with someone,” I answered dropping my backpack by the table. She paused for a second, clearly surprised. Not that you could blame her, I tended to spend most of my time alone.

“Anyone I know?” Grandma recovered from her momentary shock and started getting plates ready for dinner.

“No, she just moved here the day before yesterday,” I could almost see the gears turning in her head; just moved here means that she hasn’t completely figured out that I was the school dork.

“She,” Grandma repeated. Oh god, I know where this is going. “Is she cute?”

“Grandma, I don’t know,” I sighed starting to turn away to my room to do some of the homework before dinner.