𝐂𝐎𝐁𝐑𝐀 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍▬▬𝒉𝒂𝒘𝒌

𝟎𝟎𝟎𝟏

"There's that famous Cassy smile." Caspia kept smiling.

They finally reached their apartment complex and pulled into a parking spot. They got out of the car and saw a man and a boy Caspia's age talking at the trash cans. "I was wondering if you were having trouble with your water pressure 'cause I know out sink's being a little weird right now and- Oh, bottles go in the blue bin."

"Listen, Meneudo..." The two girls walked over to their apartment. July unlocked the door and they stepped inside. They had asked the movers prior to move all their furniture before they got there, so their apartment was already filled, but placed randomly.

The two looked around at the dull apartment. July was going to be doing job interviews all day while Caspia was meant to set up the apartment. She seemed to have a good sense of style, so July trusted her to make their new home look nice. "You sure you'er going to be okay with redecorating?"

"I'll be fine, Aunt Jules. It might take a while, but it's worth it." Caspia reassured.

"That's my girl." July pulled her niece into a hug. July did help her move their boxes that they had in the car and put them just by their front door. They walked back over to the car for the last box and Caspia picked it up. July hopped in the driver's seat and they blew kisses at each other. It was sort of their thing.

Caspia stepped back and watched her aunt drive off. She brought the last box over to her door and she was about to open the door again, but someone accidentally scared her. "Hi."

Caspia jumped back a little and turned around to be faced with the same boy who was talking to the man from earlier. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

Caspia laughed it off. "No, no. It's fine."

"I'm Miguel, by the way." He introduced himself.

"Caspia." They shook hands before Miguel offered, "You, uh, you need a hand with your boxes?"

"Oh. No, I wouldn't want to keep you from what you have to do."

"I have nothing to do, I would love to help." Caspia knew she didn't need too much help, but the process would go by faster if she had it. "Okay, yeah. Thank you so much. I just need your help first to move the furniture inside, if that's okay?"

"Yeah, that's no problem." She opened the door and they walked inside. He saw the furniture randomly placed everywhere.

"Oh, I see why you needed help." She laughed.

They started moving the furniture around in the living room. They moved the couch against the back wall, put the coffee table in the middle, and put everything else opposite to the couch. They moved the table into the middle of the kitchen, and in her bedroom, they moved her bed to the corner of the room. Miguel then helped her bring in the boxes full of decorations into her house. They put some on the kitchen table and a few on the coffee table. Miguel looked through some of the stuff on the kitchen table while Caspia was searching for the living room decorations.

"Wow, you have a lot of fake plants." Miguel observed with a small laugh.

"Yeah, it keeps me calm. I like the look of plants, but I don't have the patience to take care of them." Miguel let out a laugh. Caspia grabbed one of the boxes from the kitchen and brought it to the living room. She started unpacking belongings from the boxes and putting them around her living room, it all seemed to come together so beautifully.

Miguel was impressed that she was able to turn a run down apartment into a beautiful, city-like living room. "You are really goo at this. You have good taste."

"Thank you. You don't have to stay if you don't want to. I just needed help with those few things." Caspia reassured.

"No, no. I'll stay. Keep you company while you decorate." Caspia smiled and finished with the living room decently quickly. Miguel sat down on her couch as she began to unpack the kitchen items. "So, how long have you lived here."

"Only a few days." Miguel responded, to which Caspia was surprised by. "Oh. I thought you would've been here longer."

"Nope. Just moved here from Riverside with my mom and grandma." Miguel informed. "That's pretty cool."

"What about you? Where'd you move from?"

"Tahiti."

"What?! Tahiti? You left Tahiti for Reseda?" Miguel asked with complete shock. "It wasn't my choice. My aunt and I were forced to live here."

"Oh. Well, what about your parents?" Miguel questioned.

"My dad left when I was little and my mom's in the hospital." Miguel was shocked. He thought that her parents would simply be arriving later or maybe Caspia was adopted. It was interesting, however, that Caspia opened up that quickly. She wasn't ashamed of what happened, she recognized that this trauma she's developed wasn't going to define her.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened to you mom?" This was where Caspia was hesitant to answer. The specifics were what hit her heart. Caspia did, however, need friends and she figured, the more people know about her the better. They can know her, then they can become better friends.

"She was on a business trip down here and she found out she had cancer, that's why we moved. So we could see her." Miguel nodded. He felt bad for her.

Caspia finished setting up the kitchen and she moved onto her bedroom. Miguel followed her in and helped her make the bed. They started hanging pictures up and she had quite a few. It took them almost two hours to put up all her posters, vinyls, pictures. They finally finished decorating and exhaustively flopped on her couch. "Thank you for helping me, by the way. I really appreciate it."

"It's no problem. I had nothing better to do, so why not help out a random person move into their shockingly beautiful apartment?" Caspia laughed at the compliment.

Miguel noticed the time. "Oh, I should head home. My grandma's probably almost done cooking dinner by now."

"That's fine. I have to wait for my aunt to come back then I'm just gonna go buy us something." Caspia said.

"Alright, well, I'll see you around, Cass. Wait, can I call you Cass?" Miguel asked, receiving a nod as a response.

They waved goodbye and he left her apartment. When Caspia was moving here, she thought it was going to be awful and she'd have trouble meeting people, but she found Miguel. Her aunt was right, there is a bright side.

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