Strings || s.m.

Chapter 14

"Ooh, is that Shawn's girlfriend?" She shouted and I shook my head. Why did people constantly think that we were dating?

"Shut up, she's not my girlfriend." I heard Shawn groan and a bunch of noises such as bangs and an angry honk could be heard from the speaker and I just laughed at the commotion.

"Hi," Shawn breathed out, sounding exhausted. "Sorry about that, you know Aaliyah can be too much."

I heard her singing "Shawn and Ava sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" in the background and I laughed at her craziness. It was ironic because me and Shawn had sat in a tree together but the k-i-s-s-i-n-g had not occurred of course. That was gross.

"Well she's my favorite member of the Mendes family." I shrugged even though he couldn't see me and I heard him gasp loudly through the receiver.

"No she's not, you know you love me the mostest." He protested and said the words in a sing-song voice.

"Mostest isn't a word you idiot. Anyways, I'm on the way there." I told him, finally coming to the point of this phone call.

"Okay bye babe." He said sweetly and I heard Aaliyah grab the phone and shout a cute bye before they hung up. I guess the two goofballs had been riding in Shawn's car because his parents definitely wouldn't want to put up with that raucous.

I finally got to the pizza joint and parked beside Shawn's car. Aaliyah immediately came out from the side and gave me a quick hug. We started walking inside, leaving Shawn behind as we began talking about her school and how old she was, what her friends were like. I felt like me and her instantly clicked and it felt great because I loved kids and people generally younger than me.

We went inside to where Shawn's parents were waiting in a booth and I introduced myself to them, mainly his mom because I had already met his dad. She was very kind as well as his dad, and I felt comfortable around them almost immediately. They were just so homey and kind, it just made my heart swell at their well put together family. It sort of gave me a tinge of sadness, because that's how my family used to be too. But now that things were rough between my mom and dad, I didn't know what was really happening with us all. I just didn't want my family to be torn apart.

I shook my head, trying to shake my sad thoughts away and I felt Shawn's hand on my lower arm. We had slid in into the booth and Aaliyah had wanted to sit in the middle so badly but Shawn wanted to sit beside me too, so I sat in the middle, squashed in between the Mendes children. Aaliyah sat on the inside and Shawn on the outside. We had ordered our pizza already and had decided to split two pizzas up between all of us. I thanked Shawn's parents and we began to make small talk, them asking me general questions.

I guess Shawn had seen that I had zoned out for a bit and I glanced to him to see his worried eyes already on me, making sure that everything was alright. His left hand touched my right one and he brought our hands between the edge of our touching thighs, so that Aaliyah couldn't see. He ran his index finger over the palm of my hand I felt my lower stomach doing weird things. I looked ahead, nodding at what his parents had said and pretending to listen, but I couldn't concentrate. It was like every time we sat beside each other, he did this, rendering me breathless every time.

His fingers danced around my hand and he glanced up at me with a smirk on his face to see what effect it had on me but I just shrugged at him, not giving him the satisfaction of knowing what it did to me. He finally interlocked our fingers, a sweet gesture that I had gotten used to. I had never really held hands with somebody, especially this much, with a boy. Sure, I had a few relationships here and there when I was younger, but I didn't really consider them as relationships because we were kids and didn't know anything about being serious.