chaos || l.h. (REWRITING)

four

Alex's POV

"So, you're an insomniac that likes to fish," I said, confirming what Luke had just told me.

He nodded and smiled, lightly tugging at his lip ring.

"Okay, how old are you?"

"17. Well, I turn 18 in a month and three weeks. You?"

"19. I turned 19 about three months ago."

"Oh cool."

"Yeah," I said, smiling and kinda spacing off.

"Do you have and tattoos or piercings?"

"Yeah, I do. Wanna see?"

He nodded and grinned at me, still messing with his lip ring.

"Well, you can already probably tell that I've got a lot of piercings on my ears," I pulled the immense amount of flyaways away from one of my ears to show him, "and then I have this," I said, partially pulling my shirt up to show him the flowers trailing up my side, reaching my waist.

"Wow. It's pretty," he mumbled, too deep in admiration to really process anything else.

I grinned at him.

"So why all the questions? Nobody ever really wants to know about me. Like, I've never had any conversations with anyone like this. It's endless questions. But I don't mind."

He shrugged and licked his lips, thinking before speaking.

"Well, I wanna know you."

"Why?"

By this time we were both closer to each other, out eyes studying one another. I was really into the moment and I had thought he was too, until he looked down and shrugged, barely even trying. He muttered "I dunno."

'I dunno'?

Really, kid?

I shrugged it off and grabbed the remote, skimming through endless boring channels until I found the news. Nothing new. Suddenly, I remembered something I had been meaning to bring up.

I turned to him excitedly and spoke quickly.

"Hey, you wanna go somewhere? My cousin goes to these concerts and then always has an after party. They're actually pretty sick."

After studying my eyes for a minute, he spoke.

"Uh, yeah, sure."

"Alright," I said, smiling sweetly at him. "I'll go get dressed."

I walked upstairs quickly, putting on a white undershirt and slipping on a semi-short black skirt with suspenders on. I knew it would be a little chilly so I slipped on my favorite maroon sweater over it and put on my all black high top converse shoes. I just threw my hair up into a quick messy bun and put on some mascara, nothing fancy.

"Ready," I called as I went quickly down the stairs, just to see luke gawking at the T.V.

"Luke?"

He just shook his head and pointed to the T.V., which had switched from local news to national news. An older man with a deep purple suit on reporting to the viewers that the government was having a lot of problems with several other countries. He went into detail on just how terrible of a... Uh... disagreement the United States and another country had going between them. I found myself gawking too, because well, we're in the U.S.

I shook my head and walked over to Luke, tugging at his hoodie sleeve.

"Luke, I'm sure it's fine. C'mon, let's go."

I turned off the T.V. and grabbed his arm, gently holding on as we walked to my SUV. He got into the passenger side, still totally out of it.

"Luke," I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. "It's gonna be okay. Don't worry about it, okay?"

He sat there for another second like that and then nodded and looked at me, nervously turning his lip ring. He seemed to go to that for comfort.

"What do you want to listen to?"

He tilted his head back and then rolled it over to face me.

"You got any Green Day?"

"Yeah," I grinned, giggling and hooking up my phone to my SUV and put on Carpe Diem.

He smiled and furrowed his eyebrows.

"What?"

"Well, uh, you have good music taste."

He smiled even wider at the compliment, his head still tilted back against the headrest and now rolled over to face the roof of the car instead of me.

Carpe Diem was in my Green Day playlist. Next was Holiday, then 21 Guns, and finally Let Yourself Go. During Holiday, I had been quietly singing to myself and tapping along to the beat on the steering wheel. I knew I wasn't the best but I didn't really care. I wasn't the worst singer in the world though, so there's a plus.

By the time we got halfway through 21 Guns, we were belting out the lyrics and laughing really hard. The music was pretty loud but I could slightly hear his voice over the blaring song and oh my god, it was beautiful. He had the prettiest voice I had ever heard. I have absolutely no idea how a 17 year old boy could produce that kind of sound.