The New Normal

Chapter Forty Six

Tyler and I walked hand in hand down the hallway, when Kimberly caught my eye, she ran over, throwing her arms around my neck and nearly knocked me over. "Oh, thank God Christmas break is over."

Tyler helped me regain my balance as I laughed at my friend. "Your parents still grilling you about Seth?"

"Un-fucking-fortunately." She sighed, straightening the sleeve of her cardigan. "I told him he could text, call, email or whatever method of communication he prefers but the only rule I had is: don't come to my house. And what does he do? Shows up at my house on Christmas morning."

Tyler let go of my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "Why is that a bad thing?"

Kimberly narrowed her eyes as if she were saying, are you for real? But she quickly rolled her eyes after Tyler didn't respond. "Bringing a white guy to a Korean Christmas is a sure way to start a riot."

Tyler choked on air, trying not to laugh, meanwhile I patted my hand on her shoulder. "Well, I'm sure he had good intentions, it just was poorly executed."

Kimberly scoffed. "Very poorly executed."

The bell rang and she said her goodbyes as Tyler and I went to our next class, which was our art class. Tyler hardly ever showed up but I think now that we were dating, he had more incentive to do it.

We settled in our seats while Mr. Kaley pulled up the latest assignment on the board. When it fully loaded, Mr. Kaley clapped his hands together. "Now I know it's a little early, but I want to fill you in on your final for this class. As you know, we don't have an exam for this class but I still need to grade you on something so your final task is to pick a spot in the school and paint a mural using methods discussed in class to do so."

The class began to murmur excitedly, meanwhile, Tyler looked like he was about to fall asleep. I nudged his arm and his eyes flew open. He gave me a tired smile and I blushed, but Mr. Kaley hushed the class before I could chide Tyler for sleeping. "Alright, settle down. The mural must be approved by me before you start and you're confined to the art wing, so use your space wisely."

After that, he waved his hands in a feeble attempt to get us to begin our rough drafts.

Tyler whipped out his sketchbook, which, to my surprise, was actually filled with sketches. One caught my eye, it was a girl with high cheekbones and wide eyes. Her wavey hair fell in front of her right side of her face and even though you couldn't tell she was smiling by her lips, as she cradled a mug in front of her them with both hands, you could tell she was happy by the slight squint of her eyes. I stopped Tyler before he flipped the page in efforts to find a blank one. I caught him by the arm, "Is that...?"

My boyfriend looked down and quickly turned the page. "You? Yeah, it is. I know it's weird, I'm sorry."

"No, no it's not weird," I said quickly. "I'm just surprised. Is there anything you can't do?"

Tyler smirked. "I tried playing trumpet in the sixth-grade band. I was pretty bad at that."

I rolled my eyes as I opened my sketchbook which was filled with mediocre at best drawings. "Yeah, but then you switched to alto-sax and you got all the solos." Tyler chuckled and began sketching on a blank page, meanwhile, I struggled to think of something to draw. "So, when did you draw that?"

"About a week after you got hired. I made you some hot chocolate with cinnamon and you said that making you a drink wouldn't make up for the fact I was so hard on you for burning the brownies and I told you that wasn't my intention and when I took a sip of my hot chocolate, trying to act all tough, I got whipped cream on my nose, and I saw you trying to hide your laugh with your mug," Tyler continued, never looking up from his page. "I couldn't get that image of you out of my head, so I decided to draw it."

I fought back a blush and looked down at my paper, suddenly, I knew exactly what I wanted to draw.