It's you I'm crazy about. Not her, you.
**
Ty's POV
I sit down at our usual lunch table and immediately realize something is wrong. I look around slowly to find an empty space in front of me, in between Parker and Sierra.
"Where's C?" I ask and Blake shrugs.
"She texted me she won't be eating here today. She might be in a classroom or something," he says nonchalantly. Parker wiggles her eyebrows at me and I roll my eyes.
"Why? Worried about your girlfriend?" Evan teases and I shoot him a look.
"She isn't my girlfriend, and yeah I am worried. She didn't eat this morning did she?"
Blake nods and I grab my apple and cookie, standing up. Sierra looks at me knowingly, giving me a smile. Blake puts a hand on my shoulder stopping me. I shrug it off and he stands up next to me.
"Dude, where you going?"
I start walking away. "Looking for your sister who is probably starving."
I start walking out of the busy cafeteria and into the quiet hallways. I look at every classroom and she wasn't in any of them. She usually sits with us or studies in the library but whenever she doesn't eat breakfast, she's hungry.
My mind clicks and I immediately run up the long flight of stairs to the art room and once I get there, a heavy backpack on, an apple and cookie in hand, I see her. She has headphones on, her braid slightly messy. She's looking at a canvas with tons of paint next to her and on her arms. She's wearing a white tank top with grey sweatpants and I see her maroon denim jacket on the chair. I knock on the door loudly and she lifts her gaze to me.
"Hey! What are you doing here?" she takes her headphones off and smiles at me. I walk in, placing down the bag with a cookie and apple.
"You weren't at lunch and I knew you would be hungry." I say and I take a peek at her canvas. Right now it has sketches and she turns it around.
"Hey! No peeking. This is for our project." she narrows her eyes at me and I sit on the counter, next to the arrays of paint and brushes. Her arms have specks of paint somehow and I chuckle at the paint on a strand of hair in front of her face.
I play with a brush in my hand as she takes a bite of the apple. "Did you just come here to hand me food?"
I shake my head, "And to see what you were up to. I didn't even start thinking about mine yet." She laughs and I crack a small grin. That laugh just does something to me.
"Well, why don't you start now with me? We still have a lot of time," she suggests. I take that into thought and grabbed a canvas on the shelf. I put it on an easel across from her and she hands me an apron. I tie it on and before I could look up, a splatter of orange paint lands in the center of it, also getting my hands a bit orange.
I look up and she's trying to hide her laugh with the back of her hand.
"Whoops!"
I raise an eyebrow and grabbed the big brush next to me, dipping it in purple paint. She screams and hides behind the canvas and I wait before flicking the paint at her.
"I didn't mean it!" she says and I chuckle.
"Sure you didn't!" she peeks her face and I flick the brush and specks of purple lands on her face.
I start laughing uncontrollably as she stands there with jaw dropping and an evil glint in her eyes as she watches me laugh. I put my brush down, but that was a mistake because she starts running at me with a hand full of red paint. She slaps it on my cheek lightly and I feel the cold wet paint dripping down. I grab her hand and the purple paint next to me and start splattering it on her arms.
"You are so going to pay," I say to her smirking face.
She gets away from my grip and she runs around the tables. I chase her and she's stuck across from me. We're across each other with paint on each other and on the floors.
She grabs my canvas and holds it out in front of her. When I throw the paint, she uses the canvas to catch the paint. She runs around and throws me the canvas, I catch it and then I feel a bunch of paint on my head dripping down.
My jaw drops and I see her laughing so hard a couple feet away. I drop the canvas and run towards her, capturing her in between my arms, hugging her with paint on us.
"Ty Shruder!" she shouts, trying to squirm away, laughing. "Get off of me!"
"You did this C!" I rub paint on her head and she gasps. We pull away and she is covered in paint on her shirt and sweats and I am, well, drenched.
She throws me a towel and I look at it with a raised eyebrow. She tries to wipe her hair and I walk over without her noticing still, wiping off the paint on her cheeks. Her eyes just stare at me and I try to avoid making eye contact or looking at her lips.
"This towel won't do me justice, you know." I mutter and she chuckles. That soft chuckle was for me.
My heart is doing little gymnastics shit, what the fuck.
She takes the towel and grabs a bigger one to run under water. I lean against the counter right beside her and watched. The way her eyes is concentrated on the towel is amusing, her hair strands are just barely on her face and a streak of purple still rests on her cheek. She then takes the wet towel to dry my hair, ruffling it harshly.
After a few moments, she stops and takes a look at me. I look past her to see a small mirror and some of the paint is off of my head but there's a bunch on my clothes.
"Good enough!" she sets down the dirty towel and walks back to her easel like nothing happened.
I walk her way and sit on my easel across from her. I have specks of red, purple, and orange and I try to figure out what I could do with that for the project. I glance at her quickly and she doesn't even notice. She's focusing on her project at hand, focused eyes and steady hands.
"Aw, look at you love birds!" a voice says and Cameron and I immediately look at the door.
Kasey stands there, leaning against the doorframe in her plaid skirt and white crop. Cam rolls her eyes and puts her brush down, avoiding contact with Kasey.
"What can we do for you, Kasey?" Cameron asks impatiently and Kasey starts walking in the room.
Kasey stands beside me, hand on my arm and I shrug it off.
"Oh, nothing really. I was just wondering what the loud ruckus in here was." she responds innocently and I roll my eyes.
"You got something on your shirt and cheek there, Cameron."
Cam nods and doesn't even bother to look at Kasey. I was about to tell Kasey to get out but her mouth beats me before I could.
"You really can't even look at me, can you?" she laughs at Cameron. Cameron lifts her glare at Kasey and has a fake smile already on.
"I can, actually. I just didn't want to,"
"You know, you don't deserve Ty." Cameron stops painting and I freeze, staring at the both of them now. Kasey smirks and Cameron turns her stool toward her.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Kasey flips her hair over her shoulder and steps closer to Cam. "You know damn well what you're doing when you're with him. I deserve him. Your fucking selfish-self doesn't deserve him. Everyone would laugh if they saw you two together, so—"
"Enough." I stand up, in front of Kasey and I can see out of the corner of my eye, a blank Cameron. She's staring at her canvas with no emotion present on her face.
"Get out, Kasey."
"That's no fun, Ty I just wanted to make things interesting." she smiles at me and I scoff.
"Next time, don't even look or speak to Cameron. She had enough of your bullshit and I did too. Don't even speak to me either." I say, a bit loudly and Kasey's smirk drops. Cameron abruptly stands up and dashes out of the room.
I try to walk past Kasey and to follow Cameron but she pulls me back.
"She isn't worth it, Ty." she tells me. I shake my head, laughing.
"She gets upset so much! You don't deserve so much on your plate,"
I shake my head, stopping her. "She is worth everything."
"You don't have a say on what I deserve." I run into her shoulder and walked out, trying to find her. I mean, the only option is the bathroom.
I run to the bathrooms in the hallway and knock on the girl's one. Eventually, a head popped out and Cameron walked out. She had some mascara under her eyes but that's okay. I take her hand and pull her into a tight hug. I know she needed one.
She pulls away quicker than usual. "I'm okay, Ty. Really."
I take a look at her. She does look better than the times before but she was still hurt by Kasey's words. I put a hand to her cheek.
"She doesn't matter. It's just you and me, okay?" I say softly. "You deserve everything in the world."
"Including me."
She stares at me with a smile breaking out on her face and I kiss her hand. "Promise me you won't give a shit about Kasey?" I held out my pinky and she looks at it for a moment.
She nods and locks her pinky around mien, kissing her thumb to seal the promise. I do the same. "Promise," she says and I hug her before walking back to the art room to get our things before we leave.
The bell rings and we scramble to get everything back to normal. I see our group of friends, jaw opened when they walk to us as we step out of the art room. Blake starts hysterically laughing, Parker is taking a picture, Kaydon is hiding his laugh on Sierra's head while she is covering her laugh with her fist, and Evan is speechless.
Blake keeps on laughing with his shoulders shaking and eventually laying on the floor. "You guys are covered in paint!"
I roll my eyes, helping him up. "No, Blake. I'm covered in frosting." I respond sarcastically and he shoves my shoulder.
Sierra holds Cam's jacket as we all start walking and Blake puts his arm around my shoulder and Cam's. "You guys are literally getting stares."
Cameron shrugs, "Who cares. They can stare all they want." I see Blake smiling at that and I smile too.
Blake squeezes me and Cam by his side and I shove him away from me.
"I will dump orange paint on your white hoodie." I threaten and he puts his hands up in defense.
"You wouldn't," he grinned and I raise an eyebrow, running back to the art room. I hear him trying to catch up behind me and the group laughing their asses off.
"Ty, no!" Blake shouts and I weave through the many people in the halls.
"Kaydon, don't just stand there help me!" I shout, throwing him a paint brush from my pocket for some reason. Kaydon catches it and we both chase Blake around the school.
"Why did I even bring that up!" Blake whines and runs into the girl's bathroom. Kaydon and I start laughing like crazy and we drop the brushes.
Cameron stands by my side with a smile on her face. A beautiful smile, as usual.
"Torturing my brother, nice." she sighs and I nod. We watch as Blake gets chased by girls out of the bathroom and down the hall. We all laugh and smile at that and I take a look at her once again. This time, no worry or sadness was on her face. It's a smile full of joy, her smile is a work of art.
She is so worth it.
**
a/n
unedited
I LITERALLY LOVE THIS CHAPTER SO MUCH GUYS, HELP. im squealing like a kid.
im planning for 22 chapters and an epilogue by the way!!
anyway, since im on this summer vacation soon with my family, i wont be very active much until around wednesday. so updates will be later this week hopefully! ill try and still announce things and whatnot.
what is your dream vacation?
stay SAFE and HEALTHY. love you lots :)
-s <3