| 18 |
❝ Vogue just called. They want to put you on the front cover. ❞
Teddy!!!!!!!!!!!!: i'm sorry
Teddy!!!!!!!!!!!!: please Charlotte
Teddy!!!!!!!!!!!!: we really need to talk
Teddy!!!!!!!!!!!!: tell me what i did wrong
Charlotte's glare at her phone screen got progressively angrier as she scrolled through his messages. He knew what he did wrong. Was she not obvious when she said 'I've needed to tell you that I think you're wrong'? Was it not obvious she was mad that he called the kiss a mistake? Was it not obvious that she liked him?
Gosh, boys could be so clueless.
"Ms. Jackson, I'll see you after class," stated Mrs. Wyatt, her voice booming throughout the classroom.
Crap.
She shoved her phone in her jeans pocket with a groan. Mrs. Wyatt didn't screw around. Charlotte just hoped she didn't receive a detention.
The bell eventually rang and Charlie walked over to her with a small frown, getting ready to rant. "I've got to get home today. My mom needs me to work in her bookstore, I can't have a det-"
"This is just a warning, Charlotte. Do you know how many kids I catch on their phone every class? I would have to put everyone in detention, and I have plans tonight as well. I could care less."
"Uhh..."
"I just want you to know that I got you a tutor. They volunteered to replace Mr. Dawes just this morning."
Charlie furrowed her eyebrows. "Really?"
"Would you be alright having Mr. Theodore Higgins as your tutor?"
That sly bastard.
"Yeah, that's great!" she said with a forced smile. "Thanks."
•|•|•
Charlie was watching Netflix, as per usual, when her mom poked her head in her room. "Hey, shouldn't you be studying with Malcolm?"
"Ahh... He quit."
"What?" her mother questioned. "Why? I liked him!"
"I don't know, ask him," she said glumly.
"Well, you still have to study," she reprimanded.
"I know, I know..." She should probably ask Theodore... Her new tutor. Ah, crap.
"When you finish, come help me in the store," Mrs. Jackson said before whisking away.
With a sigh, she pulled out her phone.
Charlotte: do you wanna come over and study?
It was only a couple minutes later when her phone buzzed.
Teddy!!!!!!!!!!!!: be right over
•|•|•
He was true to his word.
Only five minutes later, not even, he was knocking at her door. His ebony hair was disheveled and his square glasses were perched on the crook of his nose. His navy-blue backpack was slung over his shoulder and his light freckles seemed to stand out today more than ever. His wide eyes seemed to sparkle and his lips formed a slight, knowing grin. "Let's get started."
She led him to her bedroom [letting him stop to say hi to her mother first] and they sat down facing each other on her bed, Charlotte sitting cross-legged on her pillow with her back on the headrest, Teddy sitting on the end.
"So, what do you want to get started on?" he asked, pulling out his math binder.
"Uh, actually, I just wanted to tell you that I just need a touch up on this stuff, I'm actually pretty smart without all this tutoring, so I don't think I'll need you that much. I just need to catch up, because sleep hates me and constantly screws me over, so I usually end up dead tired during exams and I sleep during class, missing the lesson."
"Then what do you want me to do?" he asked, his nose scrunched up. "Sleep with you?"
Charlotte blinked.
Teddy's eye's widened in horror. His jaw dropped open and he frantically gulped. "I-I didn't, I meant, bed-sleep, like dreams and, not anything like, n-not that sleep. It was a joke. It was supposed to be a joke," he finished weakly.
"I got it," she mumbled, wanting to jump off a cliff. Her cheeks glowed bright red.
"Ermmm..." he awkwardly murmured. "Uhhh..."
"Let's study, I guess," Charlie said uneasily.
Teddy flipped through the pages in the math book and gave her a load of problems to finish. She would complete them, and he would check. This went on for about forty five minutes, and she felt like she was going to ace the next test.
"So then you just foil it?"
"Yeah, and then you solve, and you should be good."
"Wow, that's really simple," she replied, putting down her pencil.
"See, you've got it," he said with a smile.
"Thanks," she shyly smiled back, combing back a piece of tangled brown hair behind her ear.
Suddenly he reached over her, making Charlie catch her breath. He grabbed the drawing of her that lay on her bedside table. Teddy glanced down at it and whispered, "You really did keep it?"
"Of course I did," she mumbled without hesitation. "Why wouldn't I?"
She kept the drawing on her bedside table so at night, if she had trouble falling back asleep, she would just glance at the small signature that said Theodore Higgins ❤️ Charlotte Jackson and smile.
He was staring at her, staring at her with an intensity she wasn't aware of. With an intensity she wasn't comfortable with. His incredible, enticing, azure eyes were as wide and as bright as the sun, sparkling and glowing with such a mesmerizing light. His glasses her slowly sliding down his nose, and he used his pointer finger to push them up. They were veering to dangerous levels of feelings zone. Abort. Abort. Abort.
She coughed. "Uhm, I have to go, go, um, help my mother in the bookstore now, sometimes I work there, y'know, and she pays me when I'm actually helping her and not sitting on my phone, and I need money because recently a lot of Marvel movies are coming out and I need to stock up, and a lot of books need to be bought so if I may..." she babbled on, trying to remind herself that Teddy did not feel the same way she did. Anytime they came close to any sort of romantical, touchy-feely action, she'd just have to rant like that. They needed to stay strictly friends.
(For now.)
"O-oh," Teddy sputtered out, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'll see you around, then?"
She didn't answer as he whisked away, running down the stairs and to his car, his navy backpack clinging to his shoulder.
And she felt slightly guilty.
•|•|•
Charlotte woke up like a submarine emerging from the water. Spluttering and gasping and searching for air.
Her hands clawed her throat, her head painfully digging into the headboard on her bed. Charlie's nails slid down the side of her face and her lungs threatened to collapse.
She was close to wheezing, her throat closing up, unable to breathe.
Hot, wet tears flowed hot and she couldn't stop them, she couldn't, she couldn't stop them even though she knew it was a dream and she knew it wasn't real and she knew everyone was all right.
She fumbled blindly with her phone, fat tears blurring the screen. She pressed his name, starting the call.
"I-" she whispered, her breathing stuttering. "I know you're working, and I know it's something like eleven or twelve at night..."
Her salty tears streamed over her lips and traced a path down her rounded chin and neck. "And I know I've been a horr-horr-horrible friend, if we still even are friends, and..."
Charlotte was shaking, her whole body trembling, her hand holding her phone quaking and her breathing was unstable. Her voice was soft and hoarse, trying not to wake her parents and her siblings.
"Shh," came his mellow, reassuring, gravelly tone. "Shhh. You're not bothering me, I swear. No one comes in this late besides a couple of stragglers like you. And I've never once thought we weren't friends."
Her quiet sniffled were the only thing on the line. Her occasional stutter-breath or hyperventilation would make her bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut, her chest bobbing up and down. After a while, her breathing slowed to a normal pace, only a couple gaspy-breaths occurring. Charlie gulped loudly, crushing her phone against her ear as she lay sideways on her uncomfortable mattress.
"You... You alright?" Teddy asked slowly, and she imagined a cautious puppy. Eyes wide, slowly creeping forward only to nudge you in the hand.
Her cheeks still felt damp. Her brown eyes were closed. "I'm fine. This-this is going to sound insane, but when I was younger, talking would calm me down. My mom would read me bits of Harry Potter and I'd fall right to sleep. That, and I used to listen to instrumental songs on my mp3 player. It helps me so I'm not alone with my thoughts. I d-don't know, but could you maybe just... Stay? On the phone? At the sleepover, I didn't have any nightmares, and every time I'd talk to you at Dunkin' Donuts I'd fall right to sleep when I got home. Maybe could you just talk or hum or something, just until you think I've fallen asleep?" she inquired quietly as she looked at the drawing on her bed table with one eye opened. Theodore Higgins ❤️ Charlotte Jackson.
"It'd be my pleasure," he murmured. "Anything for you."
The eyes of the drawing were staring right back at her. Those eyes were wide and innocent. The real eyes were wide and filled with fear and uncertainty.
In the drawing, every flaw was flawless. Every pimple and scar and crookedness of the nose and wideness of the forehead and thinness of the lips was perfectly contoured. Every flaw flawless. Instead of the deep brown, wide, innocent doe eyes of the doodle, wide, she imagined piercing blue ones gazing worryingly back at her.
If she was an artist, she could easily draw a replica of those soothing royal blue eyes. She could easily draw a replica of him.
His black, square rimmed, bulky glasses gliding down the tip of his nose. His disheveled, raven-black hair, a few loose pieces falling over his forehead. His bushy eyebrows and his curly eyelashes, his light freckles that beamed in the sun, his few, uncommon pimples dotting his forehead or cheek, his faint scar at the top of his nose that you could only see if you looked clearly, closely, carefully, slowly... Which she does.
She would draw him in his grey hoodie, the strings lopsided in length and his hands in the front pocket. She would illustrate his long, lanky legs in a pair of skinny jeans and sketch converse on his feet. She would draw his shoulders slouched and his muscular jaw clenched and his lips unmoving and taut. Just how we was presented to everyone else.
She would create a second drawing, a drawing that she'd keep to herself. A drawing that no one else saw; him smiling.
A divot cut out of his right cheek where a dimple sometimes lay. His eyes bright and wide and shining. His lips stretched so far that others had to join in. Others usually didn't notice the smile, since he didn't usually smile for others. Others didn't bother opening up to him, and he didn't bother opening up to then. Others didn't bother to get to know Teddy, Theodore, Teddy Theodore Orion Higgins. Others didn't know that he, too, smiled. Others didn't know how wonderful that smile was.
They would miss out on his signature Teddy smile, along with his deluxe Teddy hugs and his exclusive Teddy kisses.
That's why, if she could draw, she wouldn't share the last drawing. Because he was special to her and that was hers to keep. That would be, if she could draw. Selfish, maybe. But she deserved a little selfish every once in a while.
She couldn't draw, however. She couldn't. She couldn't even merely draw a stick figure, let alone two portraits of Teddy Orion Higgins. That's why she stuck with imagination. Where every fantasy, dream, or wishful thinking was possible. In her imagination, she could see herself doodling Teddy's eyebrow and his grin and his beautiful eyes. And she could imagine herself hugging the picture and twirling around, pinning it up in her locker door or on her bedroom wall for all to see. Because Teddy Orion Higgins was a work of art.
Her imagination was slightly delusional and her thoughts were slightly distorted, that's why she wasn't making sense. She just wanted to sleep. But she couldn't.
Her jumbled thoughts paused, her ears straining to hear the sound coming out of her phone; Theodore Higgins was singing to her.
It was a hum-sing combination, and it was so soft she could barely hear. She nearly laughed at how silly he must have looked, at Dunkin' Donuts, a phone in his hand as he murmured You Are My Sunshine softly. She snuggled deeper into her pillow, her eye on the drawing. Her flawlessly drawn flaws stared back at her.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine," came his throaty hum. It was soothing to the restless mind. "You make me happy, when skies are grey."
Her plain-Jane brown eyes gazed back at her, and she wondered what he thought when he stared at her eyes. She also wondered if she should ever tell Teddy about the metaphor. The ocean and the earth. Two worlds colliding. She had to say, she took pride in that one.
Her vision faltered when her head started to nod, her senses shutting down.
"You'll never know dear, how much I love you."
The Beatles shirt. Her small scar on her cheek from where her cousin's cat scratched her. The little details. The little things. He paid attention to her.
Teddy Orion Higgins. Orion. Constellations. Stars. A blur. Fighting for consciousness.
"So please don't take my sunshine away."
Scrawled in narrow, stiff, minuscule letters on the bottom, right-hand corner.
Theodore Higgins ❤️ Charlotte Jackson.
Charlotte finally closed her eyes once more.
a/n
i finished this chapter while eating cherries yum
a HUGE thanks to trixehstories for the INCREDIBLE fanart on the side. thank you so much, seriously <3 this is like your thirtieth dedication in this book but you deserve it xD
smurfswift HAHA SUCK IT jk I love you (and you love me too)
click the external link to take the quiz on a note a day. it will mean so much to me, and I will love you forever. I already love all thirty of you that have taken it, thank you so much thank you thank you.
(speaking of that i'm trying to update chapters faster i swear was this one faster???? idk)
so I think I've finished planning the book... so I know the ending. haha, suckers. you're gonna hate me.
so this chapter needs major editing and is kinda complete jibberish, whoops. idk tell me thoughts.
so please leave a vote, a comment, and maybe share if you like the chapter/book. it would mean the world.
i totally did not reach my goal last chapter. whoopsss
GOALS:
60k reads (omg speaking of that thank you so much for the 58k reads!!!!!)
170 votes
240 comments
idk one can hope
(ALSO I MIGHT BE LATE TO REPLYING TO COMMENTS BC I NEED TO GO HUSK CORN BYEEEEEEEEEE)