Calum’s POV
I’ve been sitting in Mali’s room all afternoon. She tells me about her weird adventures through Europe. She met some really weird people, I’m surprised she is still alive. People tried to ruffie her. She got kidnapped without knowing that she is kidnapped. She met a person claiming he is Jesus. She saw a couple arguing over boiled eggs, of all things. She drank a lot, got high twice, and a guy proposed to her. He was drunk, and he didn’t really give her a real ring, he just got her a ring-like plastic, probably from a bottle or something.
“Wow” I say. And she laughs.
“I know, it was so awards to reject him. He literally went down on one knee, in the middle of the club. It was so funny” she says and laughs.
I haven’t laughed like this in a long while.
“But okay, enough about me” She says, waving her hands. “What’s happening with you?” She asks.
I tell her about Marissa, and how she is 90% cheating on me, but that I still kind of lie to myself that she is not. And she repeatedly hit me with a pillow saying I told you so in-between hits.
“I swear to god I will rip that smug little face of hers next time I see her” She says, after she is done assaulting me.
“But, I’m not a hundred percent positive” I say, and she groans.
“Oh come on, Cal! Do you want surveillance tapes? Do you want me to hire a PI to investigate and bring you photos taken from a tree outside her window of her and Stephen-“
“I don’t need the visuals, Mali” I hide my eyes. Just the thought of them makes me so angry, let alone actually have that evidence.
“I’m just saying. You’re avoiding the inevitable” She settles on the other side of the couch. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“Noooo” I say. That would be worse. “I will…I just don’t know how to do it” I say.
“Well, you better do it before she breaks up with you. Then you’ll feel really stupid.” She laughs. I nod.
“Alright” She says “Well, I’m gonna go get ready. I’m going out with Elena” I arch an eyebrow “Yeah, she texted me when she arrived a few weeks ago and I called her this morning.”
“Have fun” I say. She smiles and goes to the bathroom.
I go to my room and get dressed in warmer clothes, which means I just put on a hoodie.
“I’m going out.” Yell from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll see you later”
“Kay” I hear her say from her room. “Say hi to your friends”
“Will do” I say and I put on my shoes and jacket and get out. I walk to my car and then look at Addie’s house. Might as well.
I walk to her door, and knock on it. It’s closed.
She opens it and looks at me. She’s been sleeping. Her hair is tangled, and she is wearing shorts and an oversized T-shirt. She looks so hot. Wait, no.
“I’m picking up Michael.” I say “Didn’t know if you wanted a ride”
I don’t know if she is still sleeping or not, but she turns and goes to her bathroom. Okay, I’ll wait here then.
It’s pretty chilly outside, and the gray clouds have not left the sky. The sun behind them is setting and it’s getting darker by the minute.
She comes out of the bathroom, her hair brushed and loose, and she has black jeans and an oversized sweater.
“Give me a minute” She says and goes out of her room. I hear voices on the other end and when she comes back she has her boots on and a jacket. “Kay, let’s go.”
We walk to my car and I see Mali locking the door from our house.
“Hey, can you give me a ride to…oh” she stops when she sees Addie. “Hello” She greets her. “I’m Mali Koa. Calum’s sister” She then extends her arm towards Addie.
“I’m Addie. Your new neighbor” Addie shakes her hand and smiles.
“We’re going to pick up Michael. Where do I need to drop you off?” I ask my sister.
“I’m meeting Elena at that new coffee shop they opened last year?” She says, and goes in the back seat.
“It’s not new if it’s from last year” I say, and open the passenger’s seat for Addie. Mali looks at me shocked. My cheeks flush as I go to the driver’s seat, but she doesn’t comment on it.
“You sound like Fashion Police” She groans. Addie laughs.
I drive to Michael’s, because it’s on the way, and Addie and Mali are talking. Mali is asking her where she is from, when did she move in, why did she come here and so on. Addie answers all of her questions. She is from a suburb near New York, she moved in a couple of weeks ago, and she came here because her mom got a job at the hospital. She is a surgeon.
When Michael comes in, he joins the conversation, and then Mali makes vague plans with him to hang out at some point because Michael wants to know everything about her trip.
Elena is outside the coffee shop. Mali says goodbye and thanks me for the ride before getting out of the car. Elena waves at us, and both of them go into the coffee shop together.
I continue driving to Ashton’s.
The garage door is opened halfway and after I park the car in front of it, we all get out and duck under the garage door. Ashton is not inside.
Mikey puts on the snapback and sinks into the beanbag. I go to my bass and then sit on the armchair playing a little tune.
Addie rests her back on the wall and takes out her phone.
“Where’s Luke?” She asks Michael.
“At home” Mikey says, his legs stretched in front of him.
“Is he okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah. I went there this afternoon. He actually felt ill. He’s been vomiting all day. His mom gave me a cookie. Then I left” He answers. After a few silent moments “It was a really nice cookie” He whispers.
I laugh and look at Addie. She meets my stare but I can’t read her expression. She just goes back to her phone.
After a minute, Ash comes in.
“Yo” He says, sitting on the chair in front of his drums. “Someone’s missing” he says, looking at all of us, as if counting.
“Luke” Michael answers him “He is sick”
“Well, are we gonna band or what?!” he says, and then does the badum-ts on his drums. I get up, and Michael manages to drag himself out of the beanbag.
And then we play for half an hour. But we need Luke’s guitar. And slowly we just stop. Ash brings beers and sits on the armchair, distributing them.
I sit next to Addie, since Michael is in the beanbag again, and I want to rest my back.
And I want to sit next to her.
“Okay, okay” Michael says, propping himself up on his elbows “Most embarrassing story. Calum, go!”
“Ummm…” I say, thinking. “In seventh grade. Luke got a date for the school dance, and I wanted one too, so I went up to this girl, Jessica, she was a year older than us, and I asked if I could buy her lunch. She said yes, and I bought this yogurt thing, because that was all I could afford, and then I followed her and sat with her friends. And I really wanted to ask her to the dance, but she was surrounded with all her friends. So here I am, trying to get up the nerve to ask her, when one of her friends just turns to her and goes Hey Jess, who is this kid? about me and she looks at me, in the eyes, and says ‘I don’t know. He bought me lunch and kinda followed me here’. “
All of them start Oooh-ing and Addie laughs. Her laugh is so cute and addictive.
“That’s brutal” Mikey says while laughing.
“Yeah” I say and look down, playing with my shoelaces.
“What happened after that?” Addie asks, amused.
“Well, I wanted to take her yogurt and leave, but I couldn’t. So I just got up and left. They laughed at me. It was so sad” I finish. She laughs some more.
“What’s your most embarrassing moment?” I turn to Addie. We are sitting close. She looks at me, and quickly glances at my lips before she turns away. Her cheeks flush. I smile.
“Well” She says, answering my question “Freshman in high school, I was with Aggie and we were eating lunch together with her friends, and this girl, who is a total bitch, and my sister’s bestie, just turns to me and says ‘So you’re the ugly twin?’ and I say ‘at least I don’t have polyester hair and lie about how many guys I’ve slept with' and she got so offended, she pushed me off my chair, in front of the whole school, and dumped her food on me” She finishes. Michael and I laugh and Ash just looks at her in horror. “The worse thing is that it was such a bad comeback, but I was so proud of myself in those few moments before I was on the ground, swimming in a puddle of some weird bean soup and soda.”
“Who eats bean soup with soda?” Ash asks, and Michael’s laugh turns into that weird silent seal-clap one.
“I actually think that I asked myself that, while I was on the ground and the whole cafeteria was laughing at me.
“What did your sister do?” Michael asks her.
“She laughed.” Addie says. She says it more serious. I catch a glimpse of hurt, before she masks it.
“How come your sister ends up with shitty friends?” Mikey asks her. She laughs.
“Beats me. She just pulls them with her shitty-friends gravity pull” She says, making big hand gestures. I laugh some more.
“Alright, stop laughing at my misery” She waves us off. “What’s yours, Mikey?” She asks, hugging her legs, her chin rested on her knees.
“Well” he says. “I was 15 and we were on a family vacation in Greece. And I met this girl, and I really liked her and was desperate to impress her. So I start talking to her, and tell her I’m from Australia and all that jazz, and she starts talking about how much she likes surfers, and that she wants to have a surfer boyfriend, and goes into this whole speech about surfers and how hot they are and how she wouldn’t be with a boy if he wasn’t a surfer. And I am so freaked out because I can’t surf for shit, and at the end she just asks me ‘so, do you surf?’ and I panic and say ‘yes’. And she gets really impressed and she kisses me, and then we make out. And like the whole day, we spend it together, we got along really well, and then she introduces me to her two Spanish friends, and the first thing she says is ‘this is Michael, he’s a surfer’. And they didn’t believe her for some reason and then she was like ‘he’ll prove it’ and I was like ‘yeah I would, if I had my surfboard’ and then, conveniently, one of them had a surfboard because their dad owned this shack on the beach. And I say ‘oh, that’s so cool, but there are no waves’ and, very conveniently there were big waves that day. And I was running out of excuses, so I get a surfboard, or they actually provided me with one, and I get in the water. And now, I am probably the worst surfer in the entire world. And this wave comes and I say to myself ‘you can do this Michael’, and I get up, and 0.23 seconds later I was underwater, and I hit my head on this rock, so I was bleeding, and I also scraped my knee on something, so that’s bleeding as well, and I manage to get myself to the shore. And the three girls are staring at me, and I expect them to ask me if I’m okay, right? They don’t. The girl who’s dad owned the surfboard, had a smug face and she took the board, and they left, and I am sitting there, properly bleeding, actual blood coming from my head and knee, and this girl just looks at me and goes ‘I hope you learned something today’ and leaves. And these guys my age were just laughing at me.” By the time Michael finishes, Ash, Addie and I can’t breathe from laughing.
“That is the saddest vacation ever” Ash manages to say.
After we all calm down, Ash tells his embarrassing story, which is him going in the girls toilet in school, and then the whole year everyone called him a ‘she’ and bullied him for it. And then the story isn’t funny anymore, but sad.
“Alright, alright” Ash says “Anyway, I got this today” He says, and takes out a joint from the little metal box.
“You guys have drug issues” Addie says.
“It’s a way to relieve the stress” Michael says, lighting it.

Addie’s POV
Michael takes a couple of drags, then Ash, Calum, and then it’s finally my turn. Calum hands It to me and whispers “You don’t have to if you don’t want to”. I take it anyway.
The warm smoke that tastes like grass goes through my throat. I hold it and then exhale. Calum smiles at me. I do it a couple of times, until I feel light headed. After the whole thing is done, Michael and Ash go into a laughing fit.
I feel so light and heavy at the same time. My eyelids are falling on their own, when I look at Calum, he is looking back. Time stops or goes too fast, one of them. I can’t really see his eyes because his long eyelashes shadow them. And then I glance at his lips, and imagine what they feel like, and what they taste like. I look up, and notice him looking at my lips. Is he wondering what mine taste like?
“Addie, Addie, Addie!” I hear Michael, and then I remember that they are actually in the room as well. I manage to look at Michael, but I still feel Calum’s eyes on me.
Michael and Ash are laughing so much, I just watch them confused and suddenly very tired. And then Michael is explaining something to me, but I can’t concentrate and it sounds like he is speaking a different language.
“Michael you’re not talking” Is all I say. What I meant to say is that he is not speaking English, but this makes more sense to me. And then Michael is cracking up again, and Ash leaves to go to the bathroom because he can’t take it.
“Is he ok?” I turn to Calum. He is still watching me. I should be creped out, but I’m not.
And then Michael leaves for the bathroom as well, because he can’t handle it. And it’s just Calum and me. And everything melts away, but his face.
“You’re so beautiful” he whispers. I don’t think he meant to say that out loud. I say nothing.
“I’m thirsty” I say. He smiles and then in a very slow motion, stands up and extends his hand to me.
“Let’s go inside. I’m getting kinda hungry” He says.
I take his hand and he doesn’t let it go as we go inside. It’s soft and warm on my cold one. He gives me a little squeeze as we go in.
Mikey and Ash are in the kitchen eating ice cream and Mikey’s eyes jump directly to our hands. He is still not letting it go. Not that I am.
But, eventually, we do let go, get two spoons, and eat ice cream.
“Where’s your mom?” Cal asks Ashton.
“She’s at my grandma’s.” He answers with a mouth full of ice cream.
“Are your brother and sister there as well?” Michael asks, licking his spoon. Ash nods.
Michael then starts talking how nice the ice cream is, and I feel incredibly tired.
After 15 minutes of ice cream eating, we go back to the garage. Mikey sinks into the beanbag and switches off. Ash does the same thing on the armchair, and then it’s me and Cal, sitting beside each other, in the same positions. I hug my legs and rest my cheek on my knees, facing Calum. He has his head leaned on the wall, slightly turned my way. We stare at each other. Super weird if I wasn’t high, but because I am, I find it comforting. We smile at each other from time to time, and then at point we are holding hands. I don’t know how that happened. I hear snoring but I feel like it’s coming from a different world. My world, right now, is only Calum. His relaxed body leaned against the wall. His lips curved in a little smile, his thumb rubbing the top of my hand, one of his legs brought to his chest, the other one limp on the floor.
Everything else disappears. Everything but his presence. And then I realize. And the realization hits me as if a giant piano has fallen on me from the sky, like in a cartoon. My heart beat quickens, and, I am too high to freak out properly. But I know it. I know it. I really really really like Calum.

Notes

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Sorry (again) for the spelling mistakes and weird sentence structure :))