CHAPTER SEVEN, The Girl Who Read [And the Boy Who Kissed Her]: middle of somewhere

        ❝ I still remember the day I first met you and smile because it was the best day of my life. ❞

                       ―  anonymous

        He was probably the cheesiest guy you could pick up for miles. You could probably sense his cheesiness. Yes, he believed in true love, or love at first sight. He still remembered her in her knee-high, pale violet, rubber rain boots, her hair in wet strands from the rain down pouring on them, in two long braids, rolling over her shoulders and ending with wisps. Her bright pink raincoat nearly trailed on the drenched pavement, drowning her body with it's enormous size.

        He remembered seeing the rose tint cover her chubby cheeks from the cold, a woolen hat perched atop her head. And while she read, unknowingly whispering the words from the pages to him as well, shivers traveling up and down his spine, he didn't just fall for her. Oh no. He fucking face-planted off of Mount Everest.

        His legs quivered under the booth, and he firmly put his hand over it to ease the shaking. A woman with a few grey flyaway hairs walked over to them. She grinned kindly at them and took out a notebook. "Hi, and welcome to Frankie's Diner! May I take your order?"

        "Hi, yes, um," His girl's voice piped up. "Could I please have a Frankie Fantastic, white bread, hold the mushrooms in the omelet, M&M's in the pancakes, fruit cup on the side, and could you change the sausage to bacon? Oh, and a chocolate milk for the drink." Spencer looked at her, a little aghast. How could that tiny body hold that much food? The only other person that he's ever seen that ate that much was his sister. Thank God she wasn't one of those healthy girls at school who had salads every day.

        "And you, dear?" The aging waitress smiled at him, still writing down Skylar's order.

        "Could I please have the... Big Burger? No onions, extra pickles? And for the drink, could I please have a chocolate shake, and a couple cherries?"

        She winked at the pair and replied, "Coming right up!"

        As she left, he turned towards his blushing date and rubbed the back of his neck. "Uhh... I just have to say, I'm really sorry for how the past couple days have turned out."

        "Spencer, it's fine," She grinned, picking at her nails. "They were actually some of the best dates I've ever been on."

        He blinked a couple times. "Are we on the same page? The, um, son of a bitch ticket seller? Excuse my language," His face tinged pink. "And the... Beach incident? And the Augustus Waters drama? Hell, I nearly cried, yet you liked it?"

        She bit her lip and smiled, tucking in some of her hair behind her ear. "Nobody's ever gone through that much trouble for me."

        Whoa, he wasn't expecting that. "It wasn't t-trouble. If anything, I was the one giving you trouble."

        She gave him a flat look. "I played dead, beat up a guy our age, and cried in your lap. I hardly think that's your fault."

        He replied, "With anyone else, I could find that a little... Unique. And with you, it was unique. But I had fun. Strangely."

        The waitress came back and placed a mountain of food on their table. They quickly began chomping away. Taking a sip from his chocolate shake, he dug around with the red and white striped straw for the cherries. He popped one in his mouth and held the stem. After chewing, he put the stem in his mouth. She looked at him with a befuddled look on her face and asked, "What are you doing?"

        He took the cherry stem out of his mouth, a small knot on the end. "They say if you knot it, you're good at kissing."

        She reached over and grabbed a cherry from the palm of his hand, popping the stem in her mouth. A couple minutes later, she took out the stem, smiling. "Apparently I ace PDA."

        He didn't disagree.

        ♡❤♡

        Her chocolate milk was long forgotten once he gave her a sip of his chocolate shake. They were taking turns with the red and white striped straw, and he couldn't help but veer his mind to the fact they were secondhand kissing.

        They talked. He told her about his laid-back, genius brother off at some medical school. He chatted about his younger sister, his little princess. How she was adorable, and now at the age of boy trouble. She told him about her siblings.

        "Hazel..." She slurped from the shake. "She's rebellious. Rainbow hair, nose piercing. Mom and Daddy can't keep track of her. Then there's Charlie. She's the one you saw, the one with the braces and glasses."

        "She's the one that looks like you?" He inquired, as she took a bite of her pancakes.

        "People tell us that all the time. I don't know how, though."

        "Well, you both have freckles..." He spoke, taking a piece of bacon, waving it towards Skylar's cheeks. "Big, blue eyes. And you're both adorable. But, I have to say, I think there's a certain sister that's cuter. No offense to Charlie."

        "Man, you're smooth. Like one of those Tumblr guys."

        He smirked at her. "Just like butter." That was better in his head.

        "Anyways..." She looked at him like he was something funky she found on the bottom of her shoe. "She's extremely smart, for a thirteen year old. Knows too much, if you get what I'm saying. She's gorgeous. Spends all her time helping mom and me in the bookstore. And then there's Lucas, at ten. Definitely a troublemaker. Once, he put purple hair dye in my shampoo. And he knows how much I hate purple."

        Spencer remembered that. She had come to school in a hoodie, sometime near the end of June. He had passed her in the halls and saw some jock 'accidentally' flip her hood off, uncovering her vibrant purple hair. Spencer dealt with him later.

        She had a bite of her omelet. "What are you planning on doing for college?"

        "I dunno," He replied. "My mom's been badgering me about it for a while. I want to go somewhere close to home, to be near my family."

        "Mmhm."

        He stole a piece of her bacon. She glared at him.

        "What? It was staring me in the face!"

        Skylar began laughing at him. Soon, he was laughing with her, and they were quickly dissolved into a fit of hysterics for no specific reason why, and he was perfectly okay with that.

        ♡❤♡

        She was chomping on a piece of bubblegum. Her long, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail looped through the hole in the back of the baseball cap she was wearing.

        She was wandering around, piling and stacking freshly ordered books on displays, or depositing them in the bookcases.

        She was entertaining to watch, the way she skipped around the store. It made her hair flop around, and her one-shouldered shirt with a cute cat on the front ride up, her ruffled, black skirt bouncing along to the rhythm of her walk.

        The way she hummed Bohemian Rhapsody as she rearranged the fiction books on the shelf. The way she wrinkled her nose and scowled when she saw books scattered along the floor, pages a bit torn and the spine bent back. The way she seemed to float when she saw a newly ordered, phenomenal book in the box, and snuck a whiff. He couldn't blame her. New book smell was damn good.

        He was watching her, and not creepily stalkerish either (this time). She invited him over after breakfast and he agreed wholeheartedly.

        Currently, he was sitting as the table in the middle of the bookstore, on an old, wooden chair, reading one of Skylar's novels (she actually let him touch her things).

        It was this insanely written fantasy story about a prince that was banished from his kingdom for being a jackass and murdering people, and couldn't return until he brought back this chick who needs to be his Queen, for when he's prince. They get caught up in these medieval things like dragons and other fantasy beasts. It was different from other stories that he'd read, and he was intrigued by the characters and the creatures and the scenery and the plot and the whole book, really.

        Her writing took his breath away, the description blooming in his mind. A picture of the luscious green land with flowers sprinkled atop it, with a dark, stone-built castle with aqua and evergreen colored flags billowing in the wind on the giant stone pillars looming in the background furled around in his mind. The image of a monster with dagger-like toes and triangular, sharp plates climbing up it's back, yellowing teeth the size if boulders and scaly, sickly colored, orange skin roamed his imagination.

        He was hooked, and nearly cried out when he flipped the page to see she hadn't written on. He kept flipping, flipping, flipping...

        And stopped when he saw little blurbs of chapters. Notes and bullets of ideas or sentences. There was page after page of scribbled out words and eraser residue and arrows pointing a sentence this way and that.

        The stars. The stars were surrounding us in this dome of deep blue, endless sky going on for eons and eons... Where we were almost a mere dot in humanity, in the bed of his truck, laying on top of the uneven plastic in the middle of nowhere.

        But I suppose that the middle of nowhere would have to be the middle of somewhere, just like the middle of everywhere and the middle of anywhere has to be the middle of somewhere. In this case, we were in the middle of a very beautiful somewhere, a place night owls hooted and wind rustled and crickets chirped and near silence almost existed in that moment.

        I suppose it wasn't perfect. It could have been improved, perhaps a cushion for my very sore back and behind, or possibly a kiss, snuck in here or there or anywhere or somewhere, just not nowhere. But even though the night drifted away, quite literally, as I fell asleep beside him, I couldn't help but feel as if it were perfect. We were perfect.

        Even though we were in the middle of somewhere with kisses placed nowhere and pain from the bed of the truck here and there and everywhere, we were perfect.

        Spencer felt like the wind was knocked out of him. He couldn't breathe after reading that.

        Had she written all that based on their first date? He pondered for a split second if she actually wanted to kiss him.

        This, this chapter, all her writing in general (except for maybe her previous romance novels) should be known. She was amazing, and the world deserved to know that, too.

        He scrambled to find a blank page and ripped off a small piece of paper, scratching out you're an incredible author as she came back from the bathroom. He heard the tap of her footsteps coming closer, closer, and he speedily shoved the note in the front of her notebook. He pushed the pad of paper closer to where she had been sitting and pretended to be on his phone.

        Skylar sat down and saw the journal lying on her spot at the table and turned to the first page of it, finding the note curled up in the corner. He saw her unfold it out of the corner of his eye and saw her smile, one of those shy, embarrassed smiles, in which she bit her lip and flushed. Her eyes flickered to him (where he swiftly buried his head in his phone). He observed her as she clutched the pencil that had been safely resting behind her ear and scribbled on the back of the piece of paper.

        As she got up and headed towards the kid's section, his hand short out and snatched the delicately folded reply off of her notebook. You're such a cornball.

        He blushed.

        ♡❤♡

        It soon became a game.

        They placed note in all the nooks and crannies of the quaint bookstore. The (maybe fifth round of back and forth note-passing?) memos started with and you're beautiful placed hastily on the seat of her chair as she stood up to stack more recently ordered books like the Blood of Olympus on the top shelf. She smirked at him when he saw a freshly torn scrap of paper saying you're not too shabby, either wrapped around the end of his pencil when he trotted back to the wooden chair after checking out the summary of a book that had caught his eye.

        She lay on the floor, immersed in her writing (which Spencer was extremely psyched about; he was going mental about what happens next!). He dropped the words that read look on page 53 of The Perfect Duet (the Perfect Duet being this incredible novel Spencer had read on wattpad that shattered his heart yet expanded it at the same time that had just been recently published and was already flying off the walls) beside her left hand, and saw her flinch when the paper grazed her fingers. He saw her examine (and pocket) it, crawling to a standing position as she dragged herself to the book. The pages swooshed as she flickered through them, quickly reaching page 53.

        She tapped her pencil to her thigh as she unwrapped the slip. Not bad? Honey, when I was born, I was dropped into a pool of sexy.

        He could tell she had finished reading it when he saw her snort and roll her eyes, saving that note as well.

        ♡❤♡

        A couple agonizing minutes crept by, and Spencer texted his sister out of sheer awkwardness (for he was too intrigued at the 'game' they were playing and didn't want to ruin the moment by blurting out a stupid comment on her hair or how she smelled like bubblegum). While he ducked his head and fiddled with his phone he felt something rest in his hair.

        He shook his hair like a dog, and heard her giggle from behind him when a slip of paper landed on the table before him. He eagerly unfolded it.  He read Turn to page 394. Prisoner of Azkaban. He tried stealthily walking to the book, but she caught his eye and grinned, making his heart leap and brain buzz. He opened the work of literature and found a small note, folded up over and over and over, stuck in the middle of the page break.

        He silently unfolded it and read,

        I was kidding. You're pretty cute.

        He did a double-take, gaping at the piece of paper. She thought he was cute! HIM!

        There was an arrow pointing to the back of the note and he flipped it over.

        Don't let your ego get to you, though.

        Damn, did he love her.

a/n

SO WATTPADS SCREWING WITH ME PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU GOT A NOTIFICATION THAT I UPDATED BC ITS NOT SAYING IT ON MY SISTERS IPOD AND IM SO MAD PLZ TELL ME AND SHARE THIS WITH PEOPLE SO THEY GET THE CHAPTER

long chapter, ayyy

Question; do you guys have a favorite quote/part? It'd be nice to know to make more chapters like it :D Also: How was your halloween?! What'd you do for it or dress up as?

So the next chapters, kinda arrogant of me, I kinda really like, but they just- I can't- just... You'll understand. The faster the votes, the faster the posts.

I have the next chapter ready. I think you guys will faint or just completely abandon this story after that chapter because whoa what um idk if you'll like it.

*whispers* possibly the whole next chapter is on kissing *fades into shadows*

So 1989 by swift is killing me bc it's perf and idk what to do with myself and there's a song perfect for this story agh wildest dreams listen its amazing

Reminder: I'm in the wattys now, so I need votes and comments and reads to come in streaming!
I can't blame you for the last chapters that one was ehhhrgh and this ones kinda hmmm so i get it if you don't comment or vote... but... *wipes tear* I- I understand.

How's the cast for this? I don't know if it's good, i tried finding people, but idk man.  Just i had to do Dylan bc ahhhhhh

Spylar feels this chapter yes
And the next chapter is gonna be a doozie so hold your horses partner were gonna be in for a bumpy ride

Next chapter should be up really soon!
 xoxo

dedicated again to @kpgcatlover bc I mentioned her book, The Perfect Duet that is so perfect it should be published and she's just so nice and I can't

(also she gave me tips on writing the next chapter it helped me sooo much thank you Kay you're too sweet the advice was incredible)