Deciding on You || a.i. (Book 2)

06 | Maddie

Calum's car is a lot cleaner than both Ashton and Luke's, with just a soccer ball rolling around the floor in the back and his black and white Nike track bag on one of the seats. It looks as good as new, and doesn't reek of weed in the slightest.

That's the most strange thing -- to be in a car with a boy that isn't my brother or Michael and have it smell like anything other than weed.

Calum spends the drive from the mall to my house singing along to I Believe in a Thing Called Love and American Idiot on the radio, and I spend it laughing at him. The whole experience is completely different than any other time I've ridden in a car with a boy.

When we stop at my house, I do my best to be quick. I change out of my work uniform and grab my chemistry folder and notebook. When I look in the mirror, I realize that I'm starting to feel nervous.

It's not the scared-something-bad-is-gonna-happen nervous. Okay, it may be a little bit of that, but it's mostly the kind of nervous you get when when you like someone, which is stupid.

All I do is start paying attention to how cute a boy actually is, and all of a sudden I get nervous about it. Great. At least I didn't run into Cooper in the few minutes that I was in the house, because he definitely would have picked up on it and yelled at me.

I open up the passenger door to Calum's car and as I jump in, he says, "Quick, what's your favorite band?"

Placing my chemistry stuff on my lap and shutting the door, I look up and try to think. There isn't just one particular band that I love above others.

"Uh, I really like The Used," I tell him, buckling my seatbelt.

"You just keep getting f*cking cooler," He smiles from ear to ear and, as he backs out of my driveway, he reaches over me to open the glove box. "I think I have In Love and Death in there, if you want to look."

When I actually look in the glove box, my eyes widen. It has to be the messiest part of his car, with CDs filling it to the brim. I look through albums by Brand New, Incubus, Blink 182, Green Day, and a ton more I've never heard of. By the time I actually find any by The Used, we're at his house.

I actually forgot that his house is even bigger than Luke's, since he's, well, a lot more down to earth than Luke is. He unlocks the door and, as we step into his foyer to take off our coats and shoes, I realize I've never been here without Ashton.

I'm going to have to try not to think about it. I'm the one who ended it, so I have to stop thinking about it.

Up in Calum's room, it's just as I remember. Huge, with dark green walls. He has posters of soccer players and SciFi movies, and a big New Zealand flag littering them. There's a fully black bass guitar in the corner of his room, and his macbook is open on his desk, waiting to be used.

We sit in the middle of his floor, though, on the softest rug I've ever felt in my life. He runs to the bathroom to change and I pull out my most recent homework from my folder. When I open up to my notes, they still look like a foreign language.

He comes back out in a flannel and dark wash jeans, and I try not to stare, especially as he sits cross-legged beside me on the carpet. Since I'm looking at my notebook, he picks my homework up from the floor.

"Chemical equations!" He says, "I had fun with these."

I give him a completely dumbfounded look because, honestly, who on earth would have fun balancing chemical equations? He just shrugs with a cute little giggle.

Handing him my notebook, I say, "Can you explain it to me more simply? Because I don't understand it at all."

He sits there and reads it for a moment, biting his lip. Flipping the page to see that the notes end there, he looks back up at me, "I don't know how to explain it without doing one hold on."