Summertime//Patrick Stump

Chapter 1

I've had a love-hate relationship with summer for as long as I can remember. I can enjoy the warmth in the air, going to the park, swimming, the fun stuff. But the humidity, the bugs that arise from the 7th circle of you-know-where, and basically everything else is not something I can dig. So after some thought...maybe I just hate summer.

"You excited, April?" Jen, my best friend, asks with a smile. It's the Fourth of July, and I'm spending the night at her house for the first time. She lives just a few doors down from me on my street, two houses separating us. We walk down White Street, where I've lived almost my entire life, and I tug on my backpack strap. The tattered back contains my overnight clothes, a charger and earbuds, and my toothbrush--the essentials.

"I guess." I shrug, trying to sound nonchalant. "I mean I am, I don't mean to come off as...stoic, I just-"

Jen interrupts me with an easy laugh. "You're nervous." She states. I realize that she's observant and self-aware enough to pick up my anxiety habit.

I smile slightly in return, nodding. I've known her for just over two months, but somehow I haven't met her family yet. She lives with her brother and their mom, as their dad is almost always out of the house on business.

My family doesn't do anything for the 4th, and when I told Jen almost a month prior, she immediately invited me to the small family gathering the Stump family apparently holds every year. I objected at first, for many reasons, but she insisted. Apparently it's "a great time".

Looking back, she might've meant that as sarcasm. Nevertheless, we've never had a sleepover, and it just so worked out that I could meet her family and go to this wonderful family function. Three birds with one stone.

We approach her house, a small blue abode with a porch and beautiful landscaping lining it, a single black car parked in the driveway. The white garage door is down, and from behind it I hear a wailing guitar.

"What's that?" I ask Jen, motioning to the garage. She smirks.

"That'd be Patrick."

Jen runs up the drive and knocks on the garage door, a warning to Patrick that we're coming in. The music doesn't stop as Jen pulls the door open, revealing a mostly empty, though obviously lived in, garage.

Shelves line the walls, small knickknacks decorating them. I count three guitar hooks mounted on the left wall close to the inside door. Two of the hooks are supporting guitars, while one is vacant. A few rugs are scattered around the floor randomly, and in the very center rug, in the middle of the garage, stands who can only be Patrick, facing us.

Having finished the song, he holds the neck of the guitar in one hand, smiling at us. "April?" He guesses, motioning at me.

I nod, speechless. I'm not one to believe in love at first sight, but I must admit...

His dirty blond hair swoops over his blue eyes, his askew smile propped on his pink lips looking somehow beautiful in the poor garage lighting. A fedora rests on his head, and whether it's meant to be ironic or not, it works. He's wearing a black shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a sheen of sweat covering his arms and face. How so many guys can look good sweaty will forever be beyond me. I look like a soggy potato whenever I perspire even slightly.

"Hi." I manage to say.

"You should play us something," Jen suggests, somehow oblivious to (or just ignoring) me ogling her brother.

"You don't have to-" I try to say, voice cracking mid-sentence.

"He should." Jen interrupts as she glares at Patrick. He glares right back.

I look between the two, no idea what's going on.

"Listen, I don't want to start anything, so I'll just go inside..." I trail off, walking behind Jen to the door, the siblings still standing and shooting death glares at each other.

But before I can walk through, Jen cuts in front of me, yelling to Patrick where he can put his guitar.