When I Sleep | ✓

[one] when we were younger

New story? Oops. Read a/n at the end! Dedicated to @summercalling for the new cover! Ignore typos and weird mistakes, hope you enjoy :)

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We were younger when we first crossed paths.

Weird enough, I met him in a wood shop class. Trying - and failing - to help a six year old make a birdhouse is not how I imagined to meet the guy I was going to love for all the years to come. But it was, and I'm glad. I guess I should thank Riley for that, huh?

Why she wanted to go to a wood shop class in the first place was beyond me. I hadn't even known they had that sort of thing in our town. All it took was one afternoon in the backyard with grandma spewing out facts about birds and birdhouses and my little cousin was determined to make one of her own. So determined, actually, that she threw a very dramatic, very loud, tantrum right outside of our house when I outrightly refused to take her. And in order to shut her up and stop all the startled looks from our neighbors, I had no other choice but to strap her to the back seat of my car and drive downtown to a class that was happening that day.

When we were younger, I was happy.

The road to the future was fairly smooth, besides the stress of college exams and some drama in life in general. Staying in my hometown for college wasn't all that bad. I adjusted well with my older brother moving out of the house to live with his new fiancé. He was happy, too. Grandma was enough to make me feel loved, and having an ambitious little cousin to watch from time to time kept me busy in the best way possible. Old friends who decided to stay home for college as well made for a lot of incredible memories.

When we were younger, Archie was happy.

He was playful and carefree, always joking around with this stupid smirk on his face. I had mixed feelings about that smirk. Then there was his smile. It's the same smile that brightened my day when Riley used her own form of blackmail to force me to take her to that wood shop class. Making a birdhouse isn't what it's all cracked up to be and having an incapable-of-making-even-walls child be in charge of the whole project knocked up the difficulty bar to a whole new level. I was struggling to get the roof to fit just right with the walls that Riley made. Suffice to say, it didn't work out too well.

Archie walked up to me, then. That smirk was playing on his face and there was a twinkle in his eye that made me weary from the start. Riley was busy mixing one too many colors of paint to notice a stranger walk up to us.

"Need some help?" he asked. The amused tone in his voice made me flustered, my stupid self-conscious side coming in and making me feel embarrassed that this person seemed oh-so entertained with my failure to make a proportional roof for a birdhouse.

I stumbled over my words for a moment, putting down the pieces of the roof I was working on to brush a strand of hair out of my face. My eyes dropped down to my failed project as I struggled to find a response. It only entertained him further. Jerk.

"Nope," I finally managed to say. "Riley and I are perfectly fine over here. Our birdhouse is going to be the best there is."

His eyebrow raised. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yup." Although popping the 'p' was meant to pass off my unnerved behavior, the raise of pitch in my voice was enough to give me away. That, and the not-so normal squeal that left my lips when Riley accidentally destroyed the birdhouse when I wasn't paying attention to what she was doing. I'll never forget the way his laugh caught the attention of everybody in the room as Riley cried out and blamed me for her mistake.

"Judging by the ruins of this birdhouse, I think you two could use a little help."

I rubbed the back of my neck as I looked down at the wood with my face pulled back. "I'd appreciate it," I laughed lightly.