~ Past separated them, now pain will bring them together.~
A teenager Sofia Hayden, experiencing her falling apart family isolated herself slowly from everything that she held dear, especially from her best friend Max Wilder who had just realized hi...
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Max seemed aloof as they bid farewell to the Haydens. He was awfully silent too. Wordlessly he carried and put all her suitcases and bags inside the car, dismissing Sofia's insistence to do it on her own.
The Hayden family stood behind and waved at them as she pulled the car out onto the street.
The show of a smile dissipated the moment she lost sight of her family in the rearview. Feeling worried, she glanced at Max from the corner of her eye.
Just like how they had arrived, Max once again sat beside her, hunched and looking out of the place in her small car.
It was the same car, the same her, and the same Max. But still, something had definitely changed now. Even though the windows were rolled down, there was this heaviness, this suffocating atmosphere surrounding them. And it was getting unbearable with each passing second.
Clearly, it was because of what happened in her room back there at Hayden House.
Was he mad at her?
The quickly escalating attraction between them, which reached deeper than physical level, was straining their somewhat revitalized friendship. The realization settled heavily in her stomach, and suddenly she felt desperate to hear him talk to her again, look at her again, tease her, and make her a blushing mess, just like it had been before the depressing turn they took back at Hayden House.
"Uh...," she fumbled for words. Her eyes fell on the radio. "Let's hear something on the radio."
Max looked at her briefly and gave her a tight-lipped smile, nodding an approval of some sort. And then he was staring ahead again.
Feeling disappointed at the reaction she received, she turned on the radio. Her eyes glanced sideways every now and then as the RJ blabbered something which seemed incoherent to her ears. After that, an old song began playing.
"Old songs are always the best, aren't they?" she asked, trying to pick up a conversation, trying to have him talk to her again.
"Hmmm."
That's it? No comments. No arguments.
The rest of the journey stayed unchanged, to her dismay. She tried to say some random stuff like the weather and traffic but got nothing out of Max except some absentminded nods and hums.
Soon they reached home. She killed the engine and watched Max get out of the car. He called for Bean, who came running from his seat by the front gates. The men were soon carrying her luggage inside, and with nerves twirling in her stomach Sofia followed them. Upstairs, she stood beside the wide open door, all her luggage kept in the middle of the room behind her.
She looked at Max, thinking that at least now he would talk to her, but her stomach dropped, discovering he wasn't even sparing a single glance her way. The cold shoulder hurt, really hurt.
