hard | daniel seavey

eight

ayla's pov

*ding* The bell chimed as I entered the cafe, my eyes scanned the room, immediately seeing Daniel with an open laptop. His eyes looked up, "Ayla, over here," He waved me over. I walked over, as I approached him, butterflies overcame in my stomach. The good kind.

"Hey, Dani," I reached to pull out a chair, but Daniel stopped me, "Oh, don't worry, I got it," He got up, pulling it out for me. Smirking, I softly nodded, "Quite the gentleman, Seavey," He quickly rolled his eyes, shooting back, "You know it, Santos," Just like how we did during middle school. It was our way of the sort of flirting back then. Now? Not so much, at least, I wouldn't think so.

"All jokes aside," Daniel sighed, popping his fingers and laying the softly in the prayer position. "I thought we could start off, like, reading each other's essays," He began typing on his Mac. I silently sat there awaiting to be read an essay. He waited, looking up, with an o-shaped mouth, "Oh! You want me to go first," He asked. I nodded with a laugh. "Okay, give me a second," He chuckled, pulling it up on his screen. "Several issues surrounding mental illnesses have been known throughout the world, most of them being the outcome of traumatic events.." But I wasn't really listening. I didn't want to be reminded. What I was actually doing, is dreading the fact that he convinced to write a song today. More over mental illness. Especially with him. I was scared.

Sitting there, I made up distractions from reality. I watched his perfect lips move. Perfect eyes flow along with the words on a screen as his perfect voice read them aloud. His perfect hair and his perfect bone structure. His perfect choosing of words, along with his perfect.. him. I wanted to stop myself from seeing him this way but I couldn't. He was just.. perfect. What else could you possibly say that could match up to that? I admired everything about him. I almost wanted to stop admiring him but, how could you?

Seconds went by, then minutes, soon he was done talking, I just heard the ending, "While I've gotten all the facts and statistics, that's not always the case," I didn't really hear a word. But I knew he got his half of the essay done.

"Wow, that was great. Just perfect," I gawked, acting as if I listened to every word. I was now hovering my eyes over to where I laid my things out beside me, "Thank you," Daniel gushed, I noticed a little blush from him as I was reaching to get my laptop out, which revealed a very subtle smile. "So, let's see your part," He said a bit uneasily, "Ayla, I hope you were 110% fine with writing that half," He softly spoke, eyeing the cover of my Macbook. I nodded, "Yeah, I promise. It was fine." I lied. But I didn't mind sparing him. "Good." Chuckling, he smiled, "You still have that?" I threw a confused look on my face, looking at the laptop. "Oh yeah," I realized he was talking about the 'WDW' sticker that took up one-fourth of the front.

The quiet hum of the cafe was playing soft, low music. "Okay, so here goes," I let out a breath, over the silence of the cafe, you could hear a little hush voice that belonged to me. "While mental illnesses affect the brain, as Daniel," I motioned towards him, "has said. It also effects the life of the person with the illness and those surrounding them. I, myself, would know due to several past incidents. Including my struggle about 3 years ago, which involved me having several issues at once, such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The most common types," I was interrupted by, the soft, low music that was no longer playing. Coincidentally, I heard Jonah's voice over the silence.

You know me the best, you know my worst, see me hurt, but you don't judge.

Looking over at Daniel, I saw his face had become duller. At first, I tried going on, "I was diagnosed with these disorders shortly after my mom and little brother had died," I saw that he was on the verge of tears with an annoyed glare at the ground. "Dan-" I started before he made a small grin.