It Could Be More | ✔

20. Heart Doodles

Vacuum cleaners.

Grayson interrupted my moment with Corey over vacuum cleaners. He saw one online and wanted to know if it was a good Christmas gift for Grandma. I could kill him.

Corey left before I answered the call, but promised we'd talk later. I didn't want him to go, but it was for the best. If my mom caught us, whatever we had going would've been over before it began.

Sleep wasn't an option that night. My mind bounced between this all over bubbly, giddy feeling every time I replayed the kiss in my head to Grayson finding out and never speaking to me again.

A playlist of my favorite songs helped me block out the Grayson stuff for the most part. I'd have to deal with the fact that I might've ruined my relationship with my brother for good, but I didn't want to think about it.

Grabbing my beat up journal from my desk drawer. I laid on my floor, turned my music up and flipped through the pages and pages of lyrics. Whenever I heard a line in a song that perfectly described the kind of love I wanted, I wrote it down. Along with a copious amount of heart doodles.

The last page I worked on was full of lyrics from Sabrina Carpenter's latest album. Nonsense got a whole page because the entire song captured what I wanted from a relationship.

I listened to it now, adding a couple more dozen heart doodles to the page and coloring them in with a green marker that matched the color of Corey's hoodie.

One kiss and he had me giggling and drawing hearts like a girl with her first crush.

● ● ●

I must've dozed off at some point because next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor to Mom telling at me to get dressed. Because of Uncle Jabari backing out at the last minute, Thanksgiving was being hosted at our house. Mom had enough pressure on her with the unveiling of her new boyfriend. A family dinner only added to it.

After showering and getting dressed, I was still half asleep, walking through the store. Mom complained about Aunt Nicola who wanted to make the mac and cheese, but everyone knew she can't cook.

Then she mentioned Gray. My heart jumped like he was going to appear in the spice aisle and call me out for kissing his best friend. Mom said he was stuck at school until Wednesday. All I heard was that Corey and I had three days before my brother arrived and ruined everything.

Three days for us to figure out what last night meant.

I reached for my phone, wanting to text Corey. I'd been doing that a lot since last night. Every time, I stopped myself. What did you message a guy you kissed less than twenty-four hours ago? Wasn't there some kind of rule about this to avoid looking clingy or something?

Why did kissing Corey cause way more stress than wondering if he liked me?

"Harlow?"

"Huh?" I said with a start.

"You're blocking the aisle." My mom shook her head at me when I moved to let a woman and her basket through. "Y'all with those phones."

"Jealous because when you were a kid, tablets were made out of stone?"

Her mouth fell open, a smile slipping through. "Excuse me?"

"I've seen The Flintstones. I know how you used to live."

She bumped my hip with the shopping cart, laughing. "Smart ass."

The two of us circled the entire store, grabbing everything on the list. Sweet potatoes for the pies, sodas and waters, cute little Autumn themed cupcake liners for the cornbread muffins.