Collide

Chapter 18

Tyler POV:

Summer coming to my house was quite unexpected, however, knowing a little more about her, I feel like I should have expected this. "So, why do you want to get this done? Jackson will probably continue to pile on work as we go along. So why bother to do it now? Why not wait until he gives us a date to turn it in?"

"Because," she said while she sat down in a desk chair. "By then we'll be pressed for time, and it may be too late."

I sighed. She's a real piece of work, but at least she's concerned and really engaged in her school work. I sat beside her in the other desk chair and brought out my binder. From my peripheral vision I can see her staring at the doodles I have engraved. "You like them?" She smiles and nods her head.

"My favorite is this French phrase," she says, pointing to the aesthetically cursive print from the hand of a true artist. "Laissez-moi être votre star que vous êtes ma lune. 'Let me be your star as you are my moon.' It's beautiful. Who was this for?" She looks at me with eyes full of wonder, and in this instance, she reminds me of her. Her eyebrows raise, awaiting an answer.

"A girl I used to know." She can't know too much about her. No one can. "She wrote it."

"Oh," she says, her brows now furrowed low in confusion, maybe. "She has very pretty handwriting."

I nod. "She did." I have to change the subject. "Jealous you can't write like that?"

She scoffs. "How do you know I can't write like that? And for your information, I took calligraphy during the summer of my sixth year."

"Oh, yeah? Let's see it." I push a pencil and paper towards her. She looks at it and smiles weirdly, maybe nervously? Her bottom lip is between her teeth, as she stares at the paper. "Well?" I call her out.

After a few seconds she exclaims, "fine, fine! I can't write like that. But, I did take calligraphy! I just never finished it.." I laughed. Overachiever.

"It's okay. Some people got it, some don't." She huffs a small huff and crosses her arms at my comment. "I could do it if I tried," she mumbled.

I chuckled. "Yeah, sure. Okay." Her fist meets my arm lightly in an attempt to punch me, chuckling to herself as she did so. I felt myself smiling a genuine smile, and for a moment I almost forgot that this was Summer I was talking to. Not Caroline Preston.

Anyways.. "Let's get started, yeah? We have a lot to do." She nods and opens her laptop to check her emails. Under the Inbox tab, an email awaits her from Flynnigan Jackson containing the additional requirements for our project. She reads over it, and her fingers begin to type away about how coral reacts to certain creatures on our saved documents. I sit back, with my hands behind my neck, and dancing in the sanctuary behind my eyelids is the girl whom I dared to say I ever loved. She twirls on her tip toes, with her arms poised perfectly as she spirals into passion. "Watch out, Care!" I yell to her, as she wobbles atop the rickety rock. "Don't worry, Tyler. I know what I'm doing." She says with a giggle in her voice. "I just don't want anything bad to happen to you.." I admit. I'm crazy for her, and she knows it. She knows exactly how I feel about her. "Hey," wrapping her arms around my neck in the most delicate way, she captivates my attention. "I love you." Her hazel-brown irises disappear as she leans into me, centimeters away from my lips and-

"Hey, can you take over now?" Summer's voice brings me back to reality, and Caroline fades into a silhouette of beauty.

"What? Uh, yeah. Sure." She slides the laptop to me and I begin typing where she left off. Coral is very boring. I regret not taking anatomy. That shit is actually useful. What am I gonna need marine biology for anyways? I took this class as an easy A, but now I wish I would've stayed with anatomy. Yeah, Care would've liked that. But, that is neither here nor there.