Song for this chapter - Love you goodbye

- One Direction

All of our stuff had indeed arrived, the moving truck is just waiting on the sidewalk for our arrival. Gosh, the driver must've been exhausted. I couldn't have imagined a worse job than just driving around the country, moving other people's belongings. No, sleeping in a truck at a service station, next to a busy highway does not sound fun at all.

After my dad pays the cab driver and the cab drives off, we all just stand and stare at the house, as if we didn't know what to do first. And we didn't. We didn't know what to do simply because there was so much to get done.

My dad finally takes a step forward and begins to walk up to the front door so he could unlock the door. Once it was unlocked, the moving truck driver gets out of the car and begin to unload the truck. I run inside to claim the best room before Connor and my dad could argue with me.

"Haha suckers." I call as soon as I run past my dad at the door. I hear my brother as he mutters some curse words under his breath. As I sprint upstairs, I take brief notes of the layout downstairs, but I would explore later. I run right to the end of the landing upstairs, picking the room farthest away first.

It wasn't huge, but it was the perfect size, and I could already picture everything that I could do with the layout, and the decorations - I even pictured multiple colour schemes.

It makes me so excited.

"This one is mine!" I shout and listen as my brother's footsteps got closer.

"Fine by me," he scoffs, "I thought you wanted the biggest room?" He questions with a confused look on his face, I just shake my head at him.

"I didn't want the biggest room, I wanted the best room." I reply and he laughs again.

"You haven't seen the other two though." He state, while that may have been true, I know this was the one I wanted.

"I love it." I whisper as I carry on making plans in my head.

"Guys, come down and help unpack the truck!" My dad calls from downstairs and both me and my brother race downstairs to help. The poor truck driver shouldn't have had to carry our stuff in, not after the long journey he had travelled and would have to travel again when he drove back.

Once we had carried everything in, and the truck had driven away - Connor brings out his speaker and connects his phone to the Bluetooth.

"What song do you want, Lala?" He asks, using his childhood nickname for me.

"Hmm," I start, and place a hand on my hip while I try to picture my playlist. I kind of felt like listening to the 2010s Pop, as many of the songs reminded me of them. "Any Pop song from 2010s onwards." I finish and he nod his head in understanding. After about 5 minutes, he seems to have found a perfect playlist as he hums in satisfaction and then presses down on his phone.

Through his speaker, Love you Goodbye comes on, and immediately my eyes begin to water, he notices and runs over to me quickly.

"I'm sorry... I just thought One Direction was the best bet. I know how much you two loved them." He stutters, but I just hug him, silencing him.

"Thank you." I say in gratitude, my voice is hoarse though as I was flooded with the countless memories of the singing/screaming, the dancing, the concerts, the posters.

We were the hugest One Direction fans, we both knew every single lyric to every single song of theirs. That's right, hardcore fans we were.

I help them place the furniture packs and boxes of belongings in the different rooms that they were labelled to go in. Oh yes, my dad was one efficient man.

And then we unpack the kitchen, deciding it was most important to have a fridge first rather than a tv or a dining table. I quite frankly disagree, because where would we eat? But Connor happily tells me that we could easily eat on the floor.

A huge smile makes its way into my face at the thought that we were working while listening to One Direction, both my brother and dad once making it clear that they thought the music wasn't very good, but as they danced around the rooms (Connor even mouths and sings along to the lyrics on a few songs) I know they wished I was still the girl back then who screamed along to every 1D song in my room. I appreciate them with all of my heart for them making me happier.

Once we were done with the kitchen, my dad turns to us with a huge smile on his face, "I have a surprise for you guys." He says and begins walking towards the garage while Connor and I silently follow him, curious.

When he opens the garage door, he turns around.

"So it isn't much, but I thought you'd need it." He says and then walks further in. I watch as he pulls a large tarp away from an object to reveal a car.

"This is for us?" My brother exclaims.

"For you to share, yes. I would buy you one each if I could, but we all know that I don't have that kind of money."

"Dad - don't be silly. This is perfect!" I tell him and wrap my arms around him, in a tight embrace.

The car was a slightly run down Jeep Wrangler, but it was beautiful. I run my hand over the cracked red paintwork as I admire the whole car.

"I'm proud of the both of you, you deserve it." My dad says, I hug him again, but this time Connor joins the embrace. We stand for five minutes in the family embrace as my dad cries.
I hate my mom for what she did to him.

"Go and get the paint for your new rooms, the furniture you ordered should be here in an hour so I'll wait here, you can choose my colour." He says and hands me his credit card.

Connor gets in the drivers seat and drives out of the garage as my dad presses the button on the remote to move the door.

"Think we should get the ol' man hot pink?" Connor laughs, making me giggle.

"That wouldn't go down well." I laugh, trying to picture my dad's face when he opens the paint tin to find the colour hot pink. His reaction in my head is definitely entertaining.

I search for hardware stores on the GPS, and pick the one closest to us, the prop it up so my brother can see. I then turn on the radio.

"We need to order an aux cable, I put mine in the trash can before we moved." I tell him and watched him nod his head in approval after he winced at the pop song that was currently playing.

"Fine, but we're using my playlist." He says.

"No we're not." I argue, narrowing my eyes at him.

"Yes we are, I don't wanna be listening to your One Direction shit."

"One, they are not shit and two, you weren't saying that earlier when you were singing along to all of the lyrics to the songs." I point out.

"We're listening to my music, end of conversation."

"Starting the conversation back up, we're listening to my music."

"No!"

"Fine, we'll make a playlist on my phone with both of our songs on it." I counter and watched as he contemplates the idea.

"Fine."

"Cool." I smile, happy that I'd come up with a solution to our issue.

When we get to the Hardware store, we immediately go to the paint section. For my dad, we decide to get a dark grey color, thinking that it would best match up with his curtains and bed sheets, my brother and I had a harder time picking the colors for our rooms.

I want something girly, but then again I fancy the idea of a light blue or a light grey. I just wasn't sure what I exactly wanted. I knew I should've looked at pinterest more.

"Having trouble choosing a color?" A voice says from behind me, I turn around to see a girl with dark curly hair, smiling at me with ease.

"Yeah," I start as I look down at the paint testers I already had in my hands and then put them back on the shelf, "I'm just having a hard time knowing exactly what I want." I state and watch as she nods her head, still smiling.

"Did you move houses, or are you just redecorating?" She asks.

"I moved... from North Dakota."

"Oh, wow. That's a long-distance move. What school are you going to?" She inquires, sounding genuinely interested in everything I was saying.

"Yeah, I'm pretty far from home, I'm going to Crestmont High." I tell her, she perks up even more, her smile growing another ten inches.

"I go to Crestmont!" She squeals happily.

"I'm actually really happy you've said, at least now I'll know someone there." I say, bashfully. But my smile fades when her face sunk. "What's wrong?" I ask.

"Oh, it's just I'm kind of invisible there," she bites her lip, anxiously, "you'll probably prefer to hang with the popular kids."

"Why? Do the popular kids have an issue with you?" I question.

"No! They are lovely, most of them. But you find bitches everywhere, I'm sure you're not surprised."

"How many of them?"

"3." She mutters, as she rolls her bottom lip into her mouth in disgust.

I didn't want to make friends. But this girl in front of me seems so nice, and I couldn't just turn her away - she was too sweet. Maybe I didn't want friends, but I think I could make an exception for her.

"I think you should do your walls this blue. It's the perfect mixture of the light gray and the light blue." She says, as she reaches forward and grabs a tester, and just hands it over to me so I could look at it.

"This is perfect!" I comment, smiling widely. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," She says and then turns around to leave, but then stops, "oh - and I'm Lydia by the way."

"I'm Layla." I tell her, "wait actually. Can I have your number? Maybe you could come over sometime and help me design my room?" I question, nervously.

"Yes, of course. Here." She says and gives me her phone for me to add my number to her contacts. "I'll text you when I'm free." She smiles, once I had given her phone back and she had texted me so I could have her number too. "Welcome to Palm Springs." She says, happily and waves as she walks away.

What a lovely person.

I take the tester over to a worker to get a whole tin of it.

"Just one, yeah?" The guy asks and I look up at him and nod.

"Yes please." I mumble.

"You're new to town?" He asks.

"Yeah, I moved from North Dakota."

"Ah, that's cool. Are you goin' to Crestmont?"

I just nod my head.

"I'll see you there. Name's Myles." He tells me, holding out a hand for me to shake.

"Layla." I inform, while I shake his hand.

"Well it's nice to meet you Layla." He smile, and hands me the paint can.

"You too." I replied, "and thank you for the paint."

Trying to find my brother was the difficult thing, the little rat was no where to be found, and even my big height wouldn't allow me to see over the shelves. Yes, the store was quite big, but surely he couldn't have gone too far. I wander around aimlessly, my head spinning from left to right and I walk down the middle. When I finally see him, I run and jump on his back, preventing him from moving away from me.

"I've been looking for you." He says, grabbing the paint from my hands and then hoisting me further up his back.

"My little head aches from turning left then right at every aisle." I say with a tiny pout.

"Sorry." He mutters.

"Did you find your paint?" I ask and watch as he lifts up a can of dark blue paint.

"How predictable." I mumble with a crazy smile on my face.

"Shut up! Now c'mon, let's get out of here." He says as he walks to checkout with me clinging to his back like a baby monkey.

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