Life is a chain of unpredictable moments.

One moment, I was partying with the girl I sort of am interested in, the next moment she's asking me to be her date to a family wedding and the moment after that, I'm waiting on her couch for her to finally be ready to leave.

"Grasshopper, are you applying lotion or making it?" I call out to her.

"Wright if you don't shut up now, I will leave you behind," she calls out in return, sounding furious.

That brings me to my observation skills. Usually, I'm not an observant person, but around Aliana, I tend to do this thing where I observe her and whatever little facts I uncover, I lock them in my memory.

Example being, Aliana does not do packing. She doesn't like it hence she doesn't do it. It's a simple thing, Mia had commented when I had found Ali sitting on her bedroom floor, with her clothes strewn around, watching musicals on her phone.

We were supposed to leave in half an hour. This was 2 hours ago.

Groaning, I get up from the place I've been seated for the past 2 hours and walk inside her bedroom. Mia is folding her clothes and putting them in her bag quite comfortably, almost like she has done this countless times in the past. The thought makes me chuckle, thinking of how I always did Maverick's packing. She looks up when she hears me entering the room and points me in the direction of her best friend's bathroom. And then, she winks.

Huh.

Slowly walking into the bathroom, I find Aliana sitting on her toilet seat, lid closed, watching something which suspiciously looked like a musical. Edging closer to her, I watch her completely engrossed in whatever she's watching and lean against the wall. Her hair is tied back into a haphazardly thrown bun, her face holds signs of tiredness, after her relentless shift at the bakery but she has a glow I've never seen. I watch her expressions, the way her eyes seem glued onto her phone screen, her face breaking into small smiles, sometimes even a small laugh as something on the screen amuses her. There's a hidden pleasure in watching people when they don't know, I think, and a second later, she lifts her head to meet my green eyes with her brown ones and smiles at me sheepishly.

And I almost pull her in my arms.

She pushes down her headphones, letting them hang around her neck and smiles at me nervously as I raise an eyebrow towards her.

"We all distract ourselves to avoid things we don't like to do, Nay," she reasons.

"Yes, we do. But not by leaving your best friend to do your packing and deliberately making your bestest friend wait on the couch and get bored."

"I heard you, Wright. Don't think you can get away with this lie," Mia shouts indignantly.

"Maybe you can also help? You won't be bored then, right?" Ali smirks.

I raise my eyebrows at her and she laughs, clear signs of her pulling my leg and gets up. Turning around so her back is facing my chest, she pushes her phone into her back pocket, which holds a pretty remarkable ass I might add, and starts grabbing a few bottles of lotion and some of her makeup. Swiftly, she walks out of the bathroom and I hear her and Mia laughing about something, which makes me smile. I walk out from behind her and find Mia already staring at me, raising her eyebrow and smirking. Aliana and Mia finally manage to finish packing while I lie around on Aliana's bed, my mind imagining scenarios I shouldn't be imagining.

Not when I'm about to spend an entire weekend with her parents and her. As her date.

Fuck me.

Shaking my head of all the inappropriate images, I grab my phone and scroll through my messages. Eli's message pops up as soon as I'm about to exit my messaging app.

What do you think Mia is doing on the weekend?

I smirk and look back at Mia, who's currently busy talking with Aliana.

I don't know. Ask her yourself. -N

She isn't going with you both right? -E

Nope -N

Well, I might just ask her myself. -E

Instantly Mia's phone pings and she picks it up without a thought. When she notices the message and the sender, she turns her gaze to me and glares. I just shrug and look back at Ali, who's now watching both of us curiously.

"What is it? Who's texting you?" she asks Mia.

"No one," Mia replies a little too quickly, exposing herself in the process.

Aliana dives for Mia's phone and snatches it out of her hand. Unlocking it with the passcode I didn't know she knew, she reads the message and an evil spark ignites in her eyes. Her fingers fly through Mia's screen while Mia tries to take back her phone from her. Aliana presses send and hands the phone over to Mia, who's now shaking her head in despair and something I notice as nervousness.

"What did you do?" I ask.

"Oh, nothing. Just sent a message to Eli, agreeing on Mia's behalf for a day filled with fun activities. What is with you two anyway?"

Reluctantly, Mia sighs and starts, "As an assignment for one of my classes, we have to make a short documentary of sorts on someone. That, someone, was assigned to us."

"Let me shoot in the dark and say Eli was assigned to you," Sarcasm flows through my words as I smile at her, mocking her dramatic narration of the story.

She turns to me to give me a mocking smile of her own and continues, "Actually, no. It was you. But apparently, you turned down the request to act as a muse for our class."

A flash of memory hits me as I remember Coach asking me if I was up for some camera action. I instantly had turned it down, very uncomfortable at the idea of someone filming me. Camera shy, he had called me.

"So we had to find a new muse for me. Eli stepped in at the last minute after the Coach asked him to. I don't like to make anyone feel obliged to help me, but that's what I've been feeling Eli is. He's just being nice to me because your Coach asked him to."

"Maybe he did it because he wanted to?" I reason. I know Eli's side about this whole thing and trust me when I say this, that man wanted to.

"Well, he has a weird way of showing it then. Maybe if he can go a minute without rubbing it in my face that he's my saving grace, I can believe you."

Aliana sighs and gives me a pointed look.

What? When did this become my problem?

"Okay, alright. You two, leave. Now. I'll deal with the Eli issue myself. And don't you dare utter a word of this to him, Wright. I will put Maze to shame if you do," Mia says, practically pushing us to drop the topic.

"And I don't doubt that," Quickly catching the Lucifer reference, I reply before getting up from Ali's bed and grabbing her bags.

"Bye! Give me a call when you two reach!" Mia says, bidding us her goodbye. She hugs Aliana goodbye. I hug her politely when I hear her whisper in my ear.

"All the best."

Looking back at her, I furrow my eyebrows in question. In a low tone so that Ali doesn't hear, she says, "You won't be able to fool the parents. Word of advice, don't even try to hide your affection towards my best friend from them. Mama Palmer will know. And she doesn't like liars."

Instantly, I feel a weight lift off my chest. Mia reassured my worries without even telling her about them. I give her a genuine smile and hold out my fist to her. She gets the message and fistbumps me, making us both chuckle.

"You're the best," I whisper.

"I know."

⋈ ⋈ ⋈

"Hand me the keys, Palmer," I ask her for the third time. She's stubborn as fuck.

And apparently, she can say a no to me now.

"Is it so hard to believe that I actually like driving?" she exclaims.

"It's not, trust me. Let's do a thing. You said it's a two-hour ride right?"

She nods and lets out a yawn. I smirk at this, causing her to closes her mouth quickly. A yawn of my own pushes to come out, yawns being contagious and all, but I suppress the urge.

"So let me drive for half the trip. You can take a quick nap and whenever you feel fresh enough to drive, we switch over. You look dead tired, Grasshopper."

"I suppose it's because Mrs Devil made me work twice as hard because I'm taking a 2-day leave," she mutters. I frown at that but quickly push aside my worry. Holding my palm open in her direction, I ask her non verbally to give me the keys. She lets out a defeated sigh and drops her car keys in my extended palm and walks to the passenger seat. I climb in the driver's seat and watch her adjust it and push the back down so that she's almost lying down. I start the drive and not even a minute later, she falls into a deep slumber.

⋈ ⋈ ⋈

An hour and a half later, my sleeping beauty awakens. I've stopped at a gas station to buy small cans of drinks for us and something to eat. Returning back to the car, I find Aliana wide awake and drop the food right into her lap.

"Where are we?" she asks, her voice huskier than usual from the sleep. Her sleepy form quite uncomfortably awakens something south of me and I gulp to keep everything down. Pun intended.

"GPS shows there's half an hour to reach," I reply quickly.

"Perfect. Let me drive now. We'll have some fun on the last leg of our journey."

"I hardly call this a journey, Grasshopper," I comment and she flashes the bird at me. Climbing into the driver's seat without even getting out of the car, I settle down in the passenger's seat. She grabs her can of mountain dew and puts it to her mouth and starts the car, her lips wrapping around the mouth of the can. Letting out a soft groan, I turn the music on to distract me from the newfound sexual attraction I've been feeling towards my grasshopper.

Sure, I've found her intriguing and admirable since the day I met her, but recently it's turning into something larger, something deeper and it scares me less than it excites me. But the timing of my realisation can't have worse timing. I'm about to spend a whole weekend with Aliana's parents and all I can think about is Mia's words circling around my head.

Within what felt like 10 minutes of us talking about random subjects, she takes a few expert turns, looking happy and comfortable in the area she grew up and pulls into the garage of what I assume is her childhood house.

"Welcome to the Palmers." 

⋈ ⋈ ⋈

Heyaaa! How is everyone? It's a slow-ish chapter but one thing I've realised is that I like writing character dynamics. I'm so sorry that this chapter is such a filler one. I deeply apologise. I promise better things are coming. Nathan is starting to feel something. Wonder if Aliana is on the same page. 

Question of the week then?

Q. Travelling necessities. List them all. 3 things you can't travel without.

Thank you so so much for reading this. I'm saying it again, I'm really sorry. Things are coming, I promise. So comment, vote or do whatever you would like to do! I'll talk to you later!!

Love,

Anushka <3