Chapter 8❤

Before I knew it, it was the day before the beginning of senior year. My relationship with Tommy had vastly transitioned from raging hate to us somewhat getting on with each other. At the moment, we were both seated on the brown sofa in the living room, his head on my lap, me playing with his hair, watching an old re- run of 90210.

We had been constantly bantering on who we thought Annie should end up with, I was sure it would be Ethan, while he was adamant on that Liam was the one for her. A bet was what finally resolved the argument, if I won, he would have to buy me a box of cream cheese puffs from the bakery, if he won, I would have to let us watch any movie he wanted. I was sure I would win, I had been obsessed with the show for its last two seasons; unless, of course, fortune had decided to depart from my side, once again.

I removed my phone from my pocket and typed the question into the Google search engine. There was a few miliseconds of anticipation, before the answer appeared in the first sentence on one of search results. I internally winced at the answer that appeared on the screen, trying to keep an even smile on my face. Despite me being severely wrong (Ethan wasn't even in the last season) I looked down at him and told him I was correct, knowing all too well that he wouldn't believe me.

"See, ha! I told you, she totally ends up with Ethan!" I lied, rather terribly.

"Fine, I'll go and get you your cream cheese puffs then." He pouted jokingly and I knew that he could see through my lie (quite unsurprisingly).

"Really?"

"No."

Well, it was worth a try.

"Tammy, you are by far the worst liar that I have ever come across. You can never sit still, let alone look me in the eye."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes, come on tell me a lie." He stated, sitting up.

"You're a big fat ugly jerk." I said immaturely, but I noticed that I was squirming in my seat and my gaze was trained on the beautiful pattern on the window curtains.

"Oh Tammy, we all know that's a lie." He said patronizingly.

I refused to answer him and instead turned to face the other way with my arms crossed, face blushing furiously.

I felt a tap on my back and ignored it, but it wasn't long before it became annoyingly repetitive. Finally I faced Tommy again.

"What?" I blurted, still embarrassed.

"You think I'm hot?" his tone laced with genuine curiosity, eyes glistening.

"Well- I- but-you," I stuttered, thrown off guard by his question.

But my answer was deemed suitable enough as he pulled me into a bone crushing hug, I was so surprised that it took me a second to snap out of my shock and wrap my arms around his neck. His scent intruded my nose, a mixture of his cologne along with another musky smell that lingered through the air surrounding him, I couldn't help but discreetly (I hope) sniff him.

"Thank you Tam Tam."

He had been calling me that all week, despite me constantly saying I didn't like it, but after a while, I found that I wasn't at all affected by this nickname any longer.

Once we parted, Tommy was quick to restart conversation.

"First of all, were you just smelling me?" he asked in a casual manner, smirking.

"What? No... what kind of crazy person goes around smelling people? "

Me, I thought to myself.

"Besides, I've smelt you before, you smell like Ew The Toilet." I told him cheekily.

Way to go Tammy, you just admitted to smelling him!

"I told you you smelt me!" He realised.

Dang it!

"I think you're hearing things buddy." I said patronisingly, patting his head.

His expression grew into one of confusion, before it morphed into had that same smirk, he obviously still doubting me, but continued on anyways.

"Now I was going to make you watch Return of the Arachne--"

"What? NO, I would rather die than watch those hairy abominations, I mean why do we need those creepy things, all they do is make webs, which innocent people like me have unexpectedly walk through; and they eat flies which we can just easily swat with a shoe. And they bite you, I mean come on I do NOT want to turn into Spidergirl, I'm too young for that, plus where would I fit in, Spiderman already has Mary Jane, and she sure looks feisty. Imagine getting into a cat fight with that fiery red head and also--"

My rant was silenced as a finger pressed was down onto my lips, effectively cutting me off.

"If you were listening to me, you would have heard me say was, as in past tense, I wouldn't make you sit through that, I'm not that mean." I snorted at that and he rolled his eyes "I was thinking we could just keep watching TV and I'll even buy you those cream cheese puffs that you want, I kind of knew Annie would end up with Liam because I've kind of already watched the last episode." He finished sheepishly.

"You watched 90210?" I asked incredulously.

"What can I say, it's a good show." He shrugged.

We continued watching the TV in a comfortable silence, that was until the adverts began to play and the trailer for the movie The Fault in our Stars was shown and Tommy couldn't help but comment how and I quote 'It's so stupid and sappy and which teenager in their right mind would talk like that?'

"Shut-up, it's romantic." I defended, elbowing him.

"And come on if I said half the things he said to this chick, I'm sure I would be labelled 'creep' and have multiple restraining orders look- 'Why are you looking at me? Because you're beautiful'- if that doesn't shout paedophilia to me, I don't know what does and -'You trying to distance keep your distance from me in no way lessens my affection for you'- now that's just outright creepy." He stated looking in my direction.

"It's just, it's just a- a side effect of cancer!" I finally retorted, quite pleased with my answer.

"Oh please, I'm pretty sure paedophilia cannot be used to diagnose a patient of cancer or be a side effect of treatment." He said in that trademark know- it- all tone.

In response I just huffed and said:

"You will never understand the pains of a fangirl, you would not believe the amount of boxes of tissues I went through in one night after locking myself away in my bathroom while reading that book. I was gone so long that my parents thought I had committed suicide, or been kidnapped. The book slowly picks you up-you're flying through the air, wind in your hair, and then you drop, painfully and unexpectedly with no parachute to soften your fall and your insides die and you wonder 'when will the pain end?'" I placed my hand upon my chest and stared up at the ceiling for effect.

"You're being overly dramatic, you know that right?"

"I do Tommy, I do." I replied, tears welling up in my eyes.

I heard him groan in frustration, obviously realising that I was not going to budge.

I sighed and wiped the unshed tears from my eyes.

"Come on let's do something fun." He finally said.

"Like what?"

"This." He picked up the remote and changed it to the music channels.

Just our luck, the song Loyal was on. He raised his eyebrows, and I was sure mine were raised too.

"You know, we should make this our friendship song." He stated, smiling, yet slightly hesitant.

"Friendship song?"

"You know, the song that reminds people of how their friendship started," he explained.

"Alright." I agreed, wishing away the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Now, we're going to do a competition, the person that knows the most words to each song wins. Bonus points for the best dance moves. There are 5 rounds which means 5 songs." He told me.

I accepted his idea and we both jumped up from the sofa as the game commenced.

We began to sing the first song- Drunk in Love by Beyoncé. I only knew the chorus so I was sure that I had lost this round, unsurprisingly, Tommy knew most of the words, including the rap. All I could do was bust out my best dance moves such as the shuffle and the sprinkler, which consisted of me placing one hand behind my head whilst the other was straight and doing left to right motions. I hadn't realised the song had finished until I looked up and saw Tommy staring at me strangely.

"What?" I asked self-consciously.

"Nice moves you've got there." He spoke amused.

"Thanks." I snapped of course blushing.

He changed the channel and we saw that less recent songs were on air, currently Coming Home by Diddy Dirty Money was playing, which used to be one of my absolute favourites. Let's just say that I totally whopped Tommy's behind.

He wasn't terrible at dancing, much better than me, and managed to score himself a couple more points.

The game ended at a tiebreaker, we decided to give one dare each to one another and the person that chickened out of their dare ultimately lost. I was sure I would win as I never normally backed out of a dare once I received one until:

"Kiss me."

I stiffened and froze in my spot.

"What?" I cried, my eyes wide.

"You heard what I said."

"You- but- I- well- I." I stuttered, racking my brain for any excuse I could think of that would get me out of this situation, but to no avail.

Once again, a pressed finger to my mouth silenced me.

"Relax, I was kidding." He said.

I suddenly exhaled a breath I didn't even know I had been holding in.

"But we can if you want to." He spoke cheekily, waggling his eyebrows.

"Perv!" I shouted, hitting his arm.

He only laughed in response.

"Go over to Ms Chippy Chives' garden and pick a flower." He spoke through his laughter.

I then proceeded to laugh along with him, but upon realising that his laughter had paused, stopped to inquire.

"You're not being serious?" I asked, still recovering from my laughter.

"Yes I am actually." He said calmly,

Ms Chippy Chives was our crazy next door neighbour who nurtured and cared for her garden as if it had come out of her own womb. She got her nickname from the fact that we were all sure most of her brain had been chipped away... not to mention her weight. Sometimes I would hear her snipping away at weeds during the night, or see her talking to her plants during the day. If I was to take one of her flowers, she would probably kill me on my doorstep. But again, I wasn't one to back out of a dare.

"Fine." I breathed finally.

He looked surprised to say the least.

"Seriously?"

"Doubting me Tommy Boy?" I looked over at him daring him to challenge me with raised eyebrows.

"Not at all Tam Tam." He replied, matching my stare.

------

Sneaking over Ms Chippy Chives' garden fence at 3 o'clock in the afternoon proved to be much more difficult than I ever anticipated. The weathered fence creaked with each attempt I took to climb over it, with her freakishly good ears, I was sure crossing over via this route was not going to work out.

I stepped down from the thin ledge lining the bottom of her fence and looked around for any other way to get over. At the furthest edge of my garden was my old treehouse, I remember pestering my dad into building it until he finally did, I was eleven years old...don't judge, sadly, it had fallen down the tree, making it unusable even to this day.

Anyways, it was the perfect height for me to climb onto and jump over Ms Chippy Chives' fence and it wasn't too far of a jump, not to mention much quieter than my previous option.

I walked to the old treehouse and gripped my hands onto its colour faded roof, I then adjusted my foot onto one of the planks of wood that made up the walls of the house. I pulled myself up until I was seated on the roof and then stood to my feet. I had a perfect view of Ms Chippy Chives' garden from where I was standing, despite her craziness; the beauty of her garden was seemingly unreal- from the bright red rose bushes, to the water lilies that were afloat of the crystal blue pond situated in the middle of each species of flower.

I shook my head, now was obviously not the time to be marvelling at flowers, I was on OSAF (Operation Steal A Flower) and had to be focusing on my intended goal. I jumped over the fence with surprising ease and scanned the area for a flower that Ms Chippy Chives would hopefully not notice I took. Off to the far right hand side was a bush of dozens upon dozens of small purple flowers.

Perfect, I thought to myself.

I plucked off a flower from its stem and ran back to the fence- using a huge rock as I stool, I pulled myself over, but not before I lost my footing and stepped onto a twig. All it took was that snap for a door to be heard slamming shut.

I was going to die, I was sure of it.

But I wasn't going to let that happen.

I sat down on the treehouse roof once again and slid of, at the same time as I watched the handle to the back door of Ms Chippy Chives' house turn and then heard a piercing scream followed by a loud thud.

I was now at my own back door, frozen, eyes wide.

Oh dog poop

Picture of cream cheese puffs to the side ---->