[dedicated to etchings because i love lorde too. also, a quick thanks to aciddaisies for the beautiful new cover.]

the record store; v; lorde.

I looked at the pile of clothing choices in front of me and sighed. Although the sound I produced was, to be completely honest, rather loud and obnoxious, it was nothing compared to the noise I made when I discovered the amount of school work I had to do before the weekend was up.

"You're an ass." I groaned at the pieces of paper littering my table. I had a feeling that this work wasn't actually keeping me sane, but here I am, speaking to pieces of printed paper, so I guess I had made my point.

It was eleven in the morning, and I'd only just properly woken up. The sun shone in through the blinds causing little patterns to form across the floor, and making me squint if I crossed a certain boundary where the light became uncomfortable to look at. I had a packet of breakfast biscuits in front of me on the desk, which were slowly moving out of site as I pulled the work I had to do on top of it.

My laptop awoke with a bright flash of light, and after ten minutes of loading, was up and running as usual. I ignored the Skype notifications, all of which were becoming more and more pointless as the time went on, and slowly started to write stuff down and search things in the small search bar the internet provided me.

Time quickly passed as I wrote, and when I looked up at the clock when I got called down for lunch, I'd been working for almost three hours. I panicked, running to my phone to check what time Davie had said he would meet me, but luckily, the world was on my side, as it was another two hours from now, leaving me plentiful time to get on with my afternoon as usual.

And it was then, when I was busy typing on the keyboard of my computer, that I heard a knock at the door.

"Hollie." A voice from downstairs called me. It was my mum. "There's someone here for you."

"Tell them to wait a minute." I called back, making sure I'd saved what I was working on, clicking the button twice, to double check.

I walked out of my room and down the newly carpeted stairs. The top stair creaked as usual, and I stepped carefully on the second to avoid myself making more noise. Once I reached the bottom, swinging my body around on the banister to face the other direction, I had to redirect myself across the hall to make sure I would end up in the right place, and not get side-tracked by the kitchen, as I was doing so often now.

I padded along the hall to the front door, in which nobody was standing, but a body which I recognised was closing the door of a car and walking towards me: Davie.

"I'm so sorry I'm early, Hol." He said, ditching any kind of greeting, not that I minded. "Please forgive me."

"Forgiven." I told him. "But I'm not ready yet, you'll have to stick around for a little, if you don't mind." The conversation between us was becoming a little awkward.

"Of course I don't mind. You should be angry at me for being early and lock me out or something."

I contemplated the thought, purposely making my face look like I was actually thinking about it. "As much as I like that idea, I'm pretty sure Mickey won't like that." I gestured my arm out to the small dog that was continuously barking while Davie was outside the door.

"Thanks Mickey, you may become my new favourite." He said sarcastically. "You'd never lock me outside."

"I can still lock you out." I said, as I gestured the way into the house.

- - -

"Okay. I'm finished." I said, shutting the screen of the computer off. "Sorry that took so long. It's just I forgot I had to do the work till an hour ago."

"It's cool, I don't mind." He said. "Almost ready to go out?"

"Just need to get ready. I'm sure you'll find something interesting to do while I'm gone." I gestured to the rows of books and CDs that lined the walls of the study we were in.

I heard an agreement sound before I left the room and walked up the stairs to get ready. I found the outfit I'd left out on my bed quickly, moving the things I'd stacked on top of it during the course of the day, sighing at how messy I was, in general.

When I was ready, and almost back in the room, I heard the sound of laughter. I walked in, quickly discovering that the voice was Davie's, although I had no idea who else's voice it would have been. He was holding an old Jonas Brother's EP in his hand: he'd obviously been looking at the collection of jumbled up disks and cassette tapes while I was gone.

I cut him off before he could start speaking. "I was eight okay. I just keep all of my old music, I mean who knows, Joe Jonas might be the next big thing. You never know."

"I've been working in a record store for two years now. I'm pretty good at deciding who's going to make a comeback, and I'm pretty sure these guys won't." He said as he walked towards me, grabbing my hand. "You look really pretty."

"Why thanks." I said. "You're still not let off for mocking my pre-teen musical idols, though."

He was swinging our hands as he walked around the rest of the room, looking at the rest of the music we had to offer. He looked pretty happy.

"What will I have to do to make you appreciate my company again." He said jokingly. I smiled up at him.

"I choose the music for the car." I said, making a simple and easy choice.

"Well then, m'lady." He said in an overly posh accent. "Choose away."

I let go of his hand and walked forward, looking through one of the shelves which had the least amount of dust on. I pulled out an old Coldplay album, and handed it to him. He smiled at my choice before grabbing my hand again.

"Coldplay it is then." He said before asking me a question. "Ready to go, then?"

"Sure." I said as he used his powers of judgement to guide us both of us out of the house, closing the door of the small study behind us.

- - -

The lights of the street flashed by like a blur as we drove down the street. Even in the reasonably early evening hours, the streets were still dark, and I felt like I was in a movie as my hands rested on the small armrest in the car as I gazed out of the window, taking everything in.

"You know." Davie said as he drove. "You're a pretty fun girl to hang around with. I mean, you don't really care what people think, you're just always happy."

"I've never really thought about it." I said. "But I guess I like to be happy, everyone does."

"Robbie asked about Laura the other day." Davie said as he turned the corner.

"I may have missed a drift or something, but who on earth is Robbie?"

"The cashier guy Laura was eyeing up when I first met you." He said, explaining it. "He was asking me whether I kept in contact with you and he started talking about her."

"Ah." I said, in realisation of what, or then again, who, he was going on about. "I remember now."

"Course you do." He said, simply.

"So." I asked, for the first time on the journey, which had surprised me. I was generally rather impatient when it came to things like this. "Where exactly are we going?"

"Aura." He said. "You know, the small little coffee place just around the corner." He turned the car at the junction, taking full concentration as he turned. "I guess I wanted to get to know you a little better, and nothing says more than 'get to know you' than coffee."

"I'll give you a head start on getting to know me." I said.

"What do you mean?" He asked as he drove into a small car park, and again, put his full attention on what was in front of him as he began to park.

"I prefer tea." I said as he stopped the car and pulled out the car keys.

"Even better." He said as we opened our doors, and the reasonably cold air began to hit us.

- - -

[ i can't even tell you how sorry i am for this late update, i've been tied up and stuck majorly on this story. i really want to start making the chapters longer for you guys, so i will start trying with that as well as getting the story up. thanks so much for almost 10k. i can't sum up how much i appreciate it. ]