"I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask you, neither should you

Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips

We should just kiss like real people do"

Arlo Abbott had never been a very sociable girl, not on her own free will at least.

She had a few friends at school but never liked them enough to make an effort to hang out outside of the dreadful white walls of their high school. She especially didn't see them now that she'd graduated a whole semester earlier than her peers. There's nothing wrong with them per se, she just never found anyone she felt she could be herself around.

Most seventeen-year-old girls spend their off time at parties or shopping with their friends, but those things never really interested Arlo- not that she'd worked up the courage to step foot into a high school party just yet.

Don't get her wrong, the teenage female stereotype disgusted her. That's not really the point of today's overthinking anyway

For most of Arlo's high school career, she'd been content with spending the weekends in her room, curled up with whatever book she'd chosen to obsess over for the week. But, the school's number one house to party at just so happened to be across the street from her.

Calum Hood lives there. He had since they were small.

She'd never really talked to him, but she figured he was friendly enough. Whenever they saw each other one of them would manage an awkward wave or something along that line but that's about as far as their interactions had ever gone. Neither Calum nor Arlo tried for anything more considering how different they know they are.

Calum's parents had started leaving their son home alone for the weekend more often the older he got, giving him more opportunities to wreak havoc across the street.

Sometimes the music is so loud Arlo can hear it through the thick brick walls of her house, drowning out the sound of whatever record she has quietly spinning in the corner of her room. As a result, her safe space of a bedroom was no longer so comforting.

If she had it her way, she'd just walk over to the Barnes and Noble that used to sit around ten minutes away. But, the store has been closed since before she was even old enough to reach high school. Arlo's town isn't quite big enough for a chain that large, especially now that most people prefer their phones over a good book anyway.

So, when Arlo got an email notifying her that there was a new one being opened about a forty-five-minute walk away from her house, she knew she had to go. It's quite a far walk for a girl who exercised probably about once a year, but she hadn't gotten her license yet no matter the fact that she'd turned seventeen a couple of months ago.

Today was a particularly good day for her trek to the new Barnes and Noble.

Calum's driveway is crowded with delivery trucks full of alcohol and food for his party later tonight and her parents are gone for yet another weekend away. The usually scorching sun is hiding behind the clouds meaning that she's less likely to melt during her walk.

Arlo slips on leggings and an oversized crewneck, throwing her hair up with a claw clip, and slings a small book bag over her shoulders. Sure, a tote bag would probably fit her aesthetic better, but honestly, she found them rather uncomfortable.

Usually, Arlo treated a trip to the bookstore like her own sort of party. She loved picking out a cute outfit that looked straight out of a Pinterest board and taking her time doing her hair and makeup perfectly. It was just the bookstore, but it was her favorite place to be.

As much as she hated to admit it to herself, it would probably be better to wear something fit for walking forty-five minutes- one of her tennis skirts and a cropped cardigan definitely would not do.

Once she's made sure her essentials are in her bag, earbuds, a pen, her phone, she deemed herself fit to go.

Calum Hood is standing on his front lawn when she exits her house. He's shirtless as usual, his discarded shirt wrapped around his head like a headband. The tan boy is absolutely dripping in sweat as he sets up folding tables and kegs of beer in various places on the lawn.

"Arlo!"

The dark-haired girl pauses in her tracks. She really hoped that she'd go unnoticed, like usual. But, the day turned out to be far from usual.

Arlo spins on her heel to face her neighbor. Calum jogs toward her, a wide smile on his boyish face. She's wondered how the boy could have chubby cheeks but such a sculpted jawline at the same time. He'd always been unfairly beautiful, too good to talk to her, that was for sure.

"Hi." The girl winces as her voice comes out sounding overly skeptical.

Arlo was always afraid of her shy personality coming off as rude. Most of the kids in her class assumed that she just thought she was too good to talk to anyone there, especially considering the type of neighborhood she lived in.

"Where're you off too?" Calum had taken a liking to Arlo when they were young. She'd always intrigued him with her long dark hair and hazel eyes, but they were so different he didn't quite know how to approach her.

As he took a break from moving the heavy beer kegs he'd spent way too much money on his eyes had caught sight of the girl leaving her house, a book bag on her back. He knew that she didn't have her driver's license and their neighborhood, being so secluded wasn't in safe walking distance of anywhere.

Arlo winced. She was about to sound really lame. "A new Barnes and Noble opened across town."

Calum pulls the shirt bandana from his head, instructing the girl to wait right here as he turns on his heel, jogging inside. Arlo waits on the sidewalk, quite literally twiddling her thumbs as she waits for him because well, he said to.

The puppy dog-eyed boy returns moments later with a flannel thrown on over a hoodie and his car keys in his hands. Arlo's eyes widen as she takes in the sight, seriously beginning to regret stopping.

"It's about to start raining, you can't walk across town." He says simply, boldly taking the shocked girl's wrist and pulling her behind him as he approaches his car.

Calum Hood owns the latest Ford Mustang model, but she wouldn't expect anything less. He unlocks the car, jumping in while Arlo finds herself holding her breath as she sits down. The car is nice, too nice for what she felt fit to sit in.

Calum starts the engine, chuckling to himself as the much smaller girl beside him jumps at the loud roar. He pulls out of the driveway, recklessly in Arlo's opinion but really she had no room to complain.

Despite the fact that she was very thankful for the ride, she found herself gripping the door handle quite tightly. Calum's driving habits centered around driving with his knees and taking his eyes off of the road way longer than optimal in order to change the music.

Arlo, who had memorized all the streets she had to take to get to the new bookstore notices immediately when Calum veers off track.

"Oh, you weren't supposed to turn there." She says quietly, in fear of coming off ungrateful.

"Yeah." Calum shrugs. "But my best friend just opened up a bookstore and I figured you'd enjoy it there more. You seem like more of a small business type of gal, anyway."

She didn't know this, but he couldn't have been more right.

Arlo furrows her brows at the boy's words, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ears. She wanted to ask him what exactly he meant by that but she wasn't quite confident enough to do so.

If she was being honest with herself, Calum intimidated her.

He's all dark hair, tan skin, muscles, and tattoos and she's well, exactly the opposite

Calum pulls off on a side street and down a road lined with tall oak trees, shedding their leaves onto the street every time the wind blows just in time for fall. Sure enough, as Calum's mustang rolls down the street it begins raining.

It's drizzling just enough to make Arlo mentally groan at how unnecessarily frizzy her hair will become but the raindrops on the windshield of the expensive car bring a smile to her face nonetheless.

Arlo loves the rain.

Calum haphazardly parallel parks his car on the curb in front of a small brick building shorter than the others beside it. There are windows with white panes and baskets of flowers in front of them, but curtains block the view of the inside.

Arlo quickly thanks Calum for the ride, figuring it would probably be the last real interaction she has with the boy. She couldn't have been more wrong.

As Calum pulls away from the curb, the expensive rims of his car making an ugly scraping sound, the rain falls steadily. droplets roll down her cheeks and plaster her baby hairs to her forehead but she's smiling.

She's smiling because she'd been lucky enough for Calum to decide to drive her on a whim, in turn taking her to the coziest looking building that she's ever seen in this dreadful town of hers.

Arlo hasn't even done anything but stand outside the building, allowing the drizzling rain to dampen her clothes but she's already fallen in love with it. The flowers, the cute tables outside, the smell of coffee wafting from the building- all of it.

But what Arlo decided she loves the most is the pretty sign on the front of the building, almost blending in with the brick. The copper-colored sign spells out Hemmings Bookstore in cursive font.

What she didn't know is that very soon she'd meet the boy to who the sign belonged and fall even more in love with him than she had with his name on the front of the quaint bookstore.