Clare spent every weekend she had at Eli's house. Not that he or his parents minded at all. Eli had a hard time throwing things away without Clare there for support so every Saturday and Sunday, except for church, she walked to Eli's house with rubber gloves in her hand. Clare remembered to bring them after accidentally touching moldy food that Eli left under a heaping pile in his room.
It had been 10 weekends cleaning up Eli's room and it was beginning to look normal. The floor was finally visible and the piles were lessening considerably. Eli could finally sleep in his bed without clutter all over it and actually use his desk to do homework instead of working in the basement, living room, or dining room.
Knocking on the Goldsworthy door, Clare stood in the cold clutching her arms. She didn't realize how cold it was until she was halfway to Eli's house and didn't want to turn back around to grab a warmer jacket. A minute later, Eli opened the door and immediately, a smile grew on his lips.
"Hey there," he said happily and pushed the door more open to let Clare in. She practically ran in and shivered. "Forgot your jacket?"
"I didn't want to go back to get it," Clare said with clattering teeth.
Eli took her in his strong arms suddenly and pressed his lips against Clare, surprising her but she immediately melted under his touch. Clare parted her lips a little bit but it was enough for Eli to turn his head and insert his tongue gently into Clare's mouth. She was still nervous whenever she and Eli kissed like this and Eli could sense it so he took it as slow as possible.
After a few minutes of kissing and Eli rubbing his hand up and down on Clare's back, they both pulled away breathing heavily. "Warm enough?" Eli asked with a smirk.
"Very," Clare replied in a short breath and a smile.
Eli took a hold of Clare's hand and the two walked up the stairs and to Eli's door. Clare furrowed her eyebrows when she saw that the lock was gone on Eli's door. The latch was gone entirely and all that was left was the doorknob.
"Where's your lock?" Clare asked curiously.
"Now that my room is a lot cleaner, I feel that I didn't need a lock anymore to hide clutter," Eli said proudly. "Plus, it's a lot easier to get inside. Having to put my combination in every time is a hassle. Also, someone broke into my room before and knows the combination already."
"Hey, Adam was the one who figured it out," Clare reminded him.
"Yeah well now we don't need a combination to remember, you can come into my room anytime you'd like," he replied with a small smile on his face.
"Is Hotel Eli in service already?" Clare joked.
"It will be very soon," Eli said and took a deep breath. "Maybe even tonight."
Clare was a little surprised when she thought she heard Eli saying that she could maybe stay over that night. Then she remembered that the room was still pretty cluttered and didn't think it would be clean that soon so she opened the door and was surprised at how much less clutter there was since she was there last weekend.
"You cleaned up without me?" Clare asked as she maneuvered around the room.
"A little bit," Eli admitted. "My mom helped a little too but I did a lot myself. See, look, nothing under the bed."
Clare leaned down and looked under the black bed skirt and lo and behold, it was empty under there. Smiling proudly, Clare went to hug Eli and the two shared a long and close hug. "I'm so proud of you," she whispered. Clare pulled away and pressed a chaste kiss on Eli's lips for a second. "Come on, let's get to work."
For the next few hours, Clare handed Eli things around the room and he either put it in the trash bag or put it in a place in his room. It depended on the item though. Things like the many popcorn containers and random papers were thrown away. It had gotten easier for Eli to throw away the useless things but there were many things that Clare had to convince Eli to throw away.
"We could get more when the fair comes back, Eli," Clare said softly. Eli held onto a long strip of carnival game tickets in his hand.
"But…Julia and I won these," Eli replied in a solemn voice. "We spent so long and practically all of our money just trying to win the game…"
Clare hated to admit it but whenever Eli spoke of Julia or mentioned her name, there was a pang in her heart that she felt. She understood Eli's sadness over his ex-girlfriend but she couldn't help the feeling she got whenever he talked so lovingly of her.
"Well then how about…" Clare looked around the room and spotted a hidden popcorn container, "we keep all of the tickets in here and keep it on that shelf. We can see how long it takes us to fill it when we go to the fair."
Smiling, Eli folded the tickets into a large clump and put it in the deep and wide popcorn container. Clare walked over to Eli's shelf on the wall with his door and put it on the top shelf.
Eli looked at his girlfriend, amazed at how patient and helpful she was. He felt guilty for taking her weekends but since Clare never objected, he never said how bad he felt. He loved spending this time with her and he finally felt comfortable with Clare in his room. The clutter was disappearing because of Clare and her helping him every step of the way.
Looking around, the picture of Julia on his bedside table caught his eye and he automatically felt guilty. He didn't even have one picture of Clare and there was his ex-girlfriend right next to his bed. Taking the picture frame, he took Julia's picture out and left the frame on the bedside table. He walked over to the shelf on the opposite side of the room and set it on the corner of another picture frame, one holding a picture of him and his parents.
"Why'd you do that?" Clare asked as she picked up the obvious trash and put it in the trash bag.
"I thought I'd put a new picture in there," Eli said and walked over to Clare, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her back to his front. "One of you and me, maybe?"
Spinning around in Eli's arms, Clare smiled. "That would be great." Kissing again momentarily, Clare pulled away. "Now stop getting distracted, we have to clean."
"But look how much progress I've made! Doesn't that call for a break? Like, I don't know…a kissing break?" Eli suggested as he raised his eyebrows suggestively.
"We can have a break once we're finished, then we can kiss all you want as a reward," Clare replied with a mischievous smile.
"Promise?"
Clare held out her pinky to Eli and feeling silly, Eli wrapped his own pinky around Clare's. "I promise. But let's up the stakes. We finish cleaning by…I don't know, 5 o'clock, then we can do whatever you want."
Eli glanced at the clock and saw that it was already 2:30. Clare looked at him with a challenging face and with their pinkies still attached Eli said, "It's on."
For the next two hours and thirty minutes, Eli threw things away with little hassle. Clare would be the one to put sentimental things in the right place as Eli put things in the trash. Coming across a small tube of lip gloss, Eli looked up at Clare whose back was turned. The gloss was Eli's favorite scent and color of Julia and taking a deep breath, he dropped it into the trash bag. This went on for the entire time. Eli would come across something that reminded him of Julia and he'd push himself to throw it away. It would be of no use if he kept it and in his mind he kept repeating his mom's words. "That stuff in your room isn't Julia. Julia's in here and she would want you to be happy."
At 4:45, the floor of Eli's room was finally bare and there was just one box that held random things. Eli sat down on his floor and started looking through the box and realized it was the box he started putting things in after his fight with Julia. He thought they'd broken up and after she left his house, he started putting the things she left at his house into a box. It had been lost in the clutter he started collecting.
Eli grabbed Julia's hairbrush from the box and touched the plastic bristles. He thought that it was impossible to still smell Julia's shampoo but he did. In the box were CD's, jewelry, random clothes, and some pictures of him and Julia or just Julia. He took the large bunch of pictures, wrapped around by the rubber band, and contemplated looking through it.
Clare watched as Eli looked through the box she presumed were Julia's things. His hands were wrapped around the pictures and he was frozen. So Clare reached over and took the pictures from Eli's frozen fingers and smiled. "I'll make you a scrapbook with all of these pictures in it, okay? So you can keep the pictures in one place," she suggested.
"You don't have to," Eli whispered. He could already tell that Clare would get sad looking through the pictures of him and Julia. There were pictures of them hugging and kissing and it would make any girl jealous seeing their boyfriend kissing someone else.
"I want to," Clare said with a smile. She put the pictures into the pocket of her light jacket and sat back down. "So…what are you going to do with these things?"
"I don't know," Eli replied with a sad voice. "I can't throw it away."
Clare stood up and walked to the closet. She saw that there was still enough space to put a box on the top shelf. "Keep it then," she suggested. "Put it up here and look through it when you miss her. You don't have to throw away everything, just as long as what you keep actually means something."
Eli slowly closed the box and lifted it up to the shelf. He pushed it all the way back and put one of his jackets over it to cover it and he closed the closet with a sigh. Turning around slowly, he stopped when he saw Clare laying down on the bed with her back against the wall next to it.
"Room's clean," she said happily. "And it's…4:56. You win."
Eli climbed into the bed and sat next to Clare, taking her hand and wrapping his fingers around his. "Do you want to say over tonight? We don't have to do anything…we can just be with each other."
"That would be nice," Clare smiled. "But I'd have to come back after dinner. Mom and Dad actually want to have a normal family dinner tonight. They're in no way getting back together but they wanted to start having family dinners on Saturday nights and this is the first week."
"Well I'll come pick you up around 8 and we can come back here, watch a movie and eat junk food, and we can spend our first night together," Eli said then kissed the back of Clare's hand. "Thank you for helping me. I know that I couldn't have done this without you."
"Anytime," Clare replied. She leaned over and kissed Eli for a few seconds then pulled away. "I should get home. I have to help Mom with dinner. I'll see you at 8?"
"On the dot," Eli promised. Clare grabbed her jacket and waved goodbye and left the room, leaving Eli alone in his finally clean room. After hearing the front door closing, he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and his parents appeared in the doorway.
"Oh my goodness," Cece and Bullfrog said simultaneously.
Eli got off his bed and stood in the middle of his room. "We finished today," he said excitedly. "And Clare's staying over tonight, if that's okay."
His parents looked at each other and Eli was quick to explain. "We're not going to do anything. Since it's the first night that it's clean, I asked her to stay over."
"Of course it's okay with us," Cece told his son. She walked over to him and hugged him tightly. "I'm so proud of you for not giving up."
"Thanks Mom," Eli muttered into his mom's shoulder. "I couldn't have done this without your support and Dad's too. Thanks for not giving up on me."
"We're proud of you son," Bullfrog hugged Eli for a few seconds. "Clare's a good influence on you. I didn't think this would get clean so fast but seeing as Clare's been here every weekend for a while, I'm guessing she was the reason why."
"She's my reason for everything," Eli said. "She's everything to me."
Cece and Bullfrog replied with an obnoxious "awww" and left the room laughing playfully. Eli closed the door and looked around the clean room. He sat down at his desk and logged onto his computer then Facerange account. He clicked on Clare's page and smiled at her profile picture. It was of Clare smiling and leaning against a large wooden fence with a beautiful field and sunset behind her. She looked absolutely breathtaking and Eli, wanting to fill the empty picture frame next to his bed, clicked copy on the picture and put it on a word document and printed it out. He cut out the picture and put it into the frame and set it on his table.
Ten minutes before 8, Eli started up Morty and drove to the Edwards residence. He stayed in his car until promptly 8 o'clock and walked up to the door and rang the doorbell. Clare came to the door a minute later holding an overnight bag.
"Ready to go?" Eli smiled, holding out his hand.
"Let's go," Clare grabbed Eli's hand and the two walked to Morty.
At Eli's house, Clare and Eli watched a movie in the living room and cuddled on the couch. The movie of the night was To Kill a Mockingbird, a movie they both love. After the movie, they went up to Eli's room and he turned on some music.
"Wanna dance with me?" Eli smiled.
"I would love to," Clare stood up and wrapped her arms around Eli's shoulders and pressed their foreheads together. The two swayed to the music slowly and their eyes never left each others. Their gazes towards one another were loving and intense. Blue mixed with green as they looked at each other for what seemed like forever.
"Thank you for being there for me Clare," Eli whispered against Clare's lips.
"Thank you for being strong, Eli," Clare replied. She closed the small gap between them and kissed her boyfriend unlike she ever did. By the time the two parted for air, Clare's back was pressed on the mattress of Eli's bed with him hovering over her. She slightly chuckled when she saw the mess she made with Eli's hair.
"Sorry," she said pointing to Eli's dark and messy hair.
"You can mess up my hair anytime just as long as we're doing this," Eli joked. Clare laughed in return and yawned. "Okay, I think it's time we go to sleep. You can get the bathroom first."
"Thanks," she said and kissed Eli again. She jumped off the bed and grabbed her things and headed towards the bathroom. Eli quickly changed into his pajama pants and a loose white v-neck and waited for Clare to come back into the room. Once she did, he quickly brushed his teeth and washed his face and joined the already laying down Clare on his bed. He got under the covers and wrapped his arm around Clare's waist to pull her closer to him.
After sharing a goodnight kiss, Eli said, "Sweet dreams, Clare. I love you."
This being the first time Eli said those three words, Clare was a little surprised. But after a minute she replied. "I love you too Eli. Goodnight."
And the two spent their first night together never pulling apart for one second.
That was a one-shot! Hope you enjoyed! Please review!