"First of all, you don't know me," she said, deadbeat; her eyes fixed on his face, eyebrows raised. He watched as she walked towards him slowly. "Second of all, you don't know me." She said it the second time with sarcasm, and an expression of annoyance at the elder Scott brother's nosiness. He just laughed, which made her cross.
"God, why are guys such jerks?" she groaned.
"Guys, or Nathan?" He said, not at all swayed by her last comment.
"Him," she said. She looked at him. "You."
"I don't know," replied Lucas. "We share the same father."
"Yeah, I heard about that," she said.
She listened to him talk about his mother, and Nathan and how he first found out that Dan was his father. She listened intently, taking all of it in, though her expression hardly changed. He knew nothing about her, she mused- they'd barely spoken two words before that day, yet he opened up to her completely. And that part puzzled her. She, curious as she always was, wanted an explanation.
"So why'd you just tell me all that?" His back was turned and he was walking away while she said that, so she followed him to the doors of the pick-up. "I mean, we don't even know each other,"
He turned toward her and leaned against the car door.
"Maybe that's the point," he said, taking a short moment to look into her eyes. After she realised that she wouldn't get anymore information from him at this point, she turned, getting into the car, and he shut the door after her.
Later that evening, she sat, thinking about the conversation she'd had with Lucas earlier; not just the conversation itself was on her mind, it was the way he spoke, the way he seemed to understand her- not everything about her, but the way she meant certain things she said, he seemed to know not to feel offended by her sometimes harsh words and he could sense that she wasn't okay with her and Nathan's relationship.
And it wasn't just that day. Every day, she found herself just a slight bit more intrigued by the lesser-known Scott brother; she found that somehow, no matter what she did her mind seemed to wander back to him. It was like a growing curiosity, or some sort of universal pull that led her to speak to him that day.
She broke up with Nathan. She saw it coming; she'd seen it coming for weeks, months. They didn't work, and she knew that, deep down, but she was a little afraid at first, that letting him go completely meant that she may not be as secure; she had Brooke, of course, but still she thought that she may seem more vulnerable alone.
It didn't take her that long before she realised that the person who made her realise that she was strong enough was Lucas. He saw her potential, he saw the spark; the brightness that was hiding under the mysterious and sarcastic façade of Peyton Sawyer. He saw all of it. And she wondered how.
She put all of her feelings and emotions into her drawings. She called them 'sketches' because she didn't see them as something that could be that important to anyone beside herself, and that was one of the main reasons she struggled to submit them to the 'Thud' magazine when they were looking for a sort of featured or resident artist.
She hated herself for leaving the sketches in the car so he could find them. Of course she didn't do it on purpose, she just never planned for Nathan to get drunk and crash her car without even asking for permission to borrow it.
Once a jerk, always a jerk.
But she didn't care that much about the car- she loved that comet, it was like her child, but Keith was good at fixing cars, he'd fixed her up before. She was more annoyed at Lucas because those sketches showed a side of her she liked to keep to herself, one that she hoped no one would see, especially not Lucas Scott.
She didn't want him to know.
At first she thought maybe it was because she didn't want him to know her business, to see what was on her mind, what she thought about; how she felt. But spending more time talking to Lucas every now and then she started to realise that maybe it wasn't that; maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was the fact that she seemed to lose everyone she became close to, and didn't want to let him in that far.
He seemed happy enough to let her know a little about himself though, and she listened.
He didn't give her back those sketches; he sent them in and they were published.
He told her that her art mattered and for some reason she believed him.
The growing fascination she held for Lucas Scott, she realised, either contributed to, or was derived from, some form of desire. Of course, this was something that she kept to herself, as usual. But she couldn't exactly tell Brooke, the girl had been harbouring a crush on Lucas since the moment she laid eyes on him. To be honest, the moment Peyton first laid eyes on Lucas it was for about half a second, and it didn't mean anything to her since she didn't exactly take a lot of notice. But somehow, after speaking to him they seemed to connect on a level that she'd never been able to reach before with anyone else.
This scared her.
But it also made him quite a bit sexier in her eyes.
So when the night of the party came, despite the drink, she knew it meant something, and she knew it was her fault. But his words ruined it for her.
"I've wanted this for so long,"
"Me too." She was overwhelmed; he was here, with her, now. "And now we can have it,"
She was ecstatic. But his words, with his hand on her heart, had made her stop dead in her tracks.
"I want to have everything with you. I want it all."
He asked her what was wrong. She replied to him, exasperated, defeated and slightly overthrown with the sudden emotion that had come crashing down on her.
"Why couldn't you just leave it alone?"
With her black calligraphy pen she finished the last word on her sketch, before taking another look over it.
"I've wanted this for so long,"
She was angry, and upset; with him, but mostly with herself. It was her stupid mind, and her stupid insecurities, not his. But even so, she still felt as if he betrayed her with his words.
She took the cap off of a different pen, a marker this time; it was thicker and blacker than the other one she'd used to write those words. And she wrote on the page with thick, black lines to match her current mindset, adding something to just one of the words she had written.
She put all of her feelings and emotions into her drawings.
There was no way he would see this one. Not if she could help it.
She tossed the sketch on the floor, disheartened; the words landed face down:
'And now we can't have it.'
Thank you to lift-me-up for reading this first and telling me it didn't suck; you are awesome. :P
Thank you, also, for reading this, it's much appreciated. x