WOO! I'm back with a new chapter! And 100 followers? Wow! :D thanks guys. Been a while, right? You guys may wanna re-read the last one to make sure you remember what's going on and I hope that you enjoy this chapter! xx
"Did Malia and Allison stay over?" Stiles ponders, running his index finger around the rim of his coffee cup in a way that has Lydia distracted for a moment until he looks up at her again.
"Uh, yeah. I left them a note." She nods. "Did Scott stay over then? What about Lucy."
"She went home." Stiles replies shortly, showing Lydia that he doesn't want to talk about it. Lydia feels a guilty pang of happiness over that.
"Okay. So where's Scott?" she changes the subject for him.
"Asleep. I text him to say I was going out."
There's a minute of peaceful silence between them. "You know, I keep getting scared that I'm about to wake up from a dream and not have met you at that carnival." Lydia admits, taking him with her eyes in just in case it happens any second.
"Me too." Stiles smiles softly at her. "But I know for a fact this is real cause I already pinched myself a hundred times." He grins and Lydia laughs.
"So what do you want to do today?" Lydia places her arms on the table in a professional way and Stiles laughs. He thinks for a moment and then smiles at her.
"Come on." He stands up and takes her hand. "I wanna show you something."
Lydia sits in the car with her eyes glued onto Stiles. She still can't believe that he is there in front of her, flesh and blood. He catches her staring and she quickly glances away but she can see his smile through his wing mirror.
The Jeep is exactly how she imagined it: old, pale blue, rusty, charismatic. The one thing that she never anticipated before was that she would be sitting in it. Stiles turns down a dingy road that Lydia has been too scared to go down ever since she was a little girl.
"Where are we going?" she frowns slightly, trying to imagine what fun could possibly be down this road.
"You'll see." He grins at her and then diverts his eyes back onto the road ahead of him.
"All I'm seeing is a possible murder scene…" she raises her eyebrows at him and he laughs. He doesn't say anything after that, ignoring Lydia's questions. Eventually he turns another corner and the view of a beautiful mountain surrounded by emerald green grass and ivy trees with a stream and a waterfall placed directly in the centre. Some deer and various other wildlife bounce and spring around the field, dancing happily in their solitude. Nobody is around. Lydia's eyes fall wide and her mouth pops open involuntarily.
"Sometimes what looks like a ramshackle on the outside can be the most beautiful place you'll ever see on the inside." Is all Stiles says before he exits the Jeep and starts walking towards the stone wall parting the paradise from the path. Lydia quickly follows after him, desperate to get a closer look.
"This place is beautiful!" Lydia breathes out, leaning over the wall to get as close as she can. "Why have you never told me about this place?" she places her hands on her hips in mock annoyance.
"I used to come here with my mom when we were younger… I'm sure I mentioned it once but probably not very descriptively." He laughs… and then the sparkle in his eyes dims slightly. "When my mom got sick I didn't like to talk about the things we did together."
Lydia places her hand on Stiles' arm to silently tell him that he doesn't have to keep talking about it. He smiles softly at her and then lifts himself up onto the wall, legs facing the mountain scene. Lydia jumps up with him. "I try to come here as much as I can." He breathes in probably the freshest air in the whole of Beacon Hills and looks at a fawn following its mother.
"I bet you bring Lucy here all the time…" Lydia smiles contently as she stares forward, taking in the beauty and enjoying the presence of Stiles next to her.
"Actually… I've never brought her here. She doesn't even know I come here." He looks over to Lydia and she looks back at him, confused.
"Why not?" she asks, genuinely interested for the first time in a topic involving Lucy.
"I guess I just wanted this to be my place…" he replies after thinking for a few moments.
"Then why did you bring me?" Lydia laughs slightly at his logic.
"Because…" Stiles starts but then shakes his head and turns back to the mountains.
"No, tell me!" she grins, pinching his arm playfully. "You can't leave me hanging now that you've started this."
"Do you remember what you said to me before?" he asks, looking right in her eyes in a way that makes her feel a little giddy inside.
"You're gonna have to be a little clearer than that, my friend, I've said a lot of stuff to you." She giggles and he can't help but smile.
"I mean when you said…" he's interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing in his pocket. He sighs and pulls it out. "It's Lucy…" Lydia gestures to say that he can take the call and watches him answer, listen, respond with yes and no, listen, say goodbye and then sigh. "She wants me to meet her. I'm so sorry."
"Oh," Lydia frowns slightly but quickly forces herself to exchange it for a smile. "No, don't worry about it… Go!" she gives him an awkward dig in the arm to hide her disappointment. "Just promise me I'll get to hear where this conversation was going!" she laughs playfully.
"Maybe." He winks and jumps down from the wall, helping her down too and they slowly walk back towards his Jeep. "I'll take you here again, definitely."
"Thank god!" Lydia breathes a sigh of relief. "I was too scared to ask!" she grins and Stiles laughs.
On the way back to Lydia's apartment, they chat like they've been hanging out since the day they were old enough to walk, and technically they have. Stiles pulls up outside and Lydia opens the door. "Talk to you later?"
"Talk to you later." He smiles and then she exits the car and starts walking inside, stopping briefly to wave him off.
Lydia can't stop smiling as she walks through her apartment door and into her kitchen to see… Malia and Allison still there. They're sat around her table playing some sort of card game in their pyjamas.
"What have you been doing?" Malia asks without even looking up from the cards in her hands. Allison, the more polite one of the two, places her cards face down on the table and looks up at Lydia.
"Doing some stuff, I left a note." Lydia tells them through a yawn as she opens the fridge to grab some orange juice.
"Bit rude to refer to Stiles as 'some stuff'" Malia grins devilishly and Lydia rolls her eyes.
"I wasn't doing Stiles, Malia. I was running errands!" Lydia pulls a chair out and joins her best friends round the table.
"And apparently Stiles was involved in those errands." Allison folds her arms and smirks.
"Let me guess… Scott?" Lydia sighs and Allison nods with a wide grin. "I guess the note Stiles left Scott wasn't as private as the one I left you guys…" Lydia mutters to herself.
"Why was your note secretive anyway?" Allison prys.
"Did you do him?" Malia chips in.
"Because of this." Lydia answers Allison through a rolling of her eyes. "And, no, I didn't." she replies to Malia. "He has a girlfriend."
"So you would if he didn't?" Allison wiggles her eyebrows and Malia chuckles at Lydia's frustration.
"No, shut up!" Lydia stands back up from the table and gulps down her orange juice. "We were just hanging out… as friends."
"You two only met, like, yesterday and you're already meeting up like best friends." Allison starts, "All I'm saying is that there seems to be something there." She raises her hands.
"And plus, you're way better than that Lindy chick." Malia adds.
"It's Lucy." Lydia corrects her and Malia shrugs in a 'so?' kind of way. "I just feel like I've known him forever… that's all." Lydia tells them, truthfully.
"And that means that you must like each other! There's a connection." Allison grins innocently and Lydia rolls her eyes, secretly feeling pleased with the assumptions her friends are making.
"You two can either stay here or go home, I don't care. I'm going for a nap." She tells them, exiting the room so that she's not faced with any more questions or accusations.
Lydia drops back on her bed and closes her eyes, wondering if she should try and speak to Stiles or whether he'll be busy with Lucy. She decides against it, worried about what she might hear.
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