Hey everyone! Thank you so much for the reviews! You guys rock! So, here's chapter 9. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: One Tree Hill and it's characters do not belong to me, just the storyline does.
Summary: Nathan Scott is the most popular guy in school and Haley James is just an average girl who happens to be friends with Nathan's half-brother, Lucas. What happens when each of their groups of friends end up staying next door to each other all summer?
A Summer to Remember
Chapter 9
"I can't believe that it's already Friday." Haley said as she searched through one of her three dresser drawers for something to wear for the day. "This week has gone by faster than I thought it would."
"Because of Nathan?" Brooke questioned sleepily from the bed without opening her eyes.
"No," Haley said defensively, "because I though that cleaning up this place was going to be a lot harder than it is."
"Because of Nathan?" Brooke asked again as a sly grin spread across her face. She loved playing the devil's advocate.
"No!" Haley laughed. Ok, maybe Nathan did make the everyday chores a little more bearable, she had even learned through the course of the week that most of the time she could talk to him as if he were a normal person, but she would never admit that out loud.
"Come one Tutor Girl, I see you flirting with him and vice versa like every single day." Brooke was still lying in bed but now seemed to be a little more awake.
"I do not flirt!" She defended herself. Brooke thinks Nathan was flirting with me? Was he?
"Can you guys keep it down? I think you forgot that my room is right next to yours and that it's not even 7:00 yet." Lucas said groggily from the doorway.
Both girls started giggling. "Sorry, Luke. We were just talking about how much Haley loves working with Nathan every day." Brooke teased as Haley rolled her eyes.
"Oh yeah. How's that going?" Lucas asked as he laid down on the bed next to Brooke and put his hands behind his head.
"It's not as bad as I though it would be." Haley responded as she pulled her hair into a high ponytail.
"I still can't believe that this Whitey guy is making you do all the cleaning and stuff when you didn't even do anything." Lucas said as he rolled over onto his side and tried to go back to sleep. "But it doesn't surprise me that Nathan never admitted that you didn't do it." He grumbled.
"Actually, he did." Haley suddenly felt the need to be defensive of Nathan. I'm just stating the truth, She told herself. "Um, Nathan told Whitey that I had nothing to do with it but Whitey didn't believe him. I don't really know why, it's not like spray painting grass has to be a two person job."
Haley looked up to see Lucas staring at her in slight confusion. Brooke sat up in the bed with wide eyes. "I told you you have a thing for him!"
"Shut up, no I don't!" Haley responded as she threw a pillow at her friend. "Ok, well, I've got to go or I'm going to be late." She said as she headed out the door.
Lucas watched her go with nothing but concern written on his face. She couldn't really like Nathan, could she? After everything that he's done?
"Did you see the people that just left? Talk about hillbillies!" Haley laughed as she and Nathan entered condo number 8 on the second floor.
"I know, they must have been from Kentucky or something." Nathan answered, joining in on her laughter.
"Hey. Watch it mister. I have relatives in Kentucky." She said as she playfully pointed a finger at him.
"Haley, where don't you have relatives?" Nathan joked as he set the key down on the counter in the kitchen of the condo.
Whitey had informed them that the couple in condo 8 was checking out today and that they had to clean the place before the next family arrived tomorrow.
"Very funny," Haley mocked laughter. "So where do you want to start?"
"I don't know." He said as he walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. "How about we take a break before we start?" He smirked as he pulled out a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
"Nathan! We can't eat that. It's not ours."
"Who cares? I don't think they're going to come back looking for it." He laughed as he pulled out two spoons from a drawer.
"No, I can't."
"Whatever." He smirked and sat down across from her at the table. "Mmm, this is good." He taunted as he put a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.
Haley just looked at the ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough was her favorite and it seemed to be calling her name. "Fine, give me some of that."
Nathan broke into a wide grin as he handed her the other spoon and watched her shove a very large chunk of ice cream into her mouth.
"Oh my gosh!" She yelled.
"What? What?" Nathan asked in a concerned voice when he saw her shaking and with her hands pressed against the side of her head.
"Brain freeze," she managed to say as the splitting headache started to subside.
Nathan burst out in laughter. Only Haley James would eat so much ice cream so fast that she got a brain freeze.
"Shut up! I saw how worried you were when you thought I was having, like, a stroke or something." She said playfully as she reached her spoon into the tub and scooped out another spoonful of ice cream, this time a lot less though.
"I was only worried because I thought I was going to have to call a freakin ambulance or something. I'm not good in crisis situations like that." He laughed.
"Oh please, yes you are. What do you call making a game winning shot at a basketball game?"
"That's not a crisis, Hales. That's just stressful." He corrected as he shoved more ice cream in his mouth.
Haley couldn't help but smile at his use of her nickname. Was it even possible that they hated each other less than a week ago? Ever since they started spending eight hours together every day, they had almost become friends. With them, everything just seemed to click. Conversations were easy and relaxed and she felt comfortable around him as he did with her.
"Nathan! You took the last little bit!" She whined after reaching her spoon into the tub and having it come out empty.
"You snooze you lose." He smiled as he picked up the now empty container and shot it into the garbage can.
"Ok, we really need to start cleaning this place." Haley said as she came back out of the kitchen after putting the spoons in the dishwasher. "I do not want to have to finish it tomorrow."
"Me neither." Nathan added. Whitey had given them the weekends off and both had already made plans for tomorrow, their first free day since Monday. "So what are you going to do tomorrow with your day off?" He asked, obviously trying to prolong the inevitable cleaning.
Luckily for him, Haley didn't really feel like cleaning either. "Well, Brooke's dragging us to this beach party tomorrow night and before that she's apparently going to be giving me a makeover."
"Hey, we're going to that party too."
"Really?" Haley's eyes lit up when heard him say those words.
"Yeah, Tim wanted to go, so we're going." Somehow, knowing that Haley was going to be at this party made the fact that Lucas was going to be there a little more bearable.
A somewhat awkward silence followed as the realization that both of their groups of friends, who hated each other, were going to be at this party sunk in. Neither Peyton and Tim nor Brooke and Lucas really had any idea that Nathan and Haley didn't want to kill each other, let alone that they had become sort-of friends. No one could really blame them for not knowing, it's not like Nathan and Haley ever spent time together other than when they were working.
Haley thought about how much she would like to hang out with Nathan at this party, at least then she wouldn't feel like a third wheel if Brooke decided to finally tell Lucas how she felt. But, in the end, she knew that that would never happen. They came from two different worlds, his full of popularity and parties while hers consisted of studying and staying home on Friday nights.
"Ok, let's flip a coin. Heads we start in the kitchen, tails we start in the bathroom." Nathan proposed, breaking the silence.
"Ok." Haley agreed enthusiastically as he pulled a quarter out of his pocket and flipped it on the table.
"Tails, I call the sink!" He laughed as she groaned at having to clean the toilet.
They gathered the cleaning materials from under the kitchen sink and then headed into the bathroom.
"Oh my Gosh, what is that smell?" Haley gasped, holding her nose.
Nathan moved around her and lifted up the toilet seat to see a giant wad of toilet paper surrounded by murky brown water. "What the hell?" Nathan muttered. He looked up at Haley and smirked. "Good thing I called the sink."
"There is no way I'm getting anywhere near that." She stated firmly.
"You have to. I'll even flush it for you, ok?" Nathan held his shirt up over his nose and stuck his hand out to flush the toilet. Almost immediately a loud gurgling noise was heard as the toilet started to fill up with water.
"Ew!" Haley yelled and ran out of the bathroom as the toilet started to overflow.
"Well, it looks like you have a toilet to unclog." Nathan laughed as he stood next to her and looked into the bathroom.
"Ugh…I cannot believe you are making me do this." She complained.
After a few minutes, the excess water had been cleaned up from the floor and Haley was leaning over the toilet with a plunger. "Nathan, I can't do it." She whined as she tried to unclog the toilet.
Nathan sprayed some Windex on the mirror and then looked over at her. For a second, his breath caught in his throat. She had taken off her light green shirt and was now just wearing a white cami with her grey soffe shorts. Random strands of hair had fallen out of her ponytail and hung in her face as she tried as hard as she could to unclog the toilet.
He couldn't help but laugh at the sight of Haley's small frame using every ounce of strength it had to press down the plunger and then pull it up again. "Give me that." He said as he snatched the plunger from her small hands. "You can do the sink, but you have to do the toilet next time." He warned as a playful grin spread across his handsome features.
"Oh my gosh! You're the best!" She squealed as she happily picked up the rag he had left in the sink and wiped up the Windex. Nathan's smile just grew in seeing her happy.
"You're done late today." Peyton commented as Nathan entered the condo at 4:30.
"Yeah, it uh, took a long time to clean the condo downstairs. The hillbillies left the place really messy." He lied. The real reason he was so late was because of the ice cream break he and Haley had taken and because he spent a good half an hour unclogging the toilet. What had those people put in there anyway?
"Nate, dawg, come play NBA live with me." Tim demanded as Nathan plopped down on the couch next to him.
"So you guys are coming with me to the party tomorrow night, right?" Tim asked hopefully as Nathan picked his team.
"Yeah, I guess." Peyton replied as she went back into her room to find her brush.
"Yeah, I'm going." Nathan said, actually not dreading this party for the first time.