better than the movies !
the spot

⌗ sweet home alabama
❝ nobody finds their soul mate when theyre ten. i mean, wheres the fun in that right? ❞

"awesome." dorothea grumbled under her breath. today was already starting to perfectly.

her cat left a hairball in her slipper, she burned her ear on her curling iron, and when she opened the door to leave for a school, a certain someone was on the hood of her car.

"hey!" she pushed her sunglasses up and slammed the door behind her, before hightailing it in his direction. she made sure to be careful though and not ruin her new mary janes. "get off my car!"

matt jumped off and held his hands up, acting all innocent, but his smirk said otherwise. plus she has known him since kindergarten, he has never been innocent a day in his life.

"whats in your hand?" she asked the boy sternly, crossing her arms.

"nothing." he put the hand in question behind his back. even though he had gotten all tall and mannish and a tiny bit hot since grade school, matt was still the same immature boy who "accidentally" burned down her mom's rosebush with a firecracker.

matt rolled his eyes "youre so paranoid,"

she looked up at him, wanting the slap the smirk right off his face.

he raised his eyebrow, gesturing to how outlandish dorothea was acting right now. he was staring her down, and dorothea already knew what he was thinking. he was sizing her down because matt always won.

she poked him in the chest. "what did you do to my car?"

"i didnt do anything to your car, per se."

"per se?"

matt faked a gasp, "woah. watch your filthy mouth, buxbaum."

she rolled her eyes back at him in response. his smirk reappeared before he said, "this has been fun, and i love your granny shoes, by the way," he winked "but ive gotta run."

"matt—"

he turned around and walked away from dorothea like she hadn't said a word to him.

when he got to his porch, he opened the screen door and yelled to her over his shoulder, "have a good day, thea!"

well that couldn't be good, dorothea thought as matt shut the door.

because lets be real, matt never wanted dorothea to have a good day. he hadn't wished her a good day ever, even when they were 7.

see, matt sturniolo and dorothea buxbaum were enemies in a no-holds-barred, full-on war over the one available parking spot on the end of their street. matt of course, usually won because he was a dirty cheater.

he thought it was supposedly funny to reserve the spot for himself by leaving things in the space that dorothea wasn't strong enough to move.

but today, dorothea would be the one ending up victorious. she had the brilliant idea to call the city after he decided to leave his car in the spot for three days in a row. boston had a twenty-four-hour ordinance, so matt had earned himself a nice little parking ticket.

earlier, dorothea had done a little happy dance when she saw the deputy slide that ticket underneath matt's windshield wiper.

dorothea checked all four of her tires before climbing in and buckling her seatbelt. she could faintly hear matt laughing in the background, and when she leaned down to glare at him out the passenger window, she finally saw what was so funny.

the parking ticket was now on her car, stuck to the middle of the windshield with clear packing tape that was a little impossible to see through. layers and layers of what appeared to be commercial grade packing tape.

she got out of the car and tried to pry up a corner with her fingernails, but she had no luck.

"what a tool." she groaned to herself.

when dorothea finally made it to school, after doing some hardcore scraping with a razor blade on her windshield, she walked through the front doors with the bridget jones diary soundtrack playing through her headphones. she had watched the movie the night before—for the thousandth time in her life—but this time before the soundtrack had just spoken to her.

van morrison's someone like you began to play as dorothea walked by the commons and made her way through the crowds of students clogging up the halls.

dorothea's favorite thing about music—when you played it loud enough through good headphones (and she had the best) —was that it softened the edges of the world. van morrison's voice made swimming upstream in the busy hallway seem like a scene from a movie, as opposed to the pain it actually was.

dorothea headed towards the second-floor bathroom, where she met her best friend sunday every morning. her best friend was a perpetual oversleeper, so there was rarely a day where she was scrambling to put on her eyeliner before the bell rang.

"dorothea, i love that dress!" sunday threw dorothea a side-glance between cleaning up each eye with a cotton swab as we walked into the bathroom. she pulled out a tube of mascara and began swiping the wand over her lashes. "the flowers are so you!"

"thanks!" dorothea went over to the mirror and did a turn to make sure the vintage a-line dress wasnt stuck in her underwear or something equally embarrassing. two cheerleaders surrounded by a puff of white cloud were vaping behind them, and she gave them a closed-mouth smile.

"do you try to dress like the leads in your movies or is it just a coincidence?" sunday asked.

"dont say 'your movies' like im addicted to porn or something"

"you know what i mean," sunday said as she separated her lashes with a safety pin.

dorothea knew exactly what she meant. she watched her mom's beloved rom-coms practically every night, using her dvd collection she had inherited when she died. dorothea somehow felt closer to her mother when she watched them; it felt like a tiny piece of her was there, watching beside her. probably because they had watched so many together. so. many. times.

but sunday didnt know any of that. they'd grown up on the same street but hadn't become actual good friends until sophomore year, so even though sunday knew dorothea's mom had died, she never really talked about it. she always assumed dorothea was obsessed with love because she was a hopeless romantic. dorothea never corrected her.

"hey, did you ever ask your dad about the senior picnic?" sunday suddenly asked, dragging dorothea away from her thoughts.

"he wasnt home last night until after i went to bed.." it was technically the truth, but i could've asked helena, if i really wanted to discuss it. "ill talk to him today."

"sure you will." sunday twisted the mascara closed and stuffed it into her small makeup bag.

"i will, i promise."

"come on." sunday stuck her makeup bag into her backpack and grabbed her coffee. "i cant be tardy to lit again or ill get detention, and i told kate id drop gum by her locker on the way."

dorothea adjusted her backpack on her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror. "wait— i forgot lipstick!"

"we dont have time for lipstick."

"theres always time for lipstick." dorothea unzipped the side pouch and pulled out her favorite lipstick that she owned. it was a nice, deep red; just on the off chance mcdreamy was in the building today. she wanted a good mouth.

sunday left, while dorothea rubbed on the lipstick.

much better.

dorothea tucked the tube back into her bag, then put her headphones back on as she existed the bathroom, hitting play and letting the rest of the bridget jones soundtrack play.

when she arrived to english lit, she walked to the back of the room and sat down at a desk between sunday and laney morgan, sliding her headphones down to her neck.

"whatd you put for number eight?" sunday questioned, scrabbling down answers. "i forgot about the reading so i dont know why gatsby's shirts made daisy cry."

dorothea pulled out her worksheet and let sunday copy her answers, and her eyes shifted over to laney. if surveyed, everyone on the planet would unanimously agree that the girl was beautiful; it was a disputable fact. she had one of those noses that was absolutely perfect, her eyes were huge like a disney princess's, and her blond hair was always shiny and soft and looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial. too bad her soul was the exact opposite of her appearance.

dorothea disliked her very much.

on the first day of kindergarten, she'd yell ewwww when dorothea had gotten a bloody nose, pointing at her face until the entire class gawked at her in disgust.

in third grade she had told dave addleman that her notebook was full to the brim of love notes about him. (she was right but that wasnt the point.) laney had blabbed to him, and instead of being sweet and charming like the movies, david called her a weirdo.

and in fifth grade, not long after dorothea's mother passed away and had been forced to sit next to laney at lunch, due to having assigned seats in the lunch room every day, she would pick at her barely edible hot lunch while laney would unzip her pastel pink lunchbox and the entire table was in delights over it.

sandwiches cut into adorable shapes, homemade cookies, brownies with sprinkles; it had been a treasure trove of kiddie culinary masterpieces, each one prepared more lovingly than the last.

but the notes is what destroyed dorothea.

there wasnt a single day that her lunch didnt include a handwritten letter from her mom. they were funny little letters that laney would read out loud to her friends with silly drawings in the margins. and if dorothea allowed her snooping eyes to stray to the bottom, where it said "love, mom" in curly cursive with doodled hearts around it, dorothea would get so sad that she couldnt even eat.

to this day, everyone thought laney was great and pretty and smart, but dorothea knew the truth. she might pretend to be nice, but for as long as dorothea could remember, laney would give her crusty-weird looks. as in every single time the girl looked at dorothea, it was like she had something on her face.

she was rotting in all that beauty, and someday the rest of the world would see what dorothea saw.

"gum?" laney held out a pack of doublemint with her perfectly arched eyebrows raised.

"no, thanks," dorothea mumbled, and turned her attention to the front of the room, as mrs adams came in and asked for homework. we passed our papers forward, and she started talking about random stuff. everyone began taking notes on their school-issued laptops, and colton sparks gave dorothea a chin nod from his desk in the corner.

dorothea smiled and looked down at her computer. colton was nice. she talked to him for like a solid two weeks at the beginning of the year, and that turned out to be meh. which kind of summed up the whole collective dating history of dorothea: meh.

sunday always said dorothea was always browsing but never buying. and she ended up being right. but dorothea's tiny propensity for two week relationships really messed with prom potential. dorothea wants to go with someone who made her breath catch and her heart flutter, but who was even left in this school that she hadn't considered.

technically she had a prom date; she was going with sunday, its just . . going to prom with her bestfriend kind of felt like a massive fail. dorothea knew they would have a good time—but prom was supposed to be the principals of high school romance.

it was supposed to be poster-board promposals, matching corsages, speechless awe over the way you looked in your dress, and sweet kisses under the cheesy disco ball.

andrew mcarthy and molly ringwald pretty in pinky sort of shit.

suddenly, dorothea's phone buzzed.

sunday 😈
i have BIG tea.

dorothea looked over at her, but she appeared to be listening to mrs adams, she glanced at the teacher before responding.

thea 🤑
spill it.

sunday 😈
fyi, i got it from katie via text

thea 🤑
so it might not be true, got it.

the bell rang, so dorothea grabbed her stuff and shoved it into her backpack, and sunday and her began walking to their lockers.

"before i tell you everything, you have to promise not to get all worked up before you hear everything."

"oh my god," dorothea's stomach stress-dropped and asked "what happened?"

the girls turned down the wing, and before dorothea had the chance to even look at sunday, she saw him walking towards her.

michael fucking young.

"and—theres my tea," sunday said, but dorothea wasnt listening.

people bumped off dorothea and went around her, but she just stood there and stared. he looked the same, only taller, broader and more attractive (if that was even possible).

her childhood crush moved in slow motion, with tiny blue birds chirping and flitting their wings around his as his golden hair blew in a sparkling breeze.

dorothea's heart practically stopped.

michael had lived down the street when they were little and he had been everything to dorothea. shes loved him for as long as she can remember.

he has always been next level amazing. smart, sophisticated, and dreamier than any other boy ever. he would run around with the neighborhood kids (dorothea, matt and his brothers chris and nick, the potter boys on the corner, and sunday), just doing typical neighborhood things—playing hide-and-seek, tag, touch football, ding-dong-ditching, etc. but while the triplets and the potter boys enjoyed things like flinging mud into dorothea's hair because it made her scream, michael had been doing things like identifying leaves, reading thick books, and not joining in on their torture.

dorothea's brain cued up "someone like you," and the song started over from the beginning.

he was wearing khakis and a nice, thick black shirt, the kind of outfit that showed he knew he looked good, but also didnt spend too much time on fashion. his hair was thick and blond and styled the same as his clothes—intentionally casual.

he must've sensed a stalker in his mindset, because the slo-mo stopped, the birds disappeared, and he looked right at her.

"thea?"

dorothea was beyond happy that she had taken the time to apply lipstick on that morning. clearly the cosmos had known michael would be appearing before her that day.

"girl, chill." sunday said between her teeth, but dorothea was helpless to stop the whole-face smile that broke free as she said, "michael young?"

michael came over and wrapped dorothea in a hug, and she let her hands slide over his shoulders.

oh my god! oh my god!

dorothea's stomach went wild as she felt his fingers on her back, and she realized they could very well be having their meet-cute.

dorothea was dressed for it, he was beautiful. could this moment be more perfect? she made eye contact with sunday, who was slowly shaking her head, but it didnt matter.

michael was back.

he smelled so good—so, so good—and she wanted to catalogue every detail of this moment. the soft, worn-in-feel of his shirt under her palms, the breadth of his shoulders, the golden skin of his neck, scant centimeters away from her face as she hugged him back.

was it wrong for her to close her eyes and take a deep brea—

"oof." someone bumped into us, hard, destroying the hug. dorothea was shoved into, then away from michael, and as she turned around, she saw who it was.

"matt!" she said, irritated that he ruined their moment, but so unbelievably happy still that she beamed at him anyway. she was incapable of not smiling. "you should really watch where youre going."

matt's eyebrows crinkled together. "yeah . . . ?"

he was watching her, probably wondering why she was smiling instead of going ballistic over the packing tape incident. he looked like someone waiting for the punchline, and his confusion kicked up her happiness level to an even higher amount.

"yeah, you big doof," she laughed "you could really hurt somebody."

matt narrowed his eyes, talking slower, "sorry—i was talking to carson and doing the extremely difficult backwards-walking thing. but enough about me. how was your drive to school?"

she knew he wanted to hear all the details, like how long it had taken her to remove the piece of tape or the fact that she had broken two freshly manicured nails, but she wasnt about to give that aggravatior that satisfaction.

"really, really great! thanks for asking" dorothea gave matt a fake smile.

"matthew," michael did a bro handshake with matt and said, "you were right on about the biology teacher."

"its because you sat by me. she hates me." matt grinned, and started talking, but she ignored that absolute tool and focused on michael. he was just as charming as she remembered, only now he had a slight sourthern drawl.

dorothea cross her arms and practically melted into a puddle as she listened.

sunday, who dorothea had completely forgot about, nudged dorothea with her elbow and whispered, "chill out, youe drooling all over yourself."

dorothea rolled her eyes and completely ignored her.

"hey listen." matt hitched his backpack on his shoulder and pointed to michael. "remember ryan clark?"

"of course, first baseman right?"

"exactly," matt lowered his voice. "ryno is throwing a party tomorrow at his dads—you should totally come."

dorothea tried to keep her expression neutral as she listened to matt ask her michael to go to a party. well, matt did hang out with the guys that michael used to know, but still. were they best friends all of a sudden?

that wouldnt be good for dorothea. couldnt be.

because matt sturniolo got off on messing with dorothea. he always had. in elementary, matt was the guy who had put a frog in her barbie dreamhouse and a decapitated lawn gnomes severed head in her homemade little free library.

in middle school, he was the guy who thought it would be absolutely hilarious to pretend he didnt see her lying out, and then "accidentally" spray the hose right over her until she screamed.

and now, in high school, he was the guy who made it his mission to harass dorothea daily over the spot. of course, she had grown a backbone since they were kids, so technically she was now the girl who yelled over the fence when his jock friends were over and they were being rowdy.

"sounds good," michael said, and dorothea wondered what he would look like in a cowboy hat and a flannel shirt.

"ill text you the details, i gotta go. if im late to my class ive got detention for sure." matt turned and started jogging the other direction with a yell. "see you later guys!"

michael watched matt disappear, before looking down at dorothea and drawling, "i didnt get to ask. is it casual dress?"

"what? um, the party?" like she had any idea what they wore to jockstrap parties. "probably?"

"ill ask matthew."

"cool." she worked to give him a top-shelf smile, even though she was dying inside over the fact that matt had ruined their meet-cute.

"ive gotta run too," he said, but added "i cant wait to catch up though!"

take me with you to the party then! dorothea internally yelled.

the warning bell rang, and be pointed up at the speaker "this is me, see yall later!"

he went the other direction, and sunday and i started walking, i said, "i cant believe matt didnt invite us to the party."

she gave dorothea a side eye. "do you even know who ryno is?"

"no, but thats besides the point. he invited michael right in front of us. its common courtesy that he should invite us too."

"but you hate matt." sunday said, confused.

"so?"

"so why would you want him to invite you anywhere?"

dorothea sighed, "his rudeness just pisses me off."

"well i for one, am glad he didnt, because i dont want to go to that party. ive been to rynos and theyre all about beer bongs, fireball, and that never-have-i-ever immature stuff."

sunday used to hang out with the popular kids before she quit volleyball, so she "partied" a little bit before we became friends. "but—"

"listen." sunday stopped walking and grabbed dorotheas arm to stop her from walking too. "thats what i was going to tell you. kate said he lives next door to laney, and apparently theyve been talking for a few weeks now."

"laney? laney morgan?" dorothea groaned. "rumor has it that him and laney are almost official" dorothea's heart dropped all the way down to her stomach.

that girl had everything shes ever wanted, she couldnt have him, damnit.

the thought of them together made dorotheas throat tighten, and her head hurt.

it would crush her.

sunday looked at her like she knew exactly what dorothea was thinking. "michael young is not your racing-to-the-train-station guy. got it?"

"but technically they aren't official yet, so . . ."

they started walking again, dodging bodies as they made their way to their lockers. they were most definitely going to be late to class, but they could care less. especially dorothea.

"seriously, dont be that girl." she gave dorothea a motherly scowl. "that right there with michael was not your meet-cute."

"michael young is fair game until i hear an official proclamation." dorothea smiled brightly.

"i cant talk to you when youre like this." sunday sighed.

"like what? happy? excited? hopeful?" dorothea practically wanted to skip down the hall singing paper rings.

"delusional."

BROOKLYN'S NOTES !

do we fw long chapters or short chapters?
also yay first official chapter!!

word count: 3715

trust matthew will be making more of an appearance soon 😈😈