A Simple Song for Lori
supermarket thunder.

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The auditorium was a sea of dark graduation gowns – one particular gown was lying on the stage after George Zarena decided to yank it off and show off the tight white jumpsuit he was wearing underneath. Being the last person called to get his diploma, he appointed it to himself to finish the ceremony with pizazz.

Despite the teachers telling everyone not to throw their caps into the air during graduation practice, dark caps were scattered across the floors and seats. The orchestra played Pomp and Circumstance as colourful confetti poured from the ceiling. Lori Finney happily clutched her diploma in her hand as she hugged her parents, glancing at the rest of her graduating class with a large smile on her face as her sister went trigger happy with the camera.

When Lori was finally released from her father’s possessive hold, someone grabbed her shoulder and she was spun around to face her best friend, Dawn Rainer. “You’re going to the party, right?!” Dawn yelled through all the noise, her graduation cap slowly slipping off her copper head.

“Of course!” Lori yelled back, yanking her tassel back to keep her cap fixed on her head.

“Good!” Dawn said, linking their arms together. They found two empty seats and sat down, facing the sprawling mass of people in the room. Dawn rested her head on Lori’s shoulder and sighed heavily, “I can’t believe it. We just graduated. It’s over.”

“Dawn, don’t start,” Lori warned. “You’ve always said it’s been hell…”

“A mandatory hell,” Dawn corrected.

“Yeah, so – ”

“Loretta?”

Lori looked back at the sound of her name, mostly because there was only one other person that called her that besides her parents, and they only called her that when they were mad, and she never thought that one person would actually try to talk to her at graduation night.

“N-Nicholas?” she said, obvious surprise in her voice as she stood up and faced his tall frame. She noticed his black sneakers jutting out from underneath his graduation gown, something Ms. Crossman had told him not to do for graduation night. She saw that the colourful silicone wristbands that she had gotten used to still adorned his right wrist. Dawn glanced back at him and rolled her eyes before quietly leaving the two alone.

“You sound surprised,” he said, in that… confusing tone of his. She never knew if he was mocking her or not sometimes.

“Oh, yeah, duh,” she said, trying to be as smooth as possible. “How was I supposed to know I would be talking to my lab partner on graduation night? ”

“I’ve been your only science partner since Freshman year,” he said, his voice slow, and Lori almost thought it sound strained – but she quickly disregarded that thought because Nicholas was the epitome of cool. She never saw him mad or frustrated. She was always the one stressing over the dissected frogs in Bio, the hydrochloric acid in Chem, the formulas in Physics, and well… basically, everything. “I think I’m above being an acquaintance to you,” he finished.

“I never said you were one.”

“You implied it.”

“I wasn’t implying anything.”

Nicholas sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Four years and you’re still a bad liar.”

“No, it’s not that – I’m just saying that you’re not the kind of person to really approach people, you know?”

“Mhm…”

“So the last thing I’ll ever remember from Nicholas Arden was that he called me a liar…” Lori scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her and exaggeratedly looking away from him. “I can’t wait to tell my grandkids about you.”

Surprisingly, all he did was grin.

Then suddenly, there was an awkward silence between them. Nicholas kept his dark green eyes fixed on her as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her hands nervously crossed behind her back. It looked like he wanted to say something, and she let out a deep breath and tried to control the pumping in her chest. It was strange, realizing it was probably going to be the last time they’d see each other… funny how those kind of things hit you.

Lori looked past his shoulder to see people filing out of the auditorium, and she saw Dawn standing beside her parents, waving for her to hurry up. “Well, uh, Nicholas – “

She started to step around him when suddenly, he filled in the space between them, and she found herself in his arms while strands of his dark, honey ginger hair tickled her nose. She bit her lip to control a sneeze and slowly, she lifted her arms and folded them behind his back, wondering why he was holding on for so long. She had hugged a lot of people after their ceremony, but this was getting a little weird… yet at the same time, not weird.

She felt him step back, but before he did entirely, he paused when his lips stopped beside her ear, and she could feel his warm, nervous breath sending chills down her neck.

“I have a song for you.”

She stepped back, her hands on his shoulders, a quizzical look on her face. “What?”

He just gave her a vague smile before he stepped back to give her way to leave.

“Uh, thanks, I guess?” she said, very confused, and lamely patted him on the shoulder (it was the only thing she could think of doing) before heading off to Dawn, who grabbed her hand and started dragging her out of the auditorium.

“What took you so long?” she asked, dodging a pair of parents as she glanced back at Nicholas.

Lori shook her head, still confused about what just happened. She let Dawn drag her out of the auditorium only before she looked back and took one last glance at Nicholas. He wasn’t a party person, so he probably wouldn’t be at the party, so it was the last time she’d see her strange science partner.

He was leaning against a row of seats, one foot over the other, with the same calm face he had for every science period, and the same calm face he had whenever he would look up at her and greet her a good morning/afternoon before every class. His mother was talking animatedly to another parent while he smiled politely every time she would motion to him.

Maybe she had been staring too hard, maybe she was sending subconscious, psychological waves, because he slowly turned his face to the side, and their eyes met one last time, the dark green in his catching hers before he looked away and closed his eyes in thought.

Lori sighed as a flush formed in her cheeks. Too bad he was gay.

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“Milk… orange juice… mayonnaise…”

Lori read through the list of items her mother had told her to buy, picking out each required item from an aisle as she passed by. She was already halfway through her Fall term in college, and she was enjoying the freedom and the long breaks college gave her. Of course, her mother took this as time for her to do random errands now that she had a car. She hummed with the familiar song playing on the supermarket’s speakers as she picked up a carton of eggs.

“Alright, we have a new song for you from a fairly new artist,” the radio DJ’s obnoxious voice announced on the speakers.

Lori turned her cart for the canned goods aisle, picking out the different kinds her mom had written down… which was a lot of SPAM.

“It’s our artist’s first single, released last July, and after only a few weeks, the song started climbing – no, racing up the Billboard Hot 100,” the radio DJ continued. “It’s still in the number one spot, for the fourth week in a row.”

“Play the song, already,” Lori muttered. She hated it when radio DJs just went on and on because they liked the sound of their own voices.

As if reading her mind, the radio DJ cut his useless ramble short. “Alright, here’s what you’ve all been waiting for! A Simple Song for Lori!”

Lori stopped at the sound of her name and almost immediately, she felt a smile etch on her lips. It was so cool to share a name in a famous song; it added a personal touch to it and it was a lot easier to relate to. If she felt like it, she could imagine the singer writing it just for her – it was a plus if the singer was cute. She made sure to look up on some images on Google once she got home.

There was short silence until a guitar started to play a soft, simple melody, then it was joined by a slow piano riff. Seconds after, a boy’s mellow, tender voice joined the song, perfectly matching the piano’s soft notes… a voice she found strangely familiar, yet at the same time, so distant.

It didn’t take that long,
for me to write this song,
because I only realized after I left her,
after the last glance I had taken,
after the steps I had wanted to fill but never did,
that I had it written all along.

It feels like I’m miles away,
but I’ve always been beside you,
for so long, right beside you,
waiting for the chance to say,
just how pretty you look today.

Lori smiled to herself, listening to the song as that warm, gushy feeling started blossoming in her empty stomach. This song was pulling something in her heart. It was just too sweet; the kind of song you’d want a guy to write for you. Or maybe that gushing feeling meant something else… maybe she needed to eat something. Yeah, that was probably it. She raced for the check out lane while the song finished.

Because I have a simple song for Lori,
and although she’ll never understand me,
and all the things I want to say,
I’d still like for her to hear it,
and hope to take her breath away.

The song ended with the guitar and slowly faded away until the radio DJ was back. “Now, wasn’t that a sweet song? Not only do I have a ton of messages asking me to replay it, but I hear this song has gotten a Grammy nod! Congrats to its artist, Nicholas Arden!”

SCRREEEEECCCH!!

There was the unmistakable noise of a shopping cart slamming into a metal aisle, and the thunder of cereal boxes falling off the shelves and scattering across the floor. There was a collective wince from everyone in the supermarket as they waited for any signs of life beneath the pile of Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Rice Krispies.

Lori poked her head out from under a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. “Nicholas?!”

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author note.

I knowwww. What am I doing? I already have two stories in progress and I already started a new one?!

Like most of the female population, I got addicted to the song Hey There Delilah, and well, after listening to it over and over again, the idea for this story popped up! Wouldn’t you just love it if a famous singer dedicated a song to you? I know I would! I wrote the lyrics up there by myself, drawing inspiration from the song I just mentioned, John Mayer, and Matt Costa. ( :