A/N: i started this story sooooo long ago before I started other things and it fell by the way side but now i think I want to continue it after I reread the prologue and first chapter because i love the main characters.

Let me know what you think...PLEASE REVIEW!!

NEW EDITED VERSION!

Inconspicuous

Mia…

The thing is I work very hard at this. A perfect balance until he came into the picture. I was never invisible or a loser per say but I was inconspicuous. You see it all started, my calculated act, the middle slash end of my sophomore year when my friends started drifting. Back then I wasn’t exactly the bell of the ball—always the one with the pretty face but behind that there was the overweight body holding me back.

They, along with my best friend since fifth grade, were all attending prom with less than popular but decent guys. And I wasn’t. It wasn’t jealousy, I honestly didn’t want to go—too fat. Even though I designed a few of my closest friends perfect dresses months earlier.

But they didn’t even ask if I wanted to come to a dressmaker for an appraisal on the dresses—that I’d slaved over with a stick of charcoal and…well, you get the idea—before they had dates.

Then, the month before prom all contact stopped. Ignored texts, calls, and Facebook messages included—I was so hurt. It was like they all had a meeting and decided to cut me out. About a week later I bounced back, er not exactly, I missed two weeks because I became catatonic from the shock. I had a game plan. I didn’t want them back but I wanted them to know I wouldn’t curl up into a ball and regress back to childhood.

In the four months until the next school year I went from plus sizes to a size three in Abercrombie jeans—not an easy feat considering I am half black, and as much as I may hate it, have hips. I grew out and high-lighted my hair.

I became in a sense pretty, which was pressed into my brain by a couple admirers who I’d crushed with my ice-bitch attitude (which I reserved for the “unwanted” who most people were anyway) by the second week of school. I buried my self in school work, reading, designing, and finding other friends outside of school because the ones there obviously couldn’t be trusted.

I hung with my older cousin’s crowd—wild bunch they are—on the weekends and ignored everyone else Monday through Friday afternoon. During my junior year I high-tailed it out of my suburban village and into the city, Chicago, by four o’clock on Fridays faithfully. I was careful with commitments. As in I didn’t make any to anything that could change its mind about how they felt about me.

That’s probably why I had so much trouble dealing with Hayden. Because I thought I had it all under control…except I couldn’t hide from the pangs in my chest when I saw Tyler and the rest of my old crew together, without me. And that I was sick of faking everything and hiding my feelings. I went through my whole junior year, stoically, with expertise, but I wouldn’t senior year, he made sure of that.

Decisive

Hayden…

In truth I’ve never been decisive about much—I just couldn’t find the need to care. But I think that was before I saw her smile—and it wasn’t even a real smile. Something interesting must have happened in the book she was reading that last day of Study Hall last year because it was the first time I saw her mouth curve upward since sophomore year. Though I shouldn’t know that considering I didn’t know Mia until my senior year but I observed her both junior and sophomore year.

Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have as many friends if one of three things happened. They happened to get a quick glance at my thoughts, that were becoming more and more stalker-esque now-a-days, or my face became moderately disfigured. Or if my family lost its fortune; I know that’d cause a steep drop in the scale of my popularity. Only half of the guys I could trust as actual friends; the other half, I was convinced, only stayed for the girls.

Can’t say I blame them—money and looks draw high school girls like a moth to a flame. I won’t be high and mighty either—I know I’ve enjoyed it because I’ve slept with my fare share of gold-diggers and I’ve even dated some. Far from a saint but hey, we’re all sinners right?

Mia, she just seemed so detached. It bothered me how someone could be that cold, dead to the world and not naturally. Those girls—the ones that giggle when she walks by, who thought they had enough stature to leave her—caused it. I’ve always wanted to be a psychologist, to listen to people’s problems if nothing else—so for a while I convinced myself I just wanted to get inside her head. After that glimpse of a smile, watching her bright blue-green eyes twinkle as she read some book in class that day made it obvious to me.

I wanted Mia, although I wasn’t aware of the extent of it, I became determined and decisive, if you will. I hate to say it because I’m not that kind of guy. The kind who falls for his high school sweetheart with the naïve belief that it could actually last. But, getting to Mia, it tormented me all summer.

Three months surfing in SoCal with my older brother and cousins—a summer house all to us—and I all I could think about was her. Mia and her ocean colored eyes, sandy long brown hair, and smooth golden brown skin sprinkled with copper freckles. I lost myself in surfing, skating around the beach, and thinking of her.

I remember one night I was half drunk on water bottles filled with gin and lemonade. I walked down to the beach on a mission—I was out there for an hour and a half before Cole, Chace, and Kingsley found me collecting sea shells for her. We smoked in the backseat of my cousin’s jeep and as I passed the roach to Cole I glanced down at my shorts. I brushed the sand off and stared at the left over granules remembering the color of her hair.

I was pretty far gone by then—a man on a mission, but a bigger one than my usual.

I just needed to see that smile and how it would complete her face. She needed to be happy and I’d try of course—I had to see that smile again, at least just to get it out of my head.