"Her heart was in 2 pieces, one with her and the other with him."

Song- Montero; Lis Nas X

Marlees hand is locked in mine. We're out for a late night stroll since the chances of anyone seeing us is low. We walk around town just talking about random things before I drop her at her house.

When I get home it's just as silent as I left it. I go to my room, text Marlee goodnight and fall asleep. Connor wakes me up the next morning with an air horn that I have no idea how he got.

"You bitch." I groan, shoving a pillow over my head.

"Cameron James Taylor!" Ma scolds from the other room as Connor snickers.

"You heard that but not the air horn?!" I shout back, sitting up grumpily.

"Wake up, we have school." Connor hits me over the head with a pillow.

"Really, I didn't know?" I retort, standing up and shoving him out of my room.

When I'm done getting ready, I open my door and go downstairs where Ella is waddling around the dining room. Dad had already left for the day and Mom was about to leave.

"Morning Els" I scoop her up and kiss her cheek. She giggles and pokes my nose.

"Okay, I have to go. Make sure you're not late." Ma grabs Ella from me and kisses my cheek before going out the door. I check the time and walk into the kitchen, making some breakfast.

"Connor! Hurry your scrawny ass up!" I shout, shoveling some toast in my mouth.

"I'm coming!" He yells back, running down the stairs. When we're in the truck he immediately is glued to his phone. I glance over at him and he's blushing.

"Who are you texting?" I ask curiously, starting the truck.

"No one" he immediately shuts off his phone and looks at me with widened eyes.

"Is it a girl?!" I question, grabbing his phone and seeing a girls name at the top with a message about a date. "What date?!"

"There's no date" he seethes, grabbing the phone. "Not yet at least."

"Awe, my baby brothers got a girlfriends." I say playfully pinching his cheek and pulling out of the driveway.

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Do you want her to be?"

He goes red and looks down at his lap. "Yeah, she's awesome."

"Well if you need any advice let me know, I'm the expert." I wink, driving down the street.

"Yeah, expert at pining after the same girl your whole life." He snort, propping his feet on the dashboard.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I ask, parking the car in front of the Gardners house. Connor bites his lip and shakes his head, getting out of the truck.

"Nothing." He says quickly, climbing into the truck bed. Right after Marlee sits next to me and a wide smile makes it's way onto my face.

Connors wrong, I'm not pining anymore. I got her now and I don't plan on letting her go.

"All I'm saying is that if we're in so much debt than why can't we just make more money?!" Theo huffs, fixing his backpack.

"Inflammation dude, we learned about this in like 9th grade." I reply, rolling my eyes.

"I still don't get it though."

"If we make more money than the value of money will go down. Why is that so hard to understand for you?" Miles question, holding his bat in one hand.

"I'm with Theo on this. Who do we even owe money to?" Asher asks as we all walk onto the baseball field.

"I give up." Mikes shakes his head, throwing his bag down.

"Ladies! Would you care to stop gossiping and join us?" Our coach yells from the center of the field. Theo and I share a look and both grin.

"But did you hear coach?" I make my voice as high pitched as I can.

"Jason and Becky like totally broke up." Theo says in a girly voice. Coach grumbles something under his breath and turns away.

"If you make us have to run laps I'll murder you." Asher threatens, pointing a finger and Theo and I.

"Relax, coach loves us." Theo tells him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

"No I don't!" Coach shouts before looking back down at his clipboard.

After practice we all go to the locker room and to shower and change. Once we're done Asher gets in his car and we drop Miles off at his dads shoppe. Back at my house Theo burst in the door and we're met with Ellas loud wails.

"Is it too late to leave?" Theo whispers, reaching for the doorknob.

"Get both of your asses in here!" Marlee yells from the other room.

"Now it is." I tell Theo who flings his head back and stalks into the kitchen where Mar stands with Ella crying on her hip. "What did you do to her?"

Marlee gives me a plain expression. Baby food was on her cheek and her hair was in a messy bun but she still looked gorgeous. "I didn't do anything, she's sick."

"Where Sara?" Theo goes to the fridge and scans through it for food .

"She ran to pick El's medicine up but it's taking forever." Marlee sounds exhausted, I walk over and take Ella from her but Ella screams even louder.

"Okay, never mind." I outreach my hands and hold Ella out. Marlee sighs and grabs her, her cries die down to a small sob when Marlee holds her.

"Theo stop eating and grab her stuffed animal from upstairs." She demands, brushing a piece of hair out of her face.

"Aye aye captain." Theo salutes, running upstairs.

"Now you-" she turns to me, rocking Ella in her arms. "-make me a sandwich."

"Am I your maid?"

"No of course not." She smiles sweetly "you're my bitch, now make me a damn sandwich."

I quickly do what she tells me to when Theo runs downstairs with Ellas favorite stuffed animal which is a small pink pig. He trips over his feet and crashes to the ground with a thud.

"Ouch." He groans, handing Marlee the toy. She gives it to Ella who grabs it and calms slightly. Ma walks in a moment later with a pharmacy bag. She grabs Ella from Marlees arms and gives her the medicine.

"Thank you." She smiles at Marlee who's taking her sugar and looking at the sandwich with passion.

"No problem." Marlee nods not fully listening. She grabs the sandwich and takes a large bite before looking to me "you're a sandwich god."

"Well screw college then, I'm going to be a professional sandwich maker."

"Cam?! Can you come here for a minute?" Ma calls from upstairs a couple days later. I get off my bed and toss my phone on my bed before going down the hall to moms room.

"What's up?" I ask, spotting her sitting on her bed.

"So your fathers birthday is in a couple days." She tells me and I nod. "I got him a custom made present from a girl up in Atlanta but she can't deliver it so I was wonder if you could pick it up?"

"When?"

"This weekend." She smiles in a pleading way. "I don't want you going on your own though so I figured Theo and Marlee could go with you. I got a hotel booked for the night."

"Sure" I say casually but the thought of spending an day with Marlee in Atlanta would be great. Ma's phone dinged and she looked at it.

"That's Charlotte, Theo already has plans but she said Mar could go if she's wants to." Mom informs me when Ella starts crying from the other room. As she walks out she turns to me. "Thank you sweetheart, you're the best."

The next day after school we decided to have a cake competition. The girls were on a team, Asher, Theo and I were on a team and Connor and Grayson were on a team, Miles was our judge.

We all had aprons on and the ingredients in front of us. We stood in a line behind my kitchen island as Miles laid out the last thing we bought from the store.

"Are you ready contestants?" He asked in a show host voice. We all nod or say yes "alright. Get ready, get set, bake!"

Immediately Addie shoves me out of the way and grabs the best bowl. Marlee basically tackles Theo to get to the flour first and we all realized it was a bad idea to put the two most competitive people together.

Halfway through Theo gave up and ate the batter, Asher went to Connor and Grayson and joined their team since we didn't have enough batter left to make a cake.

"Okay, this isn't working out." Grayson tells us, shaking his head.

"What if we made one big cake?" Bri suggests, the only person here who actually read the directions.

"But how can we win if we're all working together." Marlee complains, crossing her arms.

"You don't always have to win Lee." I say, grinning at her.

"Yes I do." She deadpans.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do"

"No"

"Yes"

"No"

"Yes"

"Fine, I give up." I grumble, lightly hitting her arm.

"Okay, I won something so I'm good with the whole giant cake idea." Marlee smiles brightly, poking my cheek.

"You little sneak!"

"I wanna add the eggs!" Asher says fighting Theo for the egg carton.

"I wanna add the eggs!" Theo shouts, trying to keep the eggs in his hands.

"How about we read the instructions." Bri says meekly. Addie grabs them from her hand.

"No way, instructions are useless." She tosses them to the side.

"No they aren't."

The entire room breaks out in a million different arguments and we all end up yelling at each other. In the midst of our group wide shouting match Miles stands on the counter.

"Everyone shut up!" He barks and we all freeze, looking to him. "Thank you. You guys are acting like 3 year olds."

Theo sneakily grabs the bowl of batter and flings it onto Miles as he lectures us. It hits him right in the face and he stops talking to wipe it off.

"That's it." He mutters, grabbing a handful of flour and plopping it onto Theo's head. Connor grabs an egg and hits Asher in the head with it. Addie and Bri fling sprinkles at each other while laughing.

I sit back, enjoying the fact that I'm not involved in the food fight when something cold and wet is smeared across my face. I look to see Marlee holding a bowl of frosting in her hand.

"You're so dead." I push off the counter and chase after her. We get caught up in the middle of the fight and next thing I know we're all throwing food at each other while laughing so hard.

That is until the front door shuts.

"What in the hell is going on here?" Dad asks, setting his work shoes on the floor and taking the room in.

"Cake baking competition." Connor shrugs his shoulder, sending dad an awkward grin. Dad tuts his mouth, crossing his arms and we all look worried before his face breaks into a smile.

"Well why wasn't I invited?" He picks up some powdered sugar and throws it straight at Grayson.

We continue to throw food until Ma and Ella gets home. Ma scolds us, including dad , before making us all clean the kitchen and ourselves. Once the kitchen is more clean than it was before we started cooking and there's only a small amount of cake ingredients left, mostly in our hair, we give up.

Since our baking attempt was a fail we settled on watching a baking show instead. Marlee sat on the floor next to me with a blanket covering our legs. I placed and hand on her knee, giving it a small squeeze.

She looked over at me and smiles before yawning. It didn't take long for her to fall asleep on my shoulder and soon after I did too.