The Redhead, and The Dreamer.

I guess Ethan liked being overly melodramatic, because that night when I heard something tapping against my window, I just assumed it was the tree until I glanced over randomly to see him sitting there looking at me. I gasped, and he waved, clearly amused by how easily his sudden presence had started me. I climbed up from my desk, shutting off my computer screen in the process then walked over to the window and flung it open.

"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" I ranted. "Do have any clue what my mother would do to you, or me for that matter if she came up here and caught a teenage boy sneaking around my window?"

"I think I'd rather not know actually," he said. He climbed through the window and into my room uninvited. I suddenly felt vulnerable with him there invading my personal space, but my body was still quick to react, kicking a bra I'd left out I don't know how long before under my bed without even really thinking about it all that much. "Anyone who raised you had to be one scary person."

"Not exactly," I mumbled. My mother was a total sweetheart unless I did something to make her act otherwise, like sneak out my window in the middle of the night to go to some random music festival and not get back in until long after midnight and my curfew.

Ethan shook his head quickly then shrugged, not knowing how to respond. He wasted no time trying to get 'to the heart of things' as we stood there, in the middle of my room nonchalantly, like it was something we did every night. "So, what up with you avoiding more than usual all of a sudden?"

"Well," I said. My tongue felt thick and heavy in my mouth, but maybe that was just because I was nervous? "You can't be serious. I mean, have you looked at me lately. I'm just as synthetic and fake as I've always been."

"So," Ethan chuckled. "I'm not asking to marry you or anything. Music is different. With music, everything changes. It makes people look at things differently, how we want them to."

"I know," I muttered. "That's one of things I love about it so much." I was lying. I'd never even really thought of music in that sort of sense. I always wrote for myself, and just hoped on some slight chance that someone else would like what I had to say too.

"I can play and you can write," he said simply. "You know how powerful we could be if we were performing together?"

"No."

"Do you want to know?" He looked down at me with this strange, childlike gleam in his eye. I felt so small, and so important at the same time.

"I guess," I said. "But what would we...I write about? I've never written a duet before."

"Anything," Ethan threw his hands up in the air for extra emphasis. "You're a beautiful girl, Skylar. No one can tell you what to do."

I bit my lip. "No one's ever called me beautiful before other than my mother." That was a lie. He had called me beautiful too, so long ago it was more like a made up fairytale than a memory. I silently wondered where I would've been if he'd never dumped me and moved on to bigger and better things without ever really looking back.

"I don't see why not," Ethan took my hand, for real this time and smiled. His smile was so crooked, so devious. I couldn't trust it even a little bit, but I wanted to. "I've thought you were for the longest time." Was it just me or was he stepping closer and closer? Now his head was leaning down and his lips were so close. We were breathing each other's air. "I don't even know why you're still single at this point."

Because I want you. The thought flashed easily into my head, but I quickly shook it off.

"I don't know either," I whispered. I moved a little bit closer, but waited for him to close the gap between us.

"Well, even I'd be lucky to have someone like you." And then, suddenly, he'd pulled away, dropped my hand, and was halfway out my window again. "So, practice at my place tomorrow at five? Crystal has plans with her family. We can get to the point without being bothered."

I nodded.

What was 'the point'? Was it music...or...something else?