Frenemies

6

I follow Alex to the front of my father's estate. We end up walking down the sidewalk, and I start to feel myself relax since there aren't any alarms, and people aren’t running after us. Alex stops in front of a motorcycle.

"Really?" I ask, and he turns to look at me, narrowing his eyes. "You just want to seem like a generic bad boy, don't you?"

He glares at me. "And you really don't know when to stop talking. Just get on." He hands me a helmet, and I get on the back after he does. Once he has his helmet on, he drives away from the curb. My hands immediately wrap around his waist, and I cringe at the knee jerk reaction, but I don't let go.

For a teenager, he seems to be a pretty good driver, so I relax and look around. He drives towards the center of town, and stops at a car shop. "So you do work here." I say as I pull off the helmet.

"No, I don't." He takes the helmet from me, and carries it inside. I follow after him, inspecting the inside. It smells like motor oil and old men. Not the best mixture of smells. Alex tosses the helmet at the guy behind the register, and they catch it.

"Hey, who's the girl?" They ask, putting the helmet down on the counter. He seems to be in his thirties. He doesn't have any grey, but he's definitely older than us. 

Alex glares at him. "What's it to you? I didn't bring her here to talk to you." The guy chuckles and shakes his head.

"Don't fall for his act. He seems like an asshole, but he isn't." The guy says. "I'm Gregory, but you can call me Greg." He walks to the side of the counter we're on and holds out his hand for me to shake.

I put my hand in his and shake it. "Hello Greg, I'm Lelia." 

Greg looks at Alex with a teasing smile. "Lelia, huh?" Before I can say anything, Alex grabs my wrist and drags me away. "You should bring her somewhere else, Alex, you should treat her!" Greg yells after us, chuckling the whole time. 

I smile, he seems very friendly. Alex looks at me and glares at me. "Why are you smiling?"

I put a hand over my mouth. "Oh, no reason." I push the smile away and he stops dragging me. "So, what are we doing?" I ask, noticing he's just kind of standing there.

Alex looks at the car parts around him. We're now standing in the back of the store. "Well, I didn't think you'd actually say you wanted to sneak out, so I don't really know." He lifts his head to look up at me, and I look at him. 

Despite holding it back, I end up laughing, and he even ends up chuckling a bit. "Well, maybe we could go get some ice cream?" I suggest, and Alex thinks about it for a second.

He tosses his keys and catches them. "Sounds good to me. Let's take a walk to it though. I don't really need to be wasting gas."

"That's fine with me." I say, walking next to him as we head back out.

Before Greg says anything, Alex glares at him. "Don't even think about it." He says. Greg just chuckles, and waves goodbye. I smile and wave back. "Why do you keep smiling at him?"

I look at Alex, and he looks slightly angry. "I smiled at you when I first met you, didn't I?"

Alex rolls his eyes, then looks at me sideways. "That was a fake smile. You are smiling at him for real."

He walks slowly to keep up with my pace. "Well, you really didn't seem like you wanted to talk to me, so I probably put on a smile to cover my frustration. Greg seems like a pleasant and cheerful person, so it was easy to smile at him. Smiling is contagious, you know."

We walk down the sidewalk, and Alex occasionally looks around. Maybe he's paranoid that someone will see us and rat me out. He eventually sighs. "I didn't want to talk to you when I met you because I figured you were fake. Like one of those girls that pretends to be everybody's friend, but actually hates all of them."