Another Broken Smile

31- Falling somewhere safe

"Oh my god! You should totally read this book. It's so amazing, I couldn't put it down for a second. So this book starts with the guy attending the funeral and you don't understand what is going on but later everything starts to make sense..." Adeline blabbered beside me, her eyes wide in excitement as she told me about a book that she had recently read on Wattpad. I had stopped listening to her halfway through her monologue as I sleepily arranged the shitload of books in my locker.

It is back to school morning and it wasn't a surprise that I was grumpy and moody. I had forgotten my language assignment on my desk in the rush of the morning and I had a bad intuition that the teacher wasn't gonna let me off the hook today.

"You even listening to me?" she asks me next snapping her two fingers in front of my face to grab my attention

"Yeah...yeah" I mumble and nod along to whatever she is saying. She frowns knowing too well that I am lying. I stifle another yawn and curse myself for not sleeping earlier when Adeline beckons me to look towards the entrance of the block.

"I'll leave you two lovebirds alone" she tells me and gives me a tight lipped smile before exiting to her second class for the day. I smile at Daniel who approaches me near my locker despite my dampening mood. We just had one period till now but our teachers had already put a damper on today by telling us how unprepared we are for our upcoming semester exams.

"Good morning babe" Daniel greets sweetly and I smile back widely at him. He holds a bunch of some kind of flowers behind his back and I give him a questioning glance.

"I got these for you" he says and holds the bunch of pink roses forward so I can take them. I look gratefully at him and adorn the roses carefully in my locker.

"Thank you" I tell him, leaning forward and planting a soft kiss on his cheek, to show my appreciation.

"You are welcome, I know how much you love roses, c'mon every girl loves roses, so I thought I'd brighten this gloomy Monday for you" he tells me with a shy smile, and for a fraction of a second my smile slips, but not wanting to make him feel bad, pull a wider and faker smile. I loved the roses until he said that he got me roses because he thought they're my favorite just like any other girl. It doesn't matter what flower he gets me and I don't hate roses, it's just that my favorite flowers are lilies and he knows that. Or maybe knew that because it isn't just flowers but there is something that tells me it's us who are slipping away.Thinking about this only strengthens the hard-hitting headache I woke up with today.

Or these might just stupid thoughts in my head due to the lack of coffee in my system.

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Maybe it's just me being stupid with the whole flowers thing in the morning because I swear Daniel makes it up to me when he buys me a wonderful box of Christmas cookies from the cafeteria

"Here" he says offering me the wonderful delight. I open the box in anticipation and smile gleefully at the various colorful cookies shaped in red and green to welcome the upcoming event of Christmas.

I pick a gingerbread cookie which is adorned with colorful decorations and pass the box around so everyone can share.

Everyone is joking around happily as we sit around our usual lunch table talking excitedly about the upcoming festivities. We have only two weeks of school before winter holidays and I couldn't be less grateful. The teachers have been painfully annoying and cranky, more so than usual, since we returned from our camping trip and have been constantly complaining about the lack of revision we have done. We have semester exams by the end of December before winter break and everyone is stressing out. I also need to sort out my schedules to ace my exams but for now I am not ready to listen to the teachers yelling at us for being careless and not doing any amount of studying during our small break. For heaven's sake we went for a camping trip not a library tour around the world!