How To Love✓

25.

Lucien

"We were escorting an invalid elderly to the hospital sir," I say for the umpteenth time, completely annoyed. I've been repeating this for the past five minutes, but the Office of Administrations has yet to believe my reason for arriving to class later than 9:15am. I am have no clue if they got to Amara yet.

"No one actually says those things again Mr. King," the Dean announces. This entire conversation was completely ridiculous. For the past hour, I am being held captive in the OA's room being questioned against my will.

No one spoke further. Mr. Joseph eyes me suspiciously and I didn't even bother to play the stupid staring contest he wanted to play.

All I wanted to do is be with Amara. To console her, hold her hand, play with her hair, make sure that she is alright. This was far from that.

No, this was close to upsetting.

"Can I just go if you don't have any more of your dumb questions to ask? How about you just ask Amara Belle about the situation. She was there too," I grunt and he raised an eyebrow.

"Miss Belle will surely be contacted I assure you. Just please, don't be late to another class in the future. I don't want to have to let you go. Keep up your GPA. You are one of my best students here," he fakes a smile and I snort inwardly.

Asshole.

I hastily push my chair back and look at him one last time. "I can't promise you anything," the rest of the sentence was said lowly, "but I will promise you this. I know Amara is....not too well and that she can't function properly on her own. So if there is one person that you want to keep an eye on her.....it should be me," I say. Mr. Joseph didn't question the statement, he only nodded.

I walked out of the room and closed the door with a bang. I kept thinking about her.

With her, it was a new territory I have never navigated on before. Everything was so strong, so quick that my instincts fought between running away and staying; to push away my inner thoughts and deepest feelings to the back of my head and act upon the delinquent I was.

With her, she made me feel different. Just like I had seen my maman and my papa act so many years before they got divorced.

She loved my father more than anything. She looked at him with twinkles in her eyes and he looked at her like she was his entire world. I looked up to them, wanting their love.

I wanted a family, a family the way we al were before....before my father separated himself from us. In my teenaged years I wanted a complete distraction, A distraction from all the pain that collected in my heart, my soul. I invested in a dominant and I was the submissive. I invested myself with so much trouble, just to endure pain mixed with joy and putting myself in that position was the only decision I could've made so many years back.

My mother tried to hide the pain behind her smiles and laughs, whilst I tried to hide the pain behind pleasure and sex and violence. I never understood it; how you could find love so beautiful and rare and give it up in the blink of an eye, just like my father did to his family.

I didn't understand the concept of the four letter word myself; but Amara changed that. It's like she fixed something deep and dark inside me, something that I yearned to be more like.

My own person.

Maybe the reason this scares me so much is because I am afraid of hurting her. I am afraid of holding her between my fingers and dropping her to the cold hard ground, and her fragile self breaks into millennia. Amara didn't make me feel ordinary. She made me feel more.

In that moment, everything I felt was so tall; like I would explode if my lips didn't communicate with hers. Or if my fingers didn't find her delicate skin and our hearts didn't find each other's.

I couldn't remember the last time a girl made me so nervous to be near to her. As I entered my shared room with Finn, I flop unto the bed, the pillows taking up majority of the space. My mind inevitably wandered back to Amara. The way her eyes filled with concern when she saw the blood flowing out of the deep gashes on my palms, the way she comforts my weak self, the way she quivers when we were met with the functionless old man, the way she is always concerned about the world around her, more than herself. She was something and I wanted her.

"Hey, man," Finn hollas to me and walks over to his bed, taking a seat facing me.

"I heard what happened, the accident, everything. I just got off the phone with Syl. Amara is okay," he says and a wash of relief signals through my veins. She was okay and that was all that matters.

"So, what's going on?" he eyes me intently for any suspicious actions.

I only shrug. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" he questions.

I sigh and run a hand through my messy, curly hair. "Amara.....s-s-s-she's been on my mind ever since."

"You meet girls all the time. You never have to think about them," he chuckles and I furiously shake my head.

"This one's different. I can't stop thinking about her."

"So? What are you gonna do about it?"

I stare at the pale wall in thought. She was everything I have, everything I thought about, everything I wish that could just disappear so I wouldn't cause pain. She was too perfect, too good. Too kind and caring, too extraordinary for me.

"I feel myself caving," was my only answer.

"Stop constructing heavy built walls around your heart and actually try to let someone break them down," and with that, I knew she was my wrecking ball.

***

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