The Stages of Loving You

05.

"Me too," she replies, not knowing where to put her eyes. It was as if he was searching right through to her soul, and she couldn't bring herself to stare at him too long just in case he saw her vulnerabilities (like how he'd grown on her since the day I met in him on Cora's ranch) and how (he'd be brave enough to ask her to meet here at the movies...as friends. Just friends. Only friends, but it seemed to mpre than that. As if the two teenages were drawing lines in sand, one area was friendship. Completely playnonic, and to be honest, Evie always wanted more friends. A whole tribe, but with Jacob, it was different. Not that she didn't want to Jacob to fit into her tribe. But something else. And her side of the beach—was where fates were sealed. Here, they were in the grey, therething between the lines of friendship, wondering if they will blossom into love.

Worldlessly, Evie could feel all these vulnerabilities, and she  was scared he'd see just how much, the girl had grown to....like him, and he'd shatter them like glass—or if the worst happened, he'd maybe shatter her with his own vulnerabilities, too.

"How have you been?" he asks, stuffing his hand into his front pocket of his jeans. Ahead him the movie was starting with intro trailers, the sound blasting through the speakers. Evie whispers a silent prey for her heart to slow down. Like now, at this very second, so the girl will at least,  have a pathetic excuse to not explore Jacob with her gaze any longer than she already has.

Up this close, and personal, he was still two years younger than her, still annoyingly shy, like her, but he appeared buffer. Not because he'd been gullffing down bakes Cora had cooked up in those two months, but because he'd been working out, and getting shredded.

Evie thinks he looks like a sculpture made from clay by an artist's effectless crafted hands—his hands, she had a weird obsession with them. They were pale, warm, and when they were warm, she could see his freckles and veins. Look away.

"Okay," she lies.

She sees the definition in his cheekbones, the torn muscle hiding under his drawstring hoodie, and his legs...his legs were pure muscle. Evie was having a hard time not thinking about how'd she''d wrap herself around him, with his lips pressed to her neck, behind the big screen movie. She looks down at the ground–seeing discarded popcorn on the grey carpet of the movie theater, and blushes in the dark.

No. Don't do this now, she thinks. Oh, but you want to, was the small voice in the back of her mind, swaying her so. She pushes it away by clearing in my mind—thinking of the movie, the black and white scenes flashing against her eyes—and that gives the redhead boy enough to ask her, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Evie says softly.  She watches him his knee  bounce up and down—from nerves maybe?

His was inches away from her own, and Evie  sees him rub nervously at the back of his neck before he lifted his cap from his head and set it down beside him, as his attention turned to the movie. It was starting. And Evie was wondering if she managed to fill in the awkward silence.

"Never mind, Evie. I'll tell you once the movie is at the best part?"

She looks at him—the redhead boy—really looks at him. She wants to know now. And it's like an puzzle she cannot figure out. What did this redhead boy want from her?

But she had two hours of screen time to stew over it. And two hours to give Jacob the eyes of adornment when he laughs, chuckles and eats popcorn...And she has two hours to be driven mad when he gingery lingers his arm over her shoulder, she smells horses on him again, popcorn and something delightful of Jacob himself.

Two hours, at this rate would feel like a whole lifetime.

Tell me now.

He does not.