10 Days of Summer

1 Month prior

Sitting in class I glance across the classroom. Recently, ever since I started talking to him I've struggled to pay attention to the teacher. He has been here as long as I have and yet, I never noticed him. Well until drama class. I saw him waving around his hands and stuttering like crazy, disrespecting my friends yet making a good impression. I never really liked him, he was rude and disrespectful and somehow everyone still liked him. He didn't care what people thought. Well I didn't like him until now, until we ended up in the same class. I'm not fond of his views, his name, or his ungodly stutter. But I don't hate him. As I said I notice him from across the room. I stare for far too long, he looks up and looks at me funny, then he smiles. This crazy, knowing smile. He squints his eyes and nods his head towards the teacher signaling me to look back at her. When I don't quickly enough he rolls his eyes and goes back to writing the notes. I flush from embarrassment and rush to get the notes I missed before she switches the slide.

We transition to lunch, as usual we sit at the same table. We get along at first and then we argue, screaming, yelling, and laughing at one another.
I scream, "Okay, weirdo!" And he always responds with,
"What can I say! I'm a man of science,"defending his argument.
We sit and laugh and laugh. After lunch we head back to class and he ends up sitting next to me. We talk about god knows what forgetting about the previous argument. We bring up a new one, arguing about if a cruise could go from the East Coast to Europe. He has such passion in his eyes while we argue, while he yells in my face. I sit and just stare, stare into his eyes. His deep deep brown eyes. I can feel my face flush and my body grow warm. His eyes looked from my eyes to my mouth, rarely breaking eye contact for the whole period. He stutters, but this time it's more bearable, this time I'm more patient. This is when I look into his eyes and a thought pops into my head, he's beautiful. I try to stop thinking and to focus on the conversation but the thoughts keep flooding in. How do his hands feel? His hair looks so soft. His eyes are deep and vast yet so handsome. I snap back to reality with defeat finding that I have in fact lost the argument. Again we laugh over the crazy conversation, wondering how we get conversations to escalate as much as they do.

After school he walks up to me, and my heart skips a beat.
"Hey," he says to me with his goofy smile, his stupid stupid smile.
"Hi..?" I respond hesitantly wondering why he's outside when he's normally a bus rider.
"Do you have a ride today?" He asks, looking at me. In that mocking way as if he knows the answer, which he most likely does.
"No, I always walk you know this, I don't live far. Why?" I ask him, I see a flash of embarrassment as he looks at me, failing to answer for a moment.
"Oh, I just wanted to walk you home, that's all," he says, looking at me grinning and narrowing his eyes. I'm convinced he is joking.
"Oh, yeah?" I say slyly, smiling at him. We sit gazing at one another for a while until he responds.
"Yeah, let's go before it gets too late," he states, running in the opposite direction of my house.
"Hey, stupid! My house is this way," I say holding back a very obvious laugh. I grin at him when he turns around dumbfounded then it clicks he's going the wrong way. I hear him grunt in frustration from afar and he jogs back, slower than before.

Once we make it to my house it's awkward standing at the door. This is the moment I realise we have never been truly alone together. I invite him in to hang out for a while.
"Dude your house is nice, never expected that from you," he says with a laugh.
"Okay, chill out. I was nice enough to invite you in, don't make me force you out," I say rolling my eyes in an exaggerated manner. Once we make it up the stairs to my room, he mentions something.
"Why were you looking at me that way?" He says abruptly.
I'm startled by the question, "what?" I say staggering back as if he lunged at me.
He looks at me confused and laughs, "what could be so bad to make you react that way."
I say the only thing I could think of, "you were just being extremely rude and I didn't appreciate it."
His eyes show hurt for a moment, completely throwing me off, "what? What do you mean?" He says in a despondent tone. Though the hurt and despondence disappears just as quickly as it came.
"I said what I said you were being rude and I didn't like it," I say, doubling down on the mess I've made.
"Well how am I supposed to be nice to you when you were being blatantly stupid?" He snaps back at me.
I flinch, now irritated at his tone I respond with, "how are you a man of science but you don't know basic physics!" I retort.
He responds with malice and disdain, "why did i even walk you home if all you do is yell and disrespect me."
He turns around and with the last glimpse of his face, I see a man with deep brown eyes, boiling with hatred.