Don't Look Behind You ⇒ Lucaya [DISCONTINUED]

girl meets selfish wants

{m a y a}

In a way, I was grateful to be back at school, despite all the attention I was getting it. It was ironic; I'd always wanted to be noticed and cared about, but not like this. It was as if someone had plastered a sign on my forehead that read 'Stuck in the bathroom during a fire! Come ask her about her experiences and pretend to give a damn, or you'll look like a heartless b*tch!' Although that would have to be in pretty small handwriting. My forehead wasn't too big.

The fire had set the school ablaze on Monday, and it was Friday now. I'd spent two useless days at the hospital, bored out of my mind, with only Lucas to keep me company (whenever he wasn't staring gormlessly at the TV). The others in my ward were little children, and I felt a little embarrassed to have been put in there for such a stupid reason, when the kids had been through car accidents and all.
I didn't receive many phone calls from concerned relatives, obviously, but I can tell you who did. The straw-haired Texan. His parents were on a trip to Peru, but that didn't stop them from calling the hospital every ten minutes to see how their dear, old 'Lookie-bear' was handling himself. I wished that they could see him looking like a literal five-year old with a bowl of fruit loops in one hand and a TV-remote in another. It was priceless.

However, there was something very disturbingly alluring about him, sitting there, unaware that he was being watched. He smiled like a baby when he was unconscious, but I knew that when he did realise that somebody was looking at him, he changed his posture to a rougher one, and replaced his soft smile with an almost scary look of control. I wondered what caused it.

Sometimes I would see him looking down at his hands that were calloused and coarse and a regretful expression would wash over his face. It was kind of uncomfortable to be witnessing this, as I felt that I was intruding on a private moment where he reminisced his past or something sappy like that. I don't know-- it just felt wrong. I never really asked him about it either, because I knew if I were in that situation, I wouldn't want people interrogating me on what was going on in my head. In short, Lucas Friar was something else, someone that needed protection but also someone who you would really want to stay away from. And I couldn't decide which one to act upon.

I didn't hear from 'xo' after that one, unforgettable day, and deeply hoped never to again. Something, though, told me they'd only just started.

So along came Friday, my first proper day of high school. I wasn't about to let Monday anywhere near the yearbook.
We had Math first period, followed by History in which Matthews couldn't stop smiling for some reason. I knew my presence was very valued but I couldn't help thinking that this was a bit more than I deserved.

We were paired up with people from the class to start a very intriguing project on the Serbian Ultimatum of World War I. It was stupid, and I really didn't see how spending our time researching the politics of a country that I would never go to in my life (I hadn't even known that Serbia existed until last year) would help me, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

What bothered me the most, though, wasn't the topic we were set to do; it was the person I had been paired up with and the effect that was going to have on my friendship with another significant human.

Maybe you haven't guessed by now. My partner for this project was everybody's favourite Texan, the one and only...Lucas "I look absolutely ethereal and perfect, but secretly pick my nose when nobody's watching" Friar. It was bad because while part of me was terribly against working with him, another part of me was terribly for it. Four days ago I would've scoffed at myself, but now I was accepting of this feeling but confused, all the same. Had the version of him I'd experienced at the hospital really affected my view on him?

Well, duh, it had to. I couldn't just ignore the adorable image of him stuffing himself with cereal while snuggling up in the already-used hospital blanket, to watch a cartoon. I also couldn't ignore the steely glare that crept onto his face sometimes, and I especially couldn't ignore this feeling of wanting to be his partner.