Him and Me.

Him and Me- Seventeen.

Shielding my nose from the small cloud of dust that emanated from Cynthia’s car, I turned around on my heel and began to walk to my truck. My steps halted though, when I spotted Colby’s red bike parked among the other, somewhat mediocre, motorcycles. It had been two weeks since he had asked that question, and I could say we were making progress slowly but steadily. Taking a seat on a nearby bench, I remembered hearing his question and feeling that my own ears were deceiving me. There was an unmistakable feeling of incredulous disbelief. I didn’t know if I was just oblivious, but I was honestly not expecting Colby to ask that kind of question. 

The question flew out of his mouth, rendering me into a frozen state. My finger hovered over the unfinished invisible star that I was drawing as I blinked at Colby. He had his back to me still, but there was a consistent movement that jolted the couch as his right leg bounced up and down. Did I hear him right? For what seemed like eons he finally turned to look at me, and there were two faint pink spots on his cheek. If I weren’t so stunned by then, I would’ve laughed.

“Kayla? Did you hear me?” Colby asked. His leg had not stopped moving.

The only answer I could come up with was a dull “Huh?”

Colby cleared his throat. “I asked if we could start over. You know, try to be friends? Like, real ones.”

I didn’t answer as another stunning spell invaded my body. My vocal chords were also lost somewhere in space. When I didn’t manage to chase after them after a while, one corner of Colby’s mouth turned up into a weird smile, almost bordering into a grimace. He let out an audible breath through his nose.

“Well, forget it. I didn’t even know why I asked,” he started, his hands clenching and unclenching on his sides. “That was a bit insensitive of me. I mean, I’ve basically done so much that could make you loath me and here I am asking you if we could start over and be friends—“

“Yeah.” The word tumbled out of my mouth when my vocal chords returned to their rightful place.

Colby continued to ramble on, saying how he had been arrogance with legs, and I almost laughed. Apparently he didn’t hear me because he was too absorbed pointing out every reason why I shouldn’t say yes. And as he droned on, thoughts of how civil we had been to each other lately floated in my mind, and even though there were incidents of banter, they had been enjoyable. Yes, he still had his moments wherein his jerk side reared its head, but it had turned out to be tolerable for the most part. I also kept seeing him with Cameron. How caring he had been and how so obviously he loved his little cousin. There was more to him than being arrogance with legs, and right then it was decided that yes, starting over and building a friendship with Colby Mariano wouldn’t be so bad.

Softly, I called out his name. He continued rambling. I rolled my eyes. To think that I had used to think of him as the quiet type. Now he was talking so much he couldn’t even hear me. I repeated his name, a little louder this time. His response? Talking about himself.

At least I got my self-absorbed impression correct. 

“Colby!” I half shouted. “Shut up!”

Well, that worked. Colby had stopped talking and was now blinking at me, a surprised look on his face. Try as I might, I couldn’t help the smug smile that showed on my face. It was just a little smile though. Quickly I wiped the smile off my face and looked at him, my expression neutral.

“Since you were so busy talking about yourself, you failed to hear me a couple of times now,” I started. He seemed to snap out of his daze and managed to regain his focus. He was still blinking rapidly though, making his eyes water and shine even more.