How to Fall in Love ✔

How to Fall in Love (12)

            Ever since I zipped my lips in order to irk him no further, he decided it'd be best not to acknowledge my presence altogether. Well, seeing as how his statement in the trip to the mall a little while back, the words, "I like it when you're quiet. I could easily pretend you're not here" echoing in my head, it wasn't hard to think how so easily he could pretend I didn't exist.

            And then I snapped. "Why are you so mad anyway?" Finn was surprised as he turned to face me. "Am I so annoying I'm punch-worthy?"

            For one, two, three counts, he just stared at me, an electricity wire connecting our eyes together, until he let out a long sigh. "I'm sorry. For snapping at you like that, I'm sorry. For my unprofessional self, I'm sorry."

            I could only stare at him as the words stumbled out of his mouth.

            "I was mad –"

            "Obviously."

            "–because I was starving as hell, Mia. And I offered you to come with me. I thought my offer mattered when you accepted. I was so surprised when you saw me – you saw me – and then you left, just when I told them that my girlfriend was coming back from the restroom. I tried calling you, but then I realized I didn't have your number. You were wandering around without me in this goddamn huge of a theater, and I told you, I told you so well to stay with me. I didn't know where you were. I was worried."

            "You sure have a funny way of showing it."

            "I'm sorry."

            "If you were so worried, why didn't you come find me?"

            He chuckled minus the humor, his lips pressing into a thin line afterwards. "Believe me, Mia, I did."

            And at that moment, his hard exterior caught fire and broke, and for the first time, he looked something I never thought he had the capacity to be. He was humane after all. He looked vulnerable.

            For a moment, I was severely infuriated – with myself. I was mad at my inability not to care about him, seeing as he was nothing but a nasty figure – only a temporary variable – in my life. More than a few times I'd wanted nothing more but to pat him on the head using Thor's hammer, but I stopped at the half-second, thinking it was a proscriptively awful thing, which it was. I guess up to the very end, even after all that had happened a number of years back, I hadn't learned my lesson about letting people tug at my heartstrings.

            Because, come to think of it, Finn didn't look like he did when we formally (or lack of the premise thereof) met in Laurel-Tech, where he seemed to be so imperious, belittling, and not having a care whether or not he was upchucking on someone's dignity. If he looked like that, I would've already run out of the theater in a zappy instant, right after knocking a fist on his face.

            But right now, he looked nothing like that.

            I couldn't put my finger on it, succinctly, but while he loomed over me with his arrogant authority last week, at this moment, all he looked like was weak. It was almost like he was dreading what was to come so hard that he was saving his defenses for later, letting the world see his vulnerability now. I think, the second after he told me to close my mouth, was the moment he chose to collect himself and indulge in the silence, saving his first wall of defenses, building it up so high, so that later his feelings wouldn't show. He was processing, the wall of his defenses still in the works, that I realized the reason why he told me to shut up was because if I kept talking, he wouldn't be able to prepare the wall.