stone cold // tronnor au

twenty-one

"Y-yeah, sure." I nodded.

"Wait, really?" He sounded surprised.

"Yeah. We're friends, aren't we?" I asked, but even then I could feel myself lying.

"Right." He replied, with a growing, relaxed smile. "Anyway, let's go so we're not late."

My gaze lingered on his back as he turned around, before I hurried next to him. As soon as I caught up to him, I sighed, and looked down. Every time I swung my arm back and forth, I could feel the sleeve of my sweater brush against his bare skin. As we continued walking, I tried to ignore the nagging thought at the back of my head, telling me that it would have been so much better if I hadn't brought my sweater, for obvious reasons.

"So..." Troye started awkwardly. "How have you been?"

I laughed. "I've been good. How about you?"

He nodded slowly. "Good. You?"

I paused and looked up at him, with a questioning smile. With a small shake of my head, I let out a quiet laugh.

"I'm still good." I grinned.

He turned to face me, and realised what had just happened. A soft chuckle escaped him, before he replied.

"Sorry, I don't know why I said that. I don't actually know what to say. Do things seem awkward to you, or is it just me, because things definitely seem awk-" He gushed.

I wasn't used to Troye being this shy and nervous, but I couldn't dwell on it. He looked at me, waiting for my reply.

"Yeah. It's quite awkward." I nodded sadly.

"And I think we both know why." He stated, his gaze meeting mine.

My lips pursed, and I felt a shiver run down my spine. "Yeah."

"Okay, I'm just going to be the one to say it." He said, as we exited the dorm building.

We were immediately met with a sudden gush of wind, and I looked down at his arm to see if he was cold. I was about to offer him my sweater, but I didn't want to interrupt our conversation, in case we didn't get the chance to continue it later.

"We nearly kissed, and that's cool." He shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal. But it was. "I think we can both agree that it wasn't meant to happen, and we were both just in the moment?"

I stared at him for a while, and thought about how I'd rather be his friend than nothing to him at all. It kind of hurt that he didn't feel the same way about the kiss as I did, but that's just the way it had to be.

Who was I kidding? It really hurt.

"Yeah, I agree." I lied, looking away.

"Really? I was kind of worried you wouldn't feel the same way." He said, looking relieved.

"Why would you think that?" I asked, widening my eyes a bit.

"I don't know. You just seemed really eager to avoid me earlier." He shrugged.

"Oh, I was just scared you didn't want to be my friend anymore." I said, amazed at how good my lying was.

"Well, you don't need to worry about that. We're still friends." He assured me.

"Okay, that's good, because I like being your friend." I grinned.

"Me, too." He replied. "So, how about we just forget about our almost-kiss?"

"Good idea." I said.

I looked around at our surroundings, and realised that we were almost at our class. We walked the rest of the way in silence, but it wasn't awkward. We hurried down the hallway, when I made eye contact with Tyler, who was getting something out of his locker.