Black Soda Drink [exo]

VI

“So what’s the script about?” Kris asked one evening as I typed away. He had been quietly watching TV beside me for the past hour and I nearly caught him looking at the screen of my laptop twice.

“I’m not finished yet.”

“You’ve been working on it for three straight days.”

I tucked my feet underneath me and rested my chin on my hand. “It’s about a guy…”

“Wait, is it a chick flick?”

“Um, I guess you could call it that. The guy’s an angel and he’s sent down to Earth to save a woman and her child from the devil.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and saw that his brows were furrowed.

“What?”

“No offense, but that sounds lame.”

I elbowed his side.

“Ow!” He rubbed the spot where I hit him even though I knew it didn’t hurt at all. “I’m just telling the truth.”

“It’s my job to make it sound…not lame.”

“Ah, no wonder you’re working so hard on it. Let me guess, the angel falls in love with the woman and he has to decide between staying on Earth and going back to heaven?”

“Y-yes…”

He ruffled my hair again, something that I had gotten used to over the past few days. “You’d better make sure that the girl they cast is super beautiful.”

“Why?”

“If I were an angel, I wouldn’t give up the ability to be an angel just for a woman. Being a human sucks, and it’d take a lot for a man to fall in love with somebody so hard that he’d sacrifice their entire being for them.”

“It happens.” I tried to defend myself but how many angels did I know in real life? Except the one beside me, of course, except he only looked like an angel. The more I lived with him, the more I found that Kris was just like every other sloppy boy yet I still had a hard time keeping my feelings in control.

“Would you do that though?” he asked.

“Fall in love?”

“Anybody can fall in love. But would you sacrifice your future for somebody who could just walk away at any moment?”

I looked down at my keyboard. “I don’t know. For my family, I would.”

“That’s different. What if it was a complete stranger?”

I shrugged because I really didn’t know.

There was a pause. “You’ve never fallen in love before, have you?” he asked softly.

I sure felt like I was in love with Kris, but I barely knew him. It was only a crush. A major crush that I couldn’t control. I shook my head anyway.

“Me neither. You’re going to have to make the script believable enough that the audience accepts the relationship.”

“I will,” I assured him, trying not to focus on how his hand was still resting on top of my head. “Will you read my first draft when I’m done?”

“Me?”

I nodded. “You seem to have a good grasp at what I should be going for.”

“All right.”

My smile didn’t even make it to my face as his phone rang. I was a little regretful as he reached for it because his hand left my head, but then he leaned back and let the phone keep ringing.

“Aren’t you going to get it?”

He shook his head. “Not now.”

I looked at the name on the screen. “It’s your mom, though.”

“I can call her back later.”

The phone stopped ringing and I let the subject go. Did Kris have troubles of his own that I’d been oblivious to all this time? I turned back to the document on my laptop. I was in no position to pry, but I thought Kris would have a good relationship with his mom.