A Thousand Storms

15 believe

He mumbled, "Trust you to believe aliens exist."

I narrowed my eyes. "What? Of freaking course they do."

Mason shrugged. "It's hard to believe..."

"Isn't everything?"

"...Improbable," he persisted.

I raised a brow. "That, my ill informed acquaintance, is where you are terribly wrong. There are billions of galaxies and earth doesn't even form a tiny speck of that. It would be improbable for alien life not to exist."

Light bounced in Mason's eyes. He smiled, a sight I saw slightly more often of recent. All he said was, "Okay."

"You should try believing in things, Mason," I muttered. "You'd be pleasantly surprised."

He didn't respond. We stopped outside, where my red Bentley was parked close to Mason's motorcycle.

"We could always take Rebecca," Mason suggested.

I scowled at the mention of the name. "Nope, we're taking my car."

Mason chuckled. "Give me your keys."

My palm tightened around my car key. "No. I'm driving."

For a second, Mason just stared at me with incredulity. Then, he sighed with slight exaggeration, and opened the door. I got in after him.

Mason dwarfed the passenger seat of my car. His large, brooding figure was far too encompassing for the seat. His curls brushed the roof of the car. It made me realize how truly tall he was.

The sight brought a smile to my face.

He glowered. "You going to start the car anytime soon?"

I pulled into my bottom lip to keep myself from laughing. "Okay, okay," I mused.

I switched on the car. While I drove, Mason was largely silent. It was normal, I realized. I always did most of the talking.

I didn't like shopping. The things that looked nice on the mannequins almost never looked as good on you, and if they did, you probably wouldn't like the color, or the style, or something of that sort.

So when I drove into 5th avenue, I was not as amazed as I'd liked to have been. The buildings were high rise, and hundreds of branded shops covered every accessible place, lit up in the dusk of the day as the sky receded into a shade of purple.

Mason scoffed. "Not my favorite place."

I curled my lip as I glared at his side profile. "I didn't force you to come."

His stared at me, his gaze softening. Then it morphed into that insufferable smirk of his.

"You make it better," he mused.

He caught me off guard. I composed myself as quickly as possible.

"Stop spewing nonsense," I muttered, then I looked at the parking machine, "35 bucks for underground parking? What a rip off."

I could almost feel Mason's amused expression as I took the parking slip anyway, driving into the nearest parking bay at an awkward angle.

"At least you got it at half price," he mused, getting out of the car.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What do you mean?"

He motioned to the parking bay with a smirk. "You took up two spots. Two parkings for the price of one seems pretty fair to me."

I rolled my eyes walking ahead of him. He caught up with me eventually as we reached street level.

I walked into the first shop I saw. I decided that I was buying my dress here, and nowhere else, because I had no patience for things like this.