Bad Girls Have Bad Secrets

The Fifteenth Secret - His Reasons

He nodded and I reached my hand to the side of the desk, where a streak of the winters sun had filtered through the window. It's warmth was ever so gentle and I wriggled my fingers, watching the shine glint over my fingernails.

"Apricity."

"What?" I drew my gaze away, to look at him. He was watching me with the smallest of smiles.

"Apricity," he repeated, "It's the warmth of the sun during winter."

"Oh." I took the last bite of my cupcake, staring as I chewed. His knowledge of rare words never ceased to be startling. It was weird — as though he'd studied a dictionary in his spare time, but there was something about it that made me want to smile. Besides making my chest swell with pride for him, it was attractive; especially to me, as someone who loved words and poetry but didn't know many of them, with my bad memory.

I voiced my last thought to him and he smiled suddenly.

"Let me guess," I muttered, "You know a word for it."

"A person who's love for words is more than their knowledge of it—" Laughter bubbled from his lips, "— I believe it's logastellus." The word rolled from his tongue ever so smoothly and I decided then that not only was his voice beautiful, but his pronunciation of words was pleasant enough to make me actually listen to him teaching me. It might've just been his S'.

"And what about you?" I raised an eyebrow, "Do you know a word that describes your knowledge of words?"

He tugged his ear in thought, "Well, logolepsy is a fascination with words, and I am."

No. Definitely not only the S. He even made a word that sounded like leprosy seem beautiful.

"Let's stop for today."

I nodded in agreement, "You're a good teacher."

He looked away and gathered my books, placing them into my bag for me. Stop being so nice, I wanted to say, but a knock on the door shut me up.

"Lulu." The door was pushed open and a girl popped her head in, I stared in surprise at how much she looked like her brother. It was like Logan with smoother features and long, light brown hair that fell in layers to her butt. Faint dark circles resided beneath a pair of glowing, wide eyes. On seeing me, she lifted her hand subconsciously to her face, shielding the light blemishes that dotted her chin  His twin sister. "Oh, hello. You must be Vicky. I'm Luella."

"Hi," I mumbled, lowering the hand that had reached out to take my belongings from him.

"Did you take my charger again— really, Logan?" She muttered something under her breath and plugged the charger out, grumbling as she left, but a smile was sent my way.

"She calls you." I blinked, "Lulu?"

His head fell into his palm,"Please don't call me that."

My lips twitched in amusement, "I think I might."

"Please no," he whispered, horrified as he lifted his face to look at me, "Anything but that— I have a middle name too, you know? It's Myles. I prefer that even over my first name. Even Nerd is fine— Beer Guy. Whatever you want, really, just not—"

"Lulu."

He sighed, and was about to speak when my phone vibrated loudly. I opened it to a message from Shane.

- ran into Conrad,
he asked where you were.
Said you were with Stephan.

Another messages popped up.