Be Rude but Love Me | ✔

CHAPTER 31

"Why are you smiling?"

I finally look up from our hands to find Yann staring down at me. My smile turns wider and his frown turns deeper. Then I stop smiling. "What?" I ask him.

He doesn't say anything and gives his back to me, running his hands through his hair. A little worried, I march over him. "Hey, are you okay?"

And he explodes. "No, I'm not okay. I haven't been fucking okay for years now, and even more so since you came here."

I know that he is mercurial but somehow, his sudden outburst still surprises me. I take a step back and sigh involuntarily. "Maybe this town is too small for the two of us."

"It fucking is!"

I watch him, wondering how he can easily go back and forth between seemingly okay and incomprehensibly mad. As I watch him pacing around the living room, I think to myself that I've never felt so frustrated in my whole life. And to my surprise, he utters the exact same words.

"I've never felt so fucking frustrated in my whole life." Except that his sentence has an additional word.

I prepare to leave but his words halt me. "You're one of a kind, you know that, Graham?" He says to me. When I frown, he adds, "And it's a compliment."

And he doesn't leave. He bypasses me and takes a seat on the couch. When I stay up, on my feet, he gestures to the seat next to him, "Sit."

And I do. Not because I am intimidated and feel like I should obey to him, but because in this instant, I see that same look he's given me twice before, the one that says don't give up on me.

He's staring straight ahead, fingers intertwined, face tight. "I don't understand."

And I sit, looking at him, all ears, waiting for him to continue. It takes time for him to. He stays quiet, he bounces his leg on the floor. And he turns his head to me.

"I don't understand you." Those aren't exactly the words I've been expecting, but I have no idea what I've truly been expecting. "You're there, annoying, talkative pestering. More pestering than Will, Ellie and Keven put together. And I don't understand how you do so. I can't understand you." I think he doesn't realize he's just said Keven – someone I don't know – to me so I don't push it, though I do wonder who that is.

"I thought you could easily read me?" I ask, recalling a conversation we had over the past weeks.

He rolls his eyes but I sense that he wants to smile instead. "I do. And I understand what I read, what you say and what you do. But it's the why behind your actions that I don't understand."

I want to move a little closer to him but I remain in my seat. "And what do I do exactly?"

Abruptly, he gets up on his feet, takes half a dozen of steps away and looks at me. Then, unexpectedly, he reaches out to me. "Come."

I feel like I'm going back and forth with him, sometimes it's one step forwards and two back, and other times, it's two steps forward and one backward. He's unpredictable, wild in a way that makes me go crazy but also makes me fall for him a little more.

I place my hand in his and let him pull me up to my feet. And instead of taking my whole hand, he takes my forefinger. He frowns to himself as if wondering why he's holding just one finger instead of my whole hand, looks at me, then looks away, but holds my finger in his hand nonetheless and guides me.

And just like last night, he leads me to the piano. Like last night, he makes me sit. And just like last night, he whispers, "Play."

I want to ask him why he wants me to play so badly, how it makes him feel, but I'm afraid this will get him to retire himself in this cocoon of darkness and solitude he's created, to disappear behind this layer of rudeness.