Whose Fault? (Editing)

Chapter Four

Eli and I had just finished playing our second round of "Twisted Twister" as he called it. I won both rounds so far, but he still demanded that we play another round. I had fun teasing him, so I agreed to it. Telling Eli he could go first, I took a step to the side of the mat that now had foam all over it. He spun to take his turn and had to put his right foot on yellow. When I took my first turn, I had to put my left hand on blue.

We went back and forth many times and eventually were extremely close to being tangled. I didn't know how I ended up facing the sky, but I had my left foot on a red dot, right one on blue along with my right hand, and my left hand on a yellow dot. Eli had his hands on two different green dots and his left foot on a yellow dot, his right on a blue dot kicked underneath me between my two legs.

The game could go either way, but since it was Eli's turn, I had a bad feeling my winning streak was about to end. Eli spun, and it landed on right hand yellow. He removed himself from underneath me and moved above me, looking at me with an evil smirk on his face. Somehow, he turned himself, without taking his one hand or his feet off the mat and stretched as far as he could to reach the last yellow dot on the mat. He placed his hand down on the yellow dot and watched me fall to my doom.

I breathlessly told him, "I guess you won."

He had a smile on his face that made him look so genuinely happy, and his eyes didn't move from me as he moved the foamy pieces of hair out of my face behind my ear as he replied, "yeah I did."

Some irrational part of me had the thought that he hadn't been talking about the game and that's all I could think about for the rest of the day.

Eli made me laugh and smile. I always found myself wishing I could do the same for him. After we finally got up from the Twister mat, we went swimming in his pool. I had been extremely worried about it, but Eli didn't give me much of a chance before jumping in and pulling me in with him.

There was another time when we had gone bowling, which I sucked at. The only time I'd ever been bowling was when I would go with Chloe and her family or our friends. We didn't do it much, so I never got to build on the skill. It was cosmic bowling, so Eli told me to wear clothing that would glow under a black light. Eventually I got the hang of it; Eli showed me tricks and gave me tips to improve. He was so much better at it than I was. I guess practice made perfect.

Even though I stunk at it, I still had loads of fun. They played very loud music at the place we went to and when Eli knew a song he would sing along and do silly dance moves. The bowling alley also had a small arcade there and we played some games. I was pretty good at them while Eli's skills were a little lacking. It was funny to watch him play though, when he was concentrated hard on something his tongue would stick out just a little bit as he tried to succeed at whatever it was he was doing. It was adorable; it had my heart beating faster than normal and the elephants in my stomach on a stampede.

Stop thinking about it, Wren! Thinking about Eli was weird. I had the best of times when I was with him, and I wanted to have more of them, but I didn't trust myself or him enough to give me that chance. Maybe I needed to back off a bit. Not be around him as much, maybe then every time I saw him my heart wouldn't warm up and feel like it was smiling the biggest smile it could muster. Maybe then he wouldn't be in my head so much.

~~~

I was sitting at the lunch table, eating and talking with my friends when Xavier plopped down next to me. No, no, no. This is not what I need right now. I was in a decent mood, but it was one that I knew could be ruined with the snap of a finger.

"Hey Wrennie," and there goes my decent mood.

"Don't call me that. I don't know how many times I've said that to you." I said, not giving him the satisfaction of looking at him. He knew I couldn't stand that nickname; it was his nickname for me.