"Elle! Wake up!" A voice yelled out as I felt my whole body being shook like a rag doll.
Without a second thought my eyes shot open and I bolted up straight in my bed. It didn't take long to notice that my breath was ragged and my heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Looking over to my side I saw that Bryson was sitting next to me in the bed and was staring at me with his mint green eyes that were swimming in concern.
Beads of sweat dripped from my face as I reached over to my nightstand and grabbed the glass of water I had brought to bed with me.
"Are you okay?" Bryson questioned after I nearly gulped down half the glass of water that was now, unfortunately, room temperature.
Placing the glass back on the nightstand, I nodded. "I'm fine." I didn't have to look at my alarm clock, due to my freaky math abilities of being able to know the time at any given moment, to know that it was three thirty-six in the morning. Sighing, I knew I should try and get some more sleep seeing as I've only had a collective amount of five hours and twenty-two minutes of sleep.
"What was your nightmare about?" He inquired with curiosity leaking in his deep husky voice.
I gave a shake of my head as I laid back down and pulled the cotton covers up to my neck. "It was nothing," I lied for I didn't have the energy to tell him that what made me so upset was a mere memory. I was honestly trying to processes what happened in my memory of my father and I didn’t need Bryson asking a thousand and one questions. At least not with the blooming headache I had right as of that moment.
"Nothing doesn't make me come in your room to find you crying in your sleep," he stated as his voice started to turn stern and dead serious. It was a matter of time before he was going to demand what my dream was, I could just see it in his eyes.
"Bryson, please. It was nothing, really," I said in hopes to change his mind about getting me to tell him.
Reaching out, Bryson touched my right cheek. "Elle," he said in the softest voice I've ever heard.
Glancing at me, his mouth closed and his eyes slipped to gaze at my lips. Anyone with half a mind knew what was going through his thoughts as of that moment. Suddenly, I saw his face lean down in order to become closer to mine.
My stomach gave a lurch in wanting as I found myself lifting up from the bed and meeting him halfway.
We stopped right before our mouths connected and I felt his warm breath on my lips, making tingles erupt all over my body. “Are you going to kiss me? Or what?” I said under my breath.
Bryson looked at me with nothing but pure lust. “Elle, I told you we will never kiss again.” He started to lean back away from me, noticeably seeing what he was doing seconds ago.
I grabbed his arm, stopping him from creating anymore distance between us. “You confuse me, Bryson.” I blurted out as I kept a hard grip on him.
Raising one of his brown eyebrows, he smiled. “How so?”
Giving a sigh, I looked away from him. “We have something. I know you feel it -- at the pit of your stomach,” releasing his arm, I placed my hand on his abdomen. Ignoring how awesome his rock hard abs felt under my palm, I huffed. “Yet, you act so cold at times towards me. You can be a real jerk! Secretive! Hateful! Immature-”
“The kettle is calling the pot black.”
My arm, which was placed on his stomach, slipped back to my side. “I’m not a jerk or hateful!”
Bryson gave a chuckle. “Did you just admit that you are secretive?”
Giving Bryson ‘you’re-an-idiot’ expression, I spoke, "My point is that you confuse me.”
“We don’t have anything going on, Elle,” he stated.
“But! But you said you loved me! You have to feel something to know that!”
Shaking his head, he looked me straight in the eye. “That is where you are wrong. I like the eighteen-year-old Elle, not you. You are not the Elle I ... love ... you're immature and a pain in the ass.” He told me with nothing but honestly and harshness seeping from his voice.
My eyes watered up with tears. Reaching out, I shoved Bryson in the chest. “You are so mean!” I shouted as tears cascaded down my face. “I hate you!”
Bryson moved back, but didn’t get off the bed.
Lunging at him, I pushed him down on the bed. “Did you not hear me? I hate you! You jerk!”
Showing no emotion, Bryson wiggled out from under me and got off the bed. I half expected him to leave the room, but instead he just stood by the bed.
Grabbing my pillow, I threw it at him. “Get out!” When I noticed he was just looking at me and watching as tears ran faster and faster down my face, I got mad. With irritation, I got off the bed and balled up my fist that rested on my sides. “Is this what you wanted to see?” I inquired and took a step so that I was toe to toe with him. “You want to see the thirteen-year-old me cry!” Reeling back I went to punch him but he caught my fist in mid-air.
“You will have to be a lot faster than that to hit me, Eke,” Bryson said.
Ignoring how his words brought a sense of familiarity, I let out a roaring noise that pretty much summed up my anger. “Gaaaaaaaa!!!!” I tried punching him with my other hand but he was able to catch that hand too. With a wicked smile I went to kick him in the shin, but he moved his leg out of the way, obviously showing me he had quick reflexes.
Before I could attack him again, Bryson let go of my hands and roped his arms around my waist. Surprising me, he pulled me so close to him that there was absolutely no space between our chests. “You are acting very immature.”
Deciding not to look at him, I stared at his collar bone that was right in front of my eyes and showing out of the neckline of his grey cotton shirt. “Let go of me, Bryson,” I muttered in aggravation.
Leaning down in my line of vision, Bryson smirked. “No.”
Growling, I glanced at something random in the room. It was then that I remembered from the years back from Peter being mean to me when I wasn’t in the mood to fight back, that if I ignored him he would leave me alone. With that, I figured that I would just ignore Bryson as he held me in the middle of my room because sooner or later he would have to let go of me...
“Not going to speak?” He asked after a minute and five seconds passed by.
I didn’t say one word or even hint that I heard him as I started to contemplate on what my father would want with Bryson. It evidently had to do with the insurance company Dad owned due to the files he had in hand. However, I couldn't place what my dad wanted with Bryson ... maybe Bryson was trying to get a job there. After all, dad would probably want to know his background before hiring him. Yet, Bryson was fourteen then, too young to work, especially at an insurance company as vast and big as my father's.
He could have been filing for insurance, but once again he would have been too young to do that. His parents would have had to do that for him and my father didn’t ask about Bryson’s parents ... which, if my memory serves me right, I have never met or heard about his family.
In that second I bit my tongue from asking Bryson about his family, I was after all ignoring him.
“Don’t make me tickle you,” he stated as he appealed to one of my many weakness.
The walls I was building up started to crumble at his threat because I was one of the most ticklish people and I hated to be tickled. So, with what he said sinking in, I looked at him. “Stop, Bryson. You made it clear that you don’t like me. However, this is a moment in which you confuse me.”
“How so?”
“You just said a slew of words that are really mean. Yet, here you are, trying to make me not angry at you."
Bryson was silent for a second before chuckling at what I said. “I’m not trying to change your mood, Elle. You feel the way you want to feel, I don’t care.”
“You proclaim that you don’t care, yet you didn’t leave the room in the heat of my anger. You stayed and you will remain here until I fully calm down ... I might not have memory of you Bryson, but I know you more then you can imagine.”
“You know nothing about me,” he gritted. “And my reason to stay has nothing to do with ‘making you feel better’.”
“Then leave,” I challenged.
Bryson remained planted in spot and holding me against him with the same amount of grip.
“That is what I thought,” I told him. Getting on my tippy toes I made it so that even though we weren't eye level, my lips were still, with a crane of my neck, mere centimeters from his. “Kiss me Bryson,” I enticed.
He tightened his arms that were around me. “No.”
“You are a fool.”
“And you are thirteen.”
I choose not to tell him that technically I am now mentally fourteen because the memory I had last night was a flooding of memories that span over a year. However, the “movie theater” and “father” memory was the only memory that my mind processed slowly and I relived. Other, minor memories, felt like a fast motion picture that I watched fly by with full understanding of what happened.
“Excuses are like buttholes. Everyone has one,” I informed him. “So, tell me, Bryson. When are you going to give in?”
Bryson gave a loud exhale. “Never,” he said. “Elle, you don’t understand ... if I kiss you then when you learn my secret you will hate me far more than you would if we didn’t do anything ... I can’t risk even more hate. I do have a sliver of a heart, much to your disbelief, and I’m not too happy with the idea that someone would be walking around the world hating me as much as you will.”
I rolled my eyes, “So, are you admitting that you don’t want to kiss me because of the secret and not because I’m mentally thirteen-years-old?”
Bryson locked eyes with me, “No that's not what I’m saying. What I’m trying to tell you is the secret plays a substantial part in it. You being mentally thirteen plays another good part in it ...” Suddenly Bryson started to sway back and forth, rocking me from side to side. “You know what I love about the night time?”
“What?”
“The noise,” he answered with a small smile teasing his lips.
My ears tuned in to my surrounds as I tried to hear the noise he was talking about. “I don’t hear anything,” I confessed with confusion.
“That's my point exactly,” Bryson told me before spinning around in a circle, while still holding me around the waist.
“Are we dancing to no music?” I inquired with a raised eyebrow.
“Maybe,” he joked before giving a single chuckle.
“Going back to our previous topic,” I proclaimed as we continued to slow dance to no music. “What would you do if I kissed you?”
“Elle, can we please drop this. I have made it clear-”
“That you will not make a move and that what happened in the bathroom yesterday will not happen again. However, I am just curious of what you would do if I did kiss you. Will you kiss back like last time?” I teased.
For the first time since he had grabbed me around the waist, tightly, Bryson’s gripped loosened. Yet, he still held me but barely. “Elle,” he muttered slowly with closed eyelids and inflamed nostrils.
“Bryson,” I responded but with humor in my voice at how he was acting.
“If you don’t drop this topic at hand, I will leave.”
“No one is stopping you from leaving. You have had your chance many times, Buddy Boy. Yet, here you stand ... holding me ... dancing with me ... trying to distract me from the anger I feel when I remember every two seconds about what you said to me not but a few moments ago ... I might be mentally thirteen in your mind but I’m not stupid Bryson.”
He opened his eyes and spun around once more with me in his arms. “I know you are not stupid. You’ve always been smart. However, I seem, without fail, to always underestimate how smart you are.” I could tell that he was being honest with me and that made my heart flutter for his words were kind and endearing.
“Bryson, I’m terrified to say that what you just said was the sweetest thing I can remember you ever saying to me.”
Arching an eyebrow he gave me a bewildered expression. “Why are you terrified to say that?”
“Usually whenever I note that you are being nice, you turn into a butthead ... it is almost like you are bipolar.”
Bryson chuckled, “Guessing you now remember the true definition of that word.”
“Yes, I do. If we weren't dancing and I had enough sense, I would smack you.... How could you tell me that bipolar meant ‘that you are caring and kind to others'?”
Bryson laughed for a long minute as he reminisced on what he did. "Yeah, sorry about that," he apologized.
I corked an eyebrow, "You're not really sorry."
Shaking his head, he agreed. "No, no I am not. That was too funny." Looking down at me Bryson grinned from ear to ear before allowing his lips to twitch down, slightly. "So..."
"I like you," I exclaimed with all the courage I had bottled up. "...Just felt like saying that in case I haven't made it clear tonight."
Bryson released me fully and stepped back before sighing. "Elle-"
"I don't want to hear what you are going to say next. I know you don't feel the same way about the thirteen-year-old me ... But the person I am now, likes you ... Which makes me fully believe that the eighteen-year-old Elle must have unconditionally loved you ... For that I am truly jealous."
Bryon stared at me in silence. When a good minute passed, he exhaled. "You can't be jealous about what you don't know, Elle."
"But, I do know-"
"No you don't!" He shouted.
I took a step back, threatened by his sudden anger. "Bryson, it isn't that complicated!"
"That is the falsehood that you're naive and dense self has come to believe." Taking a step forward he hovered over me. "Trust me Elle, the world you are in now is a facade and it is all my selfish doing. If I were you I would leave. This tale only ends in heartbreak ... For you."
I thought for a minute before knowing exactly what I wanted. “I’m not leaving. I thought I made that clear to you.”
“That only makes you a fool.” With a turn of his heel, Bryson left my room.
The door rattled shut and I found myself standing alone in my room that seemed to drop ten degrees in a matter of seconds. Closing my eyes, I knew it was not the room that was cold but the fact that I’d been warmed by his body heat that was radiating off of him and cascading over me moments ago.
“Maybe, I am a fool,” I muttered to myself. Sitting on my bed, I started twiddling my thumbs - knowing there was no way in Hell I was going back to sleep.
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A/N:
Just to let you guys know, you will not get an update until next week. My birthday is this Saturday and I have plans all this weekend with my friends and family! So, sorry but times like this calls for me to kick back and enjoy the events planned! (:
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SMILE!
P.S - I was totally listening to the song on the side the whole time I wrote this chapter. No joke.
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TheFirstWinterSnow's (Maddy's) comment:
Again, 'smile'? Really?!
You put an incredibly sweet moment in there, and have me actually thinking the boy is actually somewhat kind ... then you make him out to be a total bastard again >:(
Gaaa! Stupid Bryson! How anyone is capable of being 'that' much of an asshole is way beyond me...
Geez ... of course it was a great chapter, it was just highly infested with jackass. Lol! XD Hurry up and update Savvy! :D