“Quinton!” I feigned surprise widening my eyes. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” he replied skeptically, but he still smiled at me so I guess that was a good thing. He glanced into the house behind me as if expecting to see someone else hovering there with the binoculars and red hands, but Kline had disappeared the moment I had attempted to strangle her upstairs a handful of seconds ago. He frowned. “So how has your evening been so far?”
“Alright,” I told him with a shrug, crossing my arms tightly over my chest as the cold chill came into the house with the wind, pinching at my bare skin. I couldn’t even fathom how he could be wearing a shirt that exposed his very impressive arms that much in a temperature like this.
He noticed. “I’m sorry,” he started, but I shook my head, silencing him.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a smile. “Actually, I’m kind of still wondering why you’re here.”
“What?” he asked.
“What?” I returned.
He shook his head once, fast. “Well I’m kind of wondering about those pajamas.”
“Do you want to come in?” I blurted out. My face turned red and I bit down on my tongue, wishing that the earth would just open up and swallow me whole. “I mean, since it’s so cold outside . . .”
“Sure,” Quinton said, having to know that something was up and that I normally didn’t act as spastically, but he was at least willing to act like I wasn’t as creepy as I knew I was being right now. I stumbled out of the doorway to let him in, but he hesitated at the threshold. “Is that cat still here?” he whispered, glancing around nervously.
As if Watson knew, his hissing entered the front room, making Quinton flinch. I couldn’t help it—I grinned.
“You’re afraid of a tabby,” I pointed out, giggling despite myself. He shot me a glare, his face a little pale.
“A murderous tabby with sharp claws,” he argued strongly, laughing a little. He cautiously stepped inside, rubbing the palms of his hands together. “Jeez, your house is so warm.”
“I’m from Florida,” I reminded him “We don’t do cold.”
“I can’t blame you,” he said. “In this kind of weather, I prefer to watch my neighbors from the comfort of my warmed house as well.”
Breathe, Mallory, breathe! I screamed internally.
“It makes the experience much more enjoyable,” I commented easily, shrugging. His dimples started to show, his smile amused. “I’m sure you can speak from experience as well, having seen my wicked dance moves.”
“I can’t deny it,” he announced a little proudly, “but I also denounce your use of military-grade equipment.”
“What, you mean the binoculars?” I asked coolly, pretending to be confused. “They were bought from Target online, actually. I think it’s meant for bird-watching. And that was Kline with them, not me.”
He looked at me with a mixture of surprise and skepticism. His eyes narrowed. “You’re sure about that?”
“Pretty darn.”
“Would you bet your eternal soul on it?”
Well, the stakes were certainly higher than I anticipated. I hadn’t eaten enough ice cream to make a decision of this magnitude.
I pressed my lips together, considering that before I nodded, calling his bluff. “What you saw was definitely Kline.”
“Funny,” he remarked, “since I very clearly recall seeing Kline standing behind you and trying to catch my attention. She looked like she was directing airplane traffic.”
I growled. “Kline . . .” I muttered to myself menacingly.
Quinton laughed. “Sorry ’bout that, Lena—I do believe I now own your soul. Nice working with you.”
I narrowed my eyes, but I couldn’t mind a boy of his hotness owning my soul. Not a bit. “You tricked me.”
“You’re trying to change the subject,” he accused right back, rolling his eyes at my antics. “I’m not mad. Thoroughly creeped out? Yes. Mad? No.”
“It was Kline’s idea,” I hurriedly threw her directly under the bus, widening my eyes innocently. “She knew where you live and she knew that I had moved in next door so she came over and she had these binoculars and she used her powers of peer pressure to get me to do it and—”
Quinton reached up and clapped his hand over my mouth. All I could think was Holy ham sandwiches, his is totally touching me.
Which is probably the best explanation as to why I had the bright idea to keep talking.
“Mmm mm mmm mm,” I told him apologetically, his hand way too warm and felt way too tingly when it kept brushing my lips, nearly making me shiver, way too distracting for my smallish brain to handle. My words were so muffled that I wasn’t sure what I was even saying anymore, but for some reason I couldn’t keep my mouth from moving. If I could even fathom anything right now other than the feeling of Quinton’s hand on my face trying to muffle me, I still don’t think I would be able to shut myself up.
Quinton took his hand away with an amused bark of laughter, and I probably would have been a little depressed with the loss if I could have kept my mouth shut long enough. But, for some reason, my brain just wanted me to die of embarrassment today.
“—being a neighbor with me is probably the pits and I’m so sorry about that because I don’t think my friends are quite willing to forget it yet and this probably won’t be the last thing I get pressured into things like this thanks to Kline’s binoculars and you being infamous for whatever reason—”
The look on Quinton’s face managed to silence me; he looked like a burning man. Like he was in incredible pain.
“Not,” he said slowly, wincing. “Not infamy. Just known.”
I figured that was a long story that he didn’t want to share at the moment, so I let the awkward turtle waddle all around the room and out into the cold. I hesitated to catch his response, biting my lip.
When he saw me watching he sacrificed a smile, Octavian-from-The-Son-of-Neptune style. “Well, at least that stopped you from talking,” he teased me wryly, weakly. I laughed a bit but stopped because it kind of sounded like I was being tortured.
Naturally, that was the exact moment that my mother decided to hone in that someone actually had been on the other side of the door.
“Lena?” she called, making me jump. “Talking to a cat or human?”
I grimaced and tried not to die from embarrassment as Quinton snorted from beside me. “Human, Mom.”
“Lena has two friends!” my mother sang, poking her head into the room. Her eyes landed on someone familiar, and they went wide. “Quinton!”
“Hello, Mrs. Mallory,” he told he bashfully. “It’s nice to see you again.”
My mom was practically purring as she looked between us, brightening to the point that it was becoming painful to look at her. She clapped her hands like a performing seal and giggled maniacally.
“I’ll just leave you two alone, then,” she told us in a stage-whispered, way too bubbly for the situation. She winked and skipped out of the room, calling over her shoulder innocently, “Sorry for interrupting!”
I had died. The blood in my face had overloaded my brain or popped a blood vessel or something and I had died and I was standing in some circle of Hades that made you live your worst nightmare. I could believe my mother’s certifiable insanity some of the time, but this?
This could be homicide, because it was totally killing me inside. Right in my soul.
I glanced at Quinton, hoping for a Kline-like reaction of nonchalance, and ending up looking at a mirror image of myself instead.
He was blushing so hard.
“A-anyway,” he stuttered, trying to gain control of our conversation again the way that some people try to get control of a car spinning out of control, “I was just wondering why you were spying on me, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not even sure why I came over here so, um, I guess I should, uh, leave if Kline is over, since you have company and it’s rude of me to keep you and all that.”
No offense to Kline or anything, but I would definitely rather stand here and be awkward with Quinton than sitting up in my room and watching him surreptitiously with Kline waving frantically behind me in hopes to sabotage me. But I guess he was right, that I should go and play hospitable hostess to a total nuisance, so I sighed and nodded obediently, edging carefully around him to open the front door for him. The cold air slapped me in the face with a little too much force.
Quinton thanked me uncertainly before he stepped out onto the porch and into the storm that looked like it was starting to build up again. I bit my lip as he stepped onto the walkway, treading slowly.
By the time I was about to tear my eyes away from his back and go to close the door, he was already spinning around to stop me.
“Lena?” he called back suddenly, spinning around like an ungraceful ice skater on the sidewalk, his feet nearly shooting out from beneath him. My heart skipped a beat because I was pretty sure I saw this same exact scene in a movie once.
“Yeah?” I replied, my heart pounding in my throat.
He opened his mouth to say something, and then hesitated, uncertainty passing over his face. I could practically see the gears in his brain clicking frantically as he looked at me with eyes I couldn’t read as every cell in my body screamed at me to do some variation of an African tribal dance.
He smiled at me, but it was guarded, and I could see as plain as day that, whatever the boy next door had been going to say, was now probably as good as being lost in the wind.
“Never mind,” he told me, shaking his head like even he couldn’t believe it. “Have a nice night, Lena.”
“Don’t forget to close your curtains, weirdo,” I called to his back, but his only response was a booming laugh that echoed all the way down the block and back, which was enough to make me smile, even if he didn’t see it.
I swung back inside and closed the door firmly behind me, my back hitting the wood as I breathed a long, winded breath. My skin prickled as the heat in the front room overcame the cold, as if it was purposely urging me to relax. I shot a glare at the air around me before I sighed, hitting my head once against the door behind me.
See, I wasn’t the kind of girl that had boys falling to their knees in wonder as I walked past—I was the kind that they were all friends with. I didn’t try to flirt since I wasn’t very good at it and my body goes into panic mode when I am talking to a boy I am interested in. I might be a little socially awkward, but even I knew that something was up with that conversation I had just had with Quinton Lancaster—it was just something that I couldn’t name.
I might have been a little naïve, but that didn’t mean I was blind.
I let my head fall back against the door with a heavy sight. Maybe I was just delusional. It would kind of explain a lot, at least.
My mom popped her head back through the doorway and eyed my new position curiously. “You okay down there, dragonfly?”
“Been better,” I told the ceiling.
She nodded slowly. “It’s kind of like that. Just do me a favor and take your time, okay? You just got friends—you don’t need children, too. Trust me, they’re a pain in the ass, and I want you to wait as long as possible before you make me a grandmommy, okay?”
I stared at her, horrified.
“Ciao!” she chimed before making her dramatic exit, leaving me behind on my spot on the floor, in my own little sphere of horror.
It took me at least a minute before I could even get to my feet after that one. My mom sure knew how to take my mind off of things, I guess.
~*~
I stepped cautiously into my room, expecting some kind of retaliation from Kline after having attempted to murder her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I frowned, pushing the door open wider, stepping into the room as I glanced around at all the nooks and crannies.
“Kline?” I called, glancing around. “Hello?”
“Hello,” she chimed, appearing out of nowhere in the back corner of my room. I jumped. “You rang?”
“Where were you?” I demanded.
“In your closet,” she replied, shrugging like this happened often. “But enough about me—holy sexual tension, Batman. He’s totally into you.”
I gave her a questioning look.
She rolled her eyes. “I was listening at the top of the stairs, duh. Now reply properly before I have to force you.”
“What makes you think?” I demanded, suddenly going clammy. “Are you sure you aren’t just sensing that he hates my laugh? Maybe he thinks I’m a crazy person and he’s just going to appease me so I don’t break into his place and steal his hair or something? What happens if he decides to tell the whole school that he caught the girl who wears glitter and tutus watching him run around in his backyard through a pair of binoculars?”
Kline sighed, sounding disappointed. “Didn’t I teach you anything in this less of a week that we have been acquainted, Lena? You shouldn’t care about the little things—all of those little flaws. If someone likes you, then they aren’t going to think that the flaws are the bad part of you; they’re going to see your flaws as proof that this great person that they know is really human. When you really like someone, it’s really reassuring just to know that the person you’ve always dreamed about can bleed.”
I turned and stared at her, surprised. “Where did this philosophical side of you come from?” I demanded, stunned. I knew Kline had a liking for poetry and a bunch of other literary things that she would never admit in front of someone she didn’t trust, but this—this was something else entirely. “Am I missing something here?”
“Missing something?” she asked me innocently. She snapped her fingers, realization flashing across her face. “Oh, I borrowed some of your romanticism off the top shelf of your dresser, hope you don’t mind.”
I smiled a little because I could see through her, and she knew it. But she wasn’t going to let me know that.
“What was up with that episode outside?” she suddenly asked me, and then laughed like she had told a mighty fine joke. “I mean, I’ve seen that kind of stuff in movies. Thing is, hot Hollywood boys don’t chicken out like hot Boston boys do.”
“Chicken out?” I asked, playing dumb. “Over what?”
She saw through me easily—she snorted, and it sounded like she was trying to snort a lung through her nose. “Lena, Lena, Lena. Have you never been asked out by a boy before?”
“Does it matter?” I asked indignantly, crossing my arms haughtily over my chest. “And that wasn’t what was going to happen. He was probably going to ask if he could copy Tyler’s assignment for Monday.”
“You and I both know that Tyler gives full credit for assignments that haven’t even been touched,” she remarked, smirking knowingly. “You’ll see. Oh, boy, will you see.”
“See what?” I asked, still pretending.
She nodded to the binoculars still sitting at the window. “Well earlier you certainly saw Mr. Lancaster through those bad boys. I think you and I have it going for us in this whole stalking thing.”
“We got caught,” I reminded her, eyeing her cautiously.
She shrugged, blasé. “Happens. We’ll practice so it doesn’t happen again.”
“No,” I chided her. “No practicing.”
“Oh, come on,” she whined, pouting. “We’re like superheroes and sidekicks right now! Batman and Robin! Thelma and Louise! Beavis and Butthead! Um . . .”
“Abbott and Costello?” I offered, and she shrugged, obviously having no idea who I was talking about.
Kids these days . . .
“My point is,” she said, “that you and I know what’s up.”
“Obviously,” I said dryly, sighing and shaking my head. Kline, of course, remained in her own thoughts, thinking about our chances at being a duo. I watched her nervously, fearing the peer pressure I knew she would fire at me like a million and one grenades.
She suddenly popped up, and I raised my fists in anticipation.
“I’m hungry!” she announced to the world, way too hyper, before shooting me a look. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I told her.
She looked at me for a long moment before she rolled her eyes, reaching out and grabbing my wrist, tugging me to the door. “Come on, let’s go downstairs and get something. I would get it myself, but it makes it a lot less awkward when you’re around.”
“Gee, thanks,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “You only like me for the location of my house and the food in my kitchen.”
“That is a lie,” she strongly declared, looking at me sternly. “Your sense of humor is cool, too.”
~~~~~~~~~~
This probably would have come quicker if I didn’t start volunteering at my old elementary school directly after school, and I lose about an hour and a half a day out of my evening, and homework comes before Wattpad and all that . . . Worst case, I’m going to try for every three days. With SAT this Saturday, I don’t even know what’s going on right now.
YOU GUYS GOT ME TO OVER A THOUSAND READS. YOU ARE THE COOLEST PEOPLE EVER.
Vote and comment, but only if you think it deserves it :P I would really like to make it in the Watty Awards, just for the fun of it. And a little bit for the fame, I’ll admit it.
x Riley