I had planned on making this one, long one-shot, but decided on spacing it out instead. There should be a few more "chapters" after this one, hopefully. Please enjoy, and R&R!
She never steps into the ramen booths intending to fall for a smart-mouth with glimmering eyes and a wholehearted smile. Her only focus is noodles and pork and soy sauce and victory-never a boy.
She carries herself with an unearthly grace that never falters until he bustles into her view. The ground is water and she is an angel, just touching the surface, until he comes.
At which point she doesn't drown, but finds herself grasping for air
and the easier, less complicated things in life-
things that don't include side glances or hidden feelings or inexistent love letters.
She falls on a restless summer afternoon dimpled with swing sets and messy kisses. He hits her front teeth, and his hot breath paints her face like vapor when he pulls back only seconds later. The blood rises in her cheeks and she stammers his name.
She should find it obnoxious. She really should. After all, he is three years younger and he barely knows her and not to mention she is a pop starwith a life and a career andthe constant threat of paparazzi, which at the time seems highly imminent.
But in all honesty, he gives her nothing but butterflies. Millions and millions of butterflies.
She wonders now how it all happened.
Wonders how his callused hands managed to pry open her flower fingers and elicit a full bloom.
Wonders.
;
She finds his eyes to be very bright. Too bright, even. Literal suns embossed into his summer sand skin, flaunting the curlicue dimples at the corners of his mouth.
According to her physics professor, there is a second that comes just before dusk pulls the world under its curtain,
or dawn charismatically parts its doors-
where the sun flashes a flamboyant, fiery green.
Something about light refracting when it makes contact with the atmosphere.
She thinks nothing of it.
;
He does not care how she looks, and at first, this unsettles her.
While she would prefer them not to be, it is a common truth that the first and foremost thing relationships are based on is physical attraction.
Which he doesn't seem to care about.
Well.
;
Some day in July, she grows sick of her hair. The stickiness, the tangles, the bangs-everything.
"Cut it, then," he says later, between slurps of pork and noodles.
She gives him a dubious look, and he shrugs. The unsettling feeling from before-the one that screams, he doesn't even care what you look like-races nimbly up her spine and into the flush of her cheeks.
Her nails float to their place at her teeth, and she gnaws nervously at her cuticles until he's forced to pry her hands away.
There are bruises ingrained into his palms that equate his hands to sandpaper. She likes their raw quality, their imperfection. At times, she allows herself to think that maybe it's his weathered hands that protect her from the world.
A knight-and-his-queen fantasy, so to speak.
"You could be bald, for all I care."
Or rather, an obnoxious knight and his overly tolerant queen.
;
She chops her hair mid-August, when the heat swells to its full potential. The tufts of hair left behind reach barely past the base of her neck, only a little more than tangible at her shoulders.
She can't deny the fact that her heart beats uncontrollably fast that weekend, as she makes her way to the ramen shop in forced stride.
He waits for her at the corner, leaning casually against his bike, as if eating there-with her-is a regular thing.
Which it is, or has become, in recent months.
"You look good," he says, angel lips pulled into a sleepy-baby smile.
She sucks in her breath and murmurs, "I thought you didn't care."
"No," he starts, pawing at the ground, "but you look good-"
She stumbles backwards when his face swoops down to her level, peridot pupils scintillating in all their radiant fire. A faint simper hugs the curve of his mouth, and the world is inexplicably quiet.
"-and I think you should know that."
She doesn't know how to breathe.
;
As summer whispers away and evolves into fall, the nature of their get-togethers changes.
After ramen comes a walk into town, her flower fingers wrapped carefully into the folds of his hands. He babbles most of the time, about school and his brothers and soccer.
She doesn't mind, though.
The lilt in his voice let's her believe that there are little things that can be appreciated, that matter.
"I'm not boring you, am I?" he asks her once, murmur dappled with evident concern. His hands are wrung around the chains of a swing, and she looks up at him from below.
There are words on her tongue, pointless yet perhaps romantic jargon that rests in the purse of her lips.
To be a part of his world, to be a part of this small and unknown yet precious something-
for that, she's forever grateful, and there aren't words she can find to express it, not now and not ever.
She opens her mouth and intakes a breath. Wisps of auburn curls tickle her nose, and she grins.
;
"No. No, you're not."
*On an extra note, I should be able to update GIMM in a few days, if anyone's wondering!