Divine
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She watches him from the other end of the room with all the tact of a forest fire, but she can't help it. She's all at once afraid to be seen and hopeful that his large, knowing eyes will find hers. She wants him, but doesn't know what she'll do if he ever wants her. There are scary, frightening thoughts: maybe this will be the time; he is so beautiful; why not, oh why not? Her hopes are so intoxicating that sometimes she can even feel the feather of his breath above her ear, a hint of amusement to his voice as he says, "You've got it bad for me, don't you?" And, heavens, it's a solid truth if there ever was one. But he's still across the room, oblivious as ever to all the times she's lived in those beautiful eyes of his.
Really, though, it's not his fault. What does he owe a know-it-all high school student? A kid, that's what she is. She's boring and plain, cautious to a fault and known to all as practical and just the littlest bit self-righteous. It's absurd to think he should ever have need to associate with her, that he should ever want to. He's beautifully devilish and just a little bit in love with a whole lot of women, that man. Most nights there is someone new on his arm, which is half comfort and half anything but. It means he isn't so particular but also that there is little hope for the kind of magic she wants – the kind of magic that exceeds midnight. He learns them, loves them and, as always, finds another slipper to rescue before the clock strikes twelve. He's a method actor, and life has cast him as red as Mars. Olette herself has no hope for such an invitation.
Not her, not at all. Not precious, dependable, lovely Olette, which is just what girls become when it's clear they're just a little shy of desirable. At eighteen, she's still the loveliest of children. He's got galaxies and hidden depths glinting behind that light in his eyes, and she's got Friday's homework tucked into her messenger bag. Her attraction is laughable, and most probably the only bewildering thing about her. But she can't help where her green eyes wander, can't help how tense her heart becomes when he, for just a moment, looks her over. He flicks her a glance, but too soon his eyes travel elsewhere. It's more than understandable, when she is so very Olette for someone who is so very Reno. It is his way.
Her friends gradually notice her unusual behavior and worry; Roxas worries, but it's for all the wrong reasons and a little too late for his protective bit. She insists that he "back off already" because it was he who broke her heart, and even though it hurt so badly, it doesn't anymore. She's moved forward and found fire and lightning brought to life before her very eyes, and she's not going to let someone she never truly loved ruin something so alive. Her heart is different now, because it finally understands everything it never dared to. The only problem is that, for all she has learned from her seat across the room, he'll never even know. She's so infatuated that it's like a physical pain, yet she can't muster up the kind of confidence it takes to trap a dragonfly in her hands.
He leaves again, glass slipper in hand – she's lovely and shapely, with narrowed eyes and a down-turned mouth as they pass her table. Olette sees the challenge in those narrowed brown eyes and pulls out her flashcards. Finally someone noticed, but the wrong someone, the someone who knows she has trapped a dragonfly between her graceful fingers. And not just any dragonfly; the angel, the devil, the red. Olette doesn't think too badly of the nights' Cinderella, intuitive and cold she may be. If it had been Olette's own victory, she would have cast cool loathing at such a nosy, wandering-eyed child, too. Tonight, again, she plays the role of the nosy, wandering-eyed child. Flashcards, Olette thinks, can only improve matters.
If she were being smart, which by no scale in the known universe does she claim herself measured by, she would turn back now. Something about him, however, always stops her. It's like discovering a new color, a new flavor, a new sensation, and she cannot get enough of his fiery, forthright presence. It is something about his hair, his eyes, that half-smile, that unabashed energy. He is unlike anyone Olette has ever met, and that is a little bit on the exciting side. It is that something, that unlike-anyone-else quality, that brings her back night after night, no apologies.
This particular night, Olette tries something new. It is becoming difficult to see him trapped in hands that are not hers, so, for the first time, she observes his lady instead. Rather than her standard, casual once-over, her eyes catalog the angle she's apparently been missing. In her plain jeans and unpinned hair, she's a clear contrast to Reno's sophisticated date of choice. The cut of her expensive dress is flattering, if not a little daringly low, and her makeup is done just right. She can't be so much older than Olette, perhaps early twenties, though her confidence masks it well.
It is decided the next night, as she slips into her mother's closet. Olette has nothing to lose. She is young and sweet and lovely at best, but a well-chosen dress and deftly applied cosmetics can turn even a girl into something a devil might take notice of.
She enters the restaurant, drawing looks as she goes. It if ever seemed strange that a girl would dine with nothing more than her evening's schoolwork, it must seem twice as strange now. Who dresses so prettily for the company of her own plate? The dress is as green as her eyes, and as form-fitting and shapely as anything she's ever worn. It feels natural, though, and good. Different. Others must feel the same way, because she notices look she hasn't before; once-overs and crooked eyebrows, at first interested and then fleeting. Who paints her face if she is not expecting company?
Reno doesn't look over once that night, not even during his customary sweep of the room. It is like she was never there at all, beautiful and expectant. She feels like more than a girl for the first time in forever, but it doesn't last as the night drags on and patrons come and go. In the end, looking at herself in the small bathroom, all she feels is embarrassed. She does not like the way she feels. This isn't her, the dress and the lined eyes and the demure line of her mouth. It's not bad or wrong, it just isn't her. It's a little like false advertising, where even she feels tricked. She is a girl who does her homework, a library volunteer and best friend to a set of boys her buy her salty ice cream. She is not this Olette, who eats dinner alone in the hopes that she might some night be good enough.
Olette wipes away the dark red on her lips with a wet napkin, and returns to her table for her things. She'll put down her money and this will be the last time. Come push or shove or regret in the morning, even a girl knows this has gone on for too long. She is better than waiting, when it has long become clear that all she will ever be doing is waiting. She owes herself the dignity of leaving before he does.
Even her dignity does not go as planned, however, as Reno rises just after she signs her name to the bill. It's a coincidence that gives grimace, but a man has every right to move around as he pleases. She nods to the gentleman at the front, who bids her goodbye with a simple, "Good evening, miss," as she departs the restaurant.
The night air is cold, but it's clean and it beats down the heat of her mortification. The relief is delicious on her bared shoulders, and she looks back one final time before stepping onto the street.
"Olette!"
And like magic, like black and wicked magic, he appears.
She doesn't turn, not yet.
"That's your name, right? Olette."
Olette narrows her eyes and finally turns to see him standing outside the restaurant, dressed in the casual suit he seems to prefer. His hair is everywhere, and it makes her excited and angry both.
"This isn't Olette," she says, gesturing at herself. She needs to say it, for herself mostly. "This is...I don't even know. But if you're here for her, she isn't Olette."
He quirks an eyebrow at her, and she sees the start of a smirk tugging at one side of his mouth.
"I—"
"No, don't. Let me talk first," she interrupts, with all the built up daring of nights spent alone. She reaches to her side and into her small purse, retrieving a calculator and one page of mid-finished homework. "This"—she holds the page of calculus out for him like a warning sign—"is Olette. This is me. I like homework and calculus and I don't even like like the food here all that much. I like sea salt ice cream, and I don't like feeling like less than I am."
"I—" he begins.
"And," she interrupts again, "this dress is my mother's. And all my friends are boys. They're nosy and clueless but I love them."
Olette releases her breath and all the disappointment with it. This is right. This feeling and this declaration, they are her.
His smirk is full tilt now. Olette stands bewildered, homework and calculator clenched in either hand.
"I know," he says, and gives a satisfied nod when she lets him speak.
He lifts one side of his jacket, and reaches in. Out from the inside of his pocket, he pulls out two folded parcels of paper. As he unfolds them, something creeps up Olette's neck, like a fuzzy recognition. As he finally opens each piece, her realization is fully formed. The paper is distinct, and as he grins and shows her the front side of both, every ounce of her hard-won boldness vanishes.
"Oh, God," she says in nothing more than a whisper. But the proof is there, two pages of homework divulged from his dinner coat. And at the top of both is her name, neatly printed, as well as dates that range in weeks from one to the next.
"You've forgotten a few of these," he says, delighted at her mortification. "I thought you'd done it on purpose. A calling card of sorts."
Her face must be red, even more red than the lipstick smeared across the napkin in the bathroom trash. He's had her name for weeks, her writing, the little notes to herself she dots in-between paragraphs and diagrams in her assignment drafts. He's been collecting bits of her.
"This looks like physics," he says, turning each page to examine the writing, "and this must be math."
"Why didn't you just return them?" Olette asks, dragging a hand across her face. She forces both her calculator and homework back into her bag. "I might have needed them."
"Mm," he says, beginning to fold both papers up. "I was hoping that would have been the case. But you never did ask after them, did you?"
No, she hadn't. She'd assumed she'd lost them between home and school. It never occurred to her that she'd left her missing homework at the restaurant, and it never really mattered. She always kept multiple drafts. He had know way of nothing that, though, had he?
"I don't suppose you'll be giving that back to me, then," she gestures at the two folded squares in his hand. "You've had it this long."
His grin is wide on both sides now, and he taps his forehead with the tips of both squares in a mock salute. "I think I'll hold onto them a little while longer, if you don't mind."
She drops both hands to her sides, surprised but increasingly pleased. And against every declaration of washing her hands clean of this whole matter, of this devilish creature with her homework tucked back into his pocket, she salutes him back. "Keep it for as long as you like."
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They don't ever return to the restaurant. Not because it's not a nostalgic place, because it is. But he can barely glance at anything she writes without her turning five shades of embarrassed red. He likes the red on her, but you just don't bait the divine. You do not ruffle beautiful things if it can be helped. But he still likes the squint of her eyes whenever she remembers how they came to be and know each other, how they darken and light again like two bits of emerald. He's never seen eyes like hers, so different from his own. So instead, they find new places, places where he can see her comfortable and daring in all her rightness. Where she can see him bright and beautiful but hold him in her hands without being burned.
"Two bits of homework," she likes to say, a devil's glint to her angel's eyes, "brought us together."
"Five bits," he likes to correct, an angel's glint in his devil's eyes. "You never did check my other pockets."
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Rewritten on 8/2/15. This is obviously some serious crack.