Chapter 25
School Work

"Have you seen my hair brush?" I ask Christina while opening all the bathroom cabinets.

Christina is looking at me from the door frame. She is leaned against it, her arms crossed in front of her body.

"Can you please stop looking at me and help me fi-"

"Look down." She interrupts me.

I look down to the sink confused and see my brush, right next to the faucet. I pick it up and mumble a "oh". I look at the dirty mirror in our bathroom and brush my hair, making a note to myself to clean that mirror when I come back.

I keep my hair loose and try to get out of bathroom, but Christina is blocking my way. I look at her, waiting for her to move, but she just cocked her head to one side.

"Where are you going?" She asks suspiciously.

"Nowhere in particular." I say and try to make my way out of the bathroom, but Christina moves and leans against the other side of the door frame, blocking my way again. "I have to go, Christina." I say and try to make my way out again, but she just blocks my way with her arm.

"Is anyone waiting for you?" She asks.

"Christi-"

"Tell me and you'll get out."

"I'm meeting Four." I say rolling my eyes. "We need to do a project. Now, can I go?"

She unhitched herself from the door frame and moved to the side.

"Project..." She repeats under her breath.

"Christina, stop that." I say slightly annoyed at her, but she just giggles.

I make my way out of the dorm and into the library, where Four and I decided to do the project. Back in the beginning of the school year, when Peter and I had to do some project to biology, we took almost a week to finish it and only got a B-. Which is not bad, considering we kind of can't stand each others presence. At least, he can't stand mine.

I turn in the last hallway before the library and see Four, next to the door of the library. I instantly tight the grip on the book I was carrying. He is wearing a tight black shirt, dark washed jeans and some old sneakers.

When he sees me, he grins and walks up to me.

"Hey." He says when he's close enough for me to hear him. I can see by his face that something is upsetting him.

"Hi." I shyly say in return as I place a strand of blonde hair behind my ear. "Hm, what's wrong?"

"unfortunately, we won't be able to do our project in the library."

"Oh?" I say and I glance past the glass door next to us, into the library. I can see very little, but it's enough. I see a table full of people, open notebooks and books and pens all over the table. I had almost forgot we are in the middle of the tests season.

"It's full. completely full." He says and shrugs. "I've never seen that library, full like that in... ever. And this is my fourth year in here."

"Do you think they let us grab two chairs and place them in the middle of the library?" I ask. "We don't need that much space."

"Honestly? I think there is not enough room for two more chairs." He says with a sideways smirk on his face and I can't help but blush.

I raise a brow at him, and he gestures towards the door. "See for yourself." He says.

"I will." I grin and walk towards the door.

I don't even have to open the door to see how crowded the library is. Right in front of the door, after the desk, there is a table full of people. The table I saw a little while ago. That table is followed by many others, and Caleb is sat in one of them with his roommate and a couple more people I've been seeing in the classes building.

Stepping back, I look at Four, who is leaned against the wall right next to the glass door, with his hands in his pockets.

"That's..." I try to say.

"I know." He agrees.

"What now?" I ask. "Do we do this another time, or..."

"Another time?" He asks astonished. "We don't have another time, Tris. We've been postponing this for weeks."

"When is the project due?" I ask. We had, in fact, postponed this for weeks. We had about a month to do the project, but because of the tests, it's getting hard to find time to do anything else besides studying.

"This Thursday." He says and my eyes widen. "I know..." He says seeing my reaction.

I don't say a thing, and neither does he. We just stay there, looking at each other for what seemed like forever. Until...

"Four!" Zeke shouts from the middle of the hallway. Four turns to face him.

"Hey dude." Four says when Zeke is close enough to us.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your little chat," he says looking at me, then he looks at Four. "but, I'm going home for the weekend. I just needed to let you know."

"Home?" Four said clearly shocked.

"Yea, I'll tell you about that later. I leave in an hour, I just need to get my stuff and Uriah. Family stuff... Whatever." Zeke says and walks away. "See you Monday!" He shouts.

"Back to the project." Four says.

"Yes, project." I say.

"Besides our dorms, I don't know anywhere else we can do it."

"Neither do I."

"So, dorms?"

"Dorms it is." I say.

We walk together to the dorms building, discussing the project topic. When we finally arrive to the building, we pass through the main hall and I remember the common room there is, in where Peter and I finished our project. But I'm pretty sure that's full of people studying as well, and as far as I know, studious people like my brother always like to study in a silent ambient. Four and I are going to be doing a project, we'll need to talk. So, I don't even tell him about the common room and keeping following him. Until I finally realise where we're heading to. A dorm. His dorm, probably.

I suddenly feel nervous, because the last time I was alone in a tiny space with him, it was when we played Truth or Dare in the beginning of the school year. And I clearly remember that it didn't went that well. At least for me.

We arrive at the main hall of our floor and we stop.

"Where to?" He asks.

I'm about to say my dorm, when I realize Christina is there. I start to stutter but I manage to say his dorm.

We arrive to his dorm, and I feel weird. I've been in here many times, but this time, it seems different somehow. Not because they changed the way the room was decorated, because they did, but because I was here with Four. The other times I've been here, it was with Zeke, and the room was usually crowded with all out friends.

"Don't be shy, you can come in." He says and turns on his computer, which is in the desk that is now in between the two beds and not across from them.

I realize I've been standing in the doorway and I come into the room. I sit in one of the beds and look at the computer screen while the computer loads.

.xx.

"So, let me see if I got this straight. They all call you Four, because when you came here, you only had four pairs of underwear?" I ask. It's about 9pm and I spent the whole day with Four. We had had dinner already, about an hour ago.

We are both sat on the floor, Four's laptop is placed between our legs and our backs are against one of the beds, Zeke's bed. In between all the talking we had done, we managed to get most of the project done.

"Basically. Zeke had to rush to the mall with me." Four says and laughs. "It took him ages to stop nagging me about that."

"But the nickname stuck."

"As you can see."

"There is only one thing I don't understand. Why did you brought so little?"

"I... How do I say this. I didn't quite wanted to come here." He says and passes his hand through his hair. "I mean, I did. It was my choice. But it was a rushed decision. I wanted to stay at home. It's a long story, forget it."

"I have time." I say.

"Actually you don't. Neither of us have. We still need to finish this." He says and points to the laptop.

"It's saturday. We have plenty of time." I say and lean my head against the bed, looking at him. My back hurt.

"It's saturday. Tomorrow I'll need to study." I don't answer, I just look at him. "Let's just finish this. Then we can chat all we want."

"Let's." I say and pull his laptop to my lap.

"We still need to revise page five." He says as he scrolls through the pages of hour work.

"And seven. We just copied and pasted. We need to resume that."

"We did not. That was page five."

"Was it?" I ask and I begin to look for it.

After about one hour or so, we are nearly at the end of the project. Four is still in the floor with the laptop in his lap, while I go through Zeke's mini-fridge.

"There is nothing you can eat in here." I complain.

"You had dinner two hours ago."

I wanted to say that I felt like eating something, but instead, I just close the fridge and crawled back to his side. He is adding some final touches to the work.

"I ran away. Kind of." Four says.

I turn to face him, clearly confused. My neck is aching. Maybe I shouldn't have spent all this time in the floor.

"From home."

I feel the need to smile, but I contain myself. I shouldn't smile about something like this, but it's almost stronger than I am.

I remember what Zeke said to me the day I asked Four what his real name was, back in the days where he dated Lauren and I knew almost no one. Zeke said Four hated to talk about his past. He never did, and no one ever asked because they all knew he wasn't going to tell them. And here we are now. He is kind of opening himself to me, telling me about his past. It's not like he is telling me his whole life, but he is talking about it. And that's more than anyone here have heard. And I feel like smiling because of that, because that means he trusts me. And that makes me happy.

Another chapter? Yaay!

It seems like they are starting to get closerrr :3

About the updates, I try as hard as I can to update this story weekly, but as the time passes, it's getting harder. I'm starting to have a lot of school work to do and it's not easy to balance school with everything else. So, I just want to say I'm sorry in advance. Because there might be a week that I won't be able to uptade. I'm not saying it will, I'm saying it might. And yea...

liv x