I won't drag you down with me

5. Sunflowers

It had been staring at the TV for at least three hours. It was one of those nights again, and I was having a hard time calming myself down.

It was in times like these that I wished I could have my phone. I could have really used something to distract myself with.

I straightened my back on the couch and crossed my legs, closing my eyes and trying to get some sleep. I had a couple of hours before dawn.

Needless to say, someone walked into the room just as I was about to fall asleep. It was the mysterious guy who, as soon as he saw me sitting on the couch, shook his head with a smirk. 

"Look at that". 

I sighed as I heard his footsteps drawing nearer to the couch. "Sorry. Nobody told me this spot was taken", I said with a forced, obviously fake smile.

He sat on the couch, resting his feet on the coffee table in front of it. "I'll let it slide, this time. Just for you"

"What are you doing here?", I asked, trying to not sound too annoyed. 

"I could ask you the same thing"

I rolled my eyes and decided to just leave it. Maybe if I focused hard enough, I could forget about his presence. I grabbed my copy of "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë in an attempt to not have a conversation with him. Trying to concentrate on what I was reading, I realized I couldn't focus knowing he was just a few feet away from me. After reading the same line seven times, I sighed and closed the book with a thud. 

"Are you going to stay here all night?", I asked. I sounded crabby, and I was. But he didn't seem bothered by it, which bothered me even more.

"Is that a problem for you?", he replied with a smirk.

"Not if it isn't for you".

He smiled, shaking his head. His smile was genuine, and I hated myself for not having enough willpower to look away. Funny how he went from annoying to bearable in a matter of seconds.

None of us said anything for half an hour. I tried to read my book one more time, but I couldn't focus on what I was reading so I quit and tried to fall asleep. That wasn't working, either. At least the shaking had stopped and my mind wasn't as hazy anymore.

After about an hour, he said, out of the blue: "Do you want to do something fun?"

"What?"

He turned to look at me. "Come on. Neither of us is getting any sleep tonight anyway"

I looked at him for a few moments, unsure whether to take him seriously or not. "It's three in the morning. There's nothing fun to do", I stated the obvious.

"Getting out of here at three in the morning looks like a lot of fun to me", he said, shrugging.

I stared at the half-smile on his face and realized he wasn't joking. "Are you serious?"

He softly nodded, scrutinizing my expression. "Dead serious"

I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't think of anything that would have made any sense to him. There was no way I was breaking out of the center with a guy I barely knew at three in the morning of one of the coldest months of the year. There was just no way. 

He chuckled. "You're scared", he stated with an annoying grin.

"I'm not!", I replied, kind of offended. But then again... I was scared. I just didn't want him to know that. "It's just crazy. If someone sees us-"

"What could they do? Kick us out of here? They'll only be doing us a favor, then"

It would have been stupid denying it, because he was right. It's not like it could get any worst. But it was reckless. And I had never done anything reckless in my entire life. I'd never put myself in situations that could have gotten me in trouble. I never took risks. My whole existence felt like one itself.