amoureux garçon

Chapter Nine: Streets Fantasmas

word count: 2.3k

Mana and Pierre, still holding hands, her looking into his eyes right through her pink big Afro, her Ghanaian tanned skin glistening in the sun. I looked. I gazed. I stared. I did everything that was possible, it just had translated to different synonyms of the word staring. Almost with hand in chest. I squeezed that squishy red palm-sized thing in my hand, if I for sure did.

"Why should I ever?" He asked.

"Because you should, dummy!"  Another laugh, another desperate look in their eyes, another slight touch of their fingers right against their pale palms, it did kind of annoyed me yet all I did was nothing. Nothing. What else was there that could be done, I couldn't just stand up, run towards them and pull them apart and excuse my actions with a mediocre reason, apart from staring it was was almost impossible to not notice that—even though Pierre had a nonchalant attitude towards Mana—I could have possibly been witnessing a sort of slowly manifesting love, I couldn't surely call it love, one thing for sure.

I looked at her, once again I couldn't seem to stop taking my eyes of her; something I used to do when I was little: look at anything I found particular, yet I though I had grown out of my habit, I thought I had pushed myself to the limits trying to get rid of that stupid habit. Once again Mana still had a smile on her face. I couldn't figure out the type of person she was. I hated that.

"Then you should too," Pierre proposed.

"Not my Afro! It took me way too long to grow it out."

Achilles, leaned to his side his body before mine and mimed to Lairah for her to pass him her cigarette and so she did; leaning back, he brought it to his lips and held it there. A few seconds after he got on his feet and run towards them—Mana and Pierre—white short sleeves shirt and white shorts right above the knees, barely covering the scar that run along his pale knee. I wanted to know how'd he got it and how far it went. It just took Achilles a matter of seconds for him to have Mana in between his arms, with his right hand he took the cigarette from in between his lips and pulled Mana closer, they both looked into each other's eyes, all of that right in front of Pierre.
Achille breathed out and Mana's lips came apart letting the cloud of smoke right into her mouth, shutting her eyes closed she seemed to be holding her exhale.

They did it multiple times, each time their bodies seemed to get closer and closer and when they realised that any closer than that wasn't physically possible for us to see that's when they stopped.

"You are crazy!" She laughed, head dropping to her right, she let her arms fall on his broad shoulders. "But let's do it one more time." She raised her index finger in between them and looked at Achilles through her eyelashes and then she gave a quick glance at Pierre that seemed to be gazing at them two intensely almost as if he could picture them both naked.

"You almost kissed me!" Achilles tried to keep a straight face before bursting out laughing, one hand on his mouth and he kept Mana at arms length.

I slightly turned towards Kwasi and Lairah—who sat next to him—without looking at them, instead with my eyes pointing towards Mana and Pierre, hands in hands; I whispered: "I don't think there's something I really ever wanted to have, so badly, for a matter of facts I think there might be something I'm longing inside to be."

Both of them quietly agreed understandably, Lairah smiled, pulling the sides of her light lips further away, like she had just accomplished something in life; maybe she even knew who I was talking about or maybe she had a rough ideas of how I wanted to be and maybe even for who.

"Come here Pierre!" She smiled. Mana spread her arms wide open.

"I'll go back to sitting." Achilles rushed towards me.