Attracted to Trouble

Chapter 4: Refusing The Trouble

I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, when I got into my house after reading Gabriel’s note. I tried to focus on the sounds outside, the honks of cars passing by, the heels of someone’s shoes hitting the pavement loudly, the boisterous laughter of a group of people, but my thoughts kept returning to my mixed feelings swimming around throughout my entire body.

            You can’t deny that you do in fact feel a strong attraction to Gabriel for whatever reason that is but what does that say about your feelings for Andrew?, I asked myself silently. I squeezed my eyes shut and slapped my hand to my forehead hoping that the slap could somehow set my feelings straight. Of course, my feelings remained scrambled and I now had a stinging pain on my forehead.

            I stood up, got my computer, and returned to my bed. After I turned it on, I immediately opened up iTunes and let the music fill up every corner of my room. I hit shuffle and the first song that pops up is, “The Way I Loved You” by Taylor Swift. As the chorus comes around and the lines, “I miss screaming, and fighting, and kissing in the rain. It’s 2 am and I’m cursing your name. You’re so in love that you act insane. And that’s the way I loved you,” drift through me, a memory of Andrew and I pops up into my head. The memory of the time when we first kissed.

            It was New Year’s Eve and by some miracle my mother had let me spend the day with my friends and then sleep over Mia’s house. An entire group of us were sitting on top of Mia’s roof, not moving too much for the fear of tumbling off, just staring out into the night sky and watching our breaths mingle in the air as we laughed at things we wouldn’t remember the next day. I took the position of lying down and having my gaze fixated on the small amount of stars scattered on the sky when I felt a hot gust of wind blow by my neck. When I turned my head, Andrew was laying down next to me, so close that I could feel the heat of his body emanating towards me. My heart began to beat a little faster and I found I had to concentrate really hard on collecting the saliva in my mouth and swallowing it down my throat.

“H-Hey there,” were the words my brain managed to travel out of my lips. I stared at the boy I had liked for 5 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes, and 53 seconds. I’m just trying to romanticize this all a little bit, but you get the point. I was crushing hard on this big brown eyed cutie and the way he made me feel. He was exactly the type of guy I always secretly fall for, incredibly sweet, makes me smile every time he’s near me, and just so darn cute.

“Hey, Ave,” he responded smoothly, with a tilt of a smile directed towards me. He directed his gaze up towards the sky while I remained staring at him, trying to catch every detail on his face that I hadn’t noticed before like the slight bump on his nose and the small indent in the middle of his chin, forming a subtle cleft chin.  

Andrew glanced back at me, then quickly resumes staring up at the sky, a small smile appearing on his lips. I tilted my head back up the sky and placed a hand over my face, attempting to hide the embarrassment at being caught staring at my crush BY my crush.

Suddenly, someone shouted, “TEN SECONDS TILL THE NEW YEAR!” Then everyone began chanting down, Andrew and I sitting up and joining in on the countdown.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! ON-“ My lips were cut off by a pair of soft lips pressing briefly onto mine. I pulled back and opened my eyes in shock and stared straight into a pair of brown eyes.

“I’m sorry, Ave,” Andrew stammered out, “Just forget everything I just did, I’m so-“ I cut Andrew off with a brief kiss of my own. I nearly had a heart attack at having to find the guts to make such a bold move.

“Happy New Years, Andrew,” I murmured, not being able to refrain the smile that etched itself onto my face.

“Happy New Years, Avery,” Andrew replied, a smile mirroring my very own.