Being forced to move so many states away from all that he once knew, Nessa was nervous to tackle his new life. Fortunately, it didn't take long for Nessa to meet a plethora of unique individuals who welcomed him into their lives:
The optimist, the k...
He felt a bit sad to see them go, missing the company that he had accumulated. But just as everything came, it had to go as well. Nessa waved to them all, wishing them a good rest of their night. When the front door was closed, Nessa found knowing looks on his parents faces.
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There were a million thoughts swimming in the boys' heads as they walked beside each other in perfect tandem. Kiwi kept glancing down at their hands, which would occasionally bump against each other when neither boy was paying attention. Every time that it happened, Kiwi felt electricity shoot up his arm.
His heart was singing in his chest, and his eyes were avoiding Ilya with a determination that took some serious effort. Ilya insisted that he wanted to escort Kiwi home, so that was what he did. Venice went home alone, while Keely and Emi walked back to their own places.
Things had felt different ever since that day in his bedroom. Kiwi didn't think that Ilya felt it too, and was convinced that he had just conjured up an imaginary scenario so that he could pretend that he was living in a fairytale. The reality was that Kiwi would only make a good cunning villain rather than a protagonist that would inevitably get rewarded.
He thought back to September —the last time that Ilya had walked him home. They flirted and pretended that there was never anything of importance behind those words. Kiwi had been thinking a lot about how he felt when it came to Ilya. Maybe that was what made everything so convoluted. He should have just dropped the subject.
But when he tilted his head back to briefly look at Ilya for the millionth time, Kiwi wondered what exactly was stopping him from reaching up and lightly grazing one of Ilya's pristine black ringlets that were always pushed back from his forehead as though he were carved from marble. Sometimes Kiwi thought that he was and that nothing was real at all.
Ilya noticed him looking and their gazes met. It was very much real, because Ilya's pale, thin lips lifted up into a smirk. "Admiring the view, Craig?"
"I said that you can call me that sometimes." Kiwi did everything in his power to train his gaze back on the path in front of them. It was impossible. "Not nonstop."
"What are you going to do to stop me?" Ilya asked, knowing full-well what he was initiating.
Kiwi huffed, crossing his arms over his chest as he pretended to not be effected. Yet, his cheeks felt warm. "Nothing, I guess."
"Wrong answer." Suddenly, Ilya's breath was fanning out on Kiwi's neck, causing him to startle and nearly trip. Once he righted himself, he attempted to swat Ilya's proximity away.
"Jeez, Ill!" Kiwi couldn't help but feel a laugh begin to echo out of his mouth. "You scared me."
Ilya wasn't smirking, he was grinning dumbly. "That's the point."
"What if I automatically went to hit you?" Trying his best to remain rational while his mind was racing, Kiwi went back to deflecting all of Ilya's advances.
