Love Maybe

72.

Akeelah Jade

"Come on, Aki!" Cassius dragged me away from our classmates preparing for our bazaar project. Being ABM students suddenly made us business-minded people selling products to other students and even teachers.

"Hold your horses, Cass!" I halted and looked at my still-healing sprained ankle. His eyes followed the direction of my head and said, "Oh, crap. My bad. I forgot. Let's take the elevator." He let out a cute chuckle before guiding me toward the school elevator.

The elevator's off-limits for students; however, given my current situation, I'm exempted from that. Last week, I had a clumsy accident. I turned my feet wrongly while climbing up the stairs. As a result, I slipped down a few steps of the stairs, then I got a pretty swollen ankle and an embarrassed face because multiple people saw how clumsy I was. Luckily, now I could slowly walk, but I still tried my hardest not to put so much pressure on my right foot.

"Do you have the lists on you?"

"Yap!" I answered, popping the letter P. Cassius never looked this enthusiastic, and it looks freaking good on him. We're currently on our way to a grocery store near our school to buy a few ingredients for our team's chosen product. Our teams picked an affordable meal perfect for students. So, we'll buy Rice and a few condiments too.

Everyone around us was too busy preparing for their own projects, too, since this would be our last semester, and we'll officially graduate this April. I have mixed emotions about leaving this school. This has been my safe haven for years. It taught me a lot of things and have me meet different kinds of people who were able to teach me some lessons that I'll definitely bring with me for the rest of my journey. One of those people is Cassius.

We had a very complicated kind of friendship. Maybe, for my part, only it's complicated, but that's one way to describe it. It was probably my fault since I'm the one who always put meaning to his action when he was just a gentleman or a nice friend. I tried doing what January told me to let my feelings out. I'm not admitting anything, but my actions speak volumes. Then again, Cassius's blind to notice it since he's having some ongoing relationship with Andy.

"Come on, let's move to the other grocery. They don't have the things we need in here." I just followed Cassius while I stared into his feature. I love his eyes, but I'm jealous of how much longer his lashes are than mine.

"You good, Aki?"
"Yeah, of course. I'm sorry." I laughed the awkwardness off and just looked in my direction. We waited for the bus to arrive to go to the next store. The horns of different vehicles blaring everywhere and people walking past us made me slightly concerned with my injured foot. Luckily, Cassius seemed to be looking out for me too.

"By the way, Cass, how's the project you've been working on?" I tried to strike up a conversation while waiting. "My client wanted to try some portrait photos. It was a shift for me since it was my first time making people my subject, but I enjoyed it."

"That's great. At least you get to try and explore new things, right?"

"I guess so. But shooting people as a subject is tricky since it's now up to the subject to provide some feelings and emotions. You know what I mean."