Every Moment (ZeRoyalMexican)

Part 34 - Discoveries

~Ze's POV~

"What are you going to do?" I ask, watching the woman who nearly got my boyfriend in prison when he was still sick. Alice turns to me with a shocked expression. After coughing awkwardly and turning away, she places down the tea pot and keeps a low gaze. No matter how I look at it, she's holding this poise which I had never seen on her from before when she was a simple and motivated reporter. Its no wonder why when Elaine described her it was a completely different image than what I had thought of Alice as. Alice doesn't answer for a long time, keeping her gaze lowered to the pot before the door opens, completely waiting out the little time we had before Elaine came back in the room. Elaine walks inside carrying a plate of snacks like she always does whenever we decide to study in her house, which is actually hardly ever. Now that Alice is here, Elaine absolutely glows and seems to be more motivated than ever. So... I guess I'll forget about the fact Alice can very well report on this or call someone on me.

"So you were where Alice was? That's quite a trip from here," Elaine comments as she sets down the snacks on the table and sits on the floor, crossing her legs and trying hard not to peek a glance over to Alice. Meanwhile Alice is glancing over directly towards me, completely unaware of the poor teen's obvious feelings. While Elaine seems to have improved just by Alice's presence, I almost wish Alice never came back. It'll only hurt Elaine more in the end, but I suppose since she's a teen she'll get over it. There are plenty of guys, or girls, in her high school that are probably better looking than Alice or me.

"Yeah, we met somewhere else though," I explain and Elaine looks to me with curious eyes. Chuckling, I glance over at Alice who immediately looks away, her hair covering her red face. Now that she told me, I don't know how I didn't see her feelings before. "I'll tell you if you get an A on this," I challenge, handing Elaine a worksheet I had put together before. Elaine looks at it with such intent and immediately begins working at the math. Right now she has a C in her class, I'm a bit afraid of helping her anymore after I helped her raise it to a C from an F, if she does any better she just won't need me and I'll be fired. In the beginning I hadn't even known how she's gotten into calculus in the first place. Now I know when she actually puts her mind to something she can, after hardly seeing any family and most people around her ignoring her, probably even classmates because she is a beautiful girl, she was probably not motivated before. At this point I feel like she's my cute younger sister, after having spent time with her and admiring her passion.

"Fuck.... umm, teacher can you help?" Elaine asks and I glance down at her work, all right.

"Do you forfeit the challenge for help?" I ask and she immediately hesitated, glancing back down at her work before completely turning away from me and begins to work violently. She must be really curious, but I suppose anyone would be because it is extremely coincidental who she admires is someone I've known for quite a bit. When she gets a B on the sheet she immediately works on fixing her mistakes and as she does so I leave the room, leaving her and Alice to chat a bit. Every moment I feel Alice's stare on me I feel the guilt growing and I feel my homesickness grow. I never really thought of any place as home, besides where the family is I never really thought of any other place as a home until the base. Havign always moved around so much I made sure to be careful of not getting too attached yet here I am. Without much thought I pull out my phone and scroll through all of the missed calls from Gassy.

I'm not ready to call him back just yet, I'm not ready to break up with him or even accept that we may never be together again like I told Gassy before. It may be hypocritical of me to have told him and judged him for that but it's the best way to accept it. If he's convinced I'll eventually become convinced if he believes it. He doesn't though, he believes there is a chance and my negativity is only annoying him, he probably didn't even mean asking me if we should just break up. His grumpiness must have just gotten to him and he said it out of annoyance and his irritation at that moment, I know him too well to take him seriously when he's irritated and grumpy like he gets. Despite thinking it was a out of the moment thing I still felt affected by it, it's not something I would take lightly after all. Taking a deep breath I shake my head and put my phone away before I decide to do something I regret, like calling him. Not saying anything but calling him, just hearing his voice may change my resolve to be hiding out here. Damn Alice, she's getting the past into my head now that she'd here as a memory of my time back there.