Lost in Hollywood

Don't Be Upsetti

They were seated at the dinner table, in Sky's home, but not to eat. Math books, laptops, notebooks, and Sky's colorful markers that had spilled out of her Hello Kitty pencil case, covered half the table, making it clear what the objective of this meeting was in case Eli's thoughts started wandering.

He wasn't here for dinner, even if he could hear Nicholas in the kitchen and there was a mouth-watering smell of something Eli suspected of being pasta Bolognese in the air. This tutoring session was purely business - or at least that Eli tried telling himself so that he could keep his thoughts and emotions in check. He was here just to help Sky pass math and science— and the fact that he hoped to find a suitable moment to ask her about the prom, was beside the point.

To ask her about the prom.

Not to ask her to the prom with him, per se. He just wanted to inquire if she was going at all, and if she was, then maybe—

He forced himself back into the moment, cutting that thought before it could grow any bigger. This was hardly the time to think about the prom. Jeez. She probably wasn't even going, and neither should he. He could still return the tux, and get back the money Mom had spent on it. He would spend that night alone at home playing Dungeon Lord, just like he had spent every night of every previous school dance of his whole life. Nothing new there, so why the fuck did that thought feel like a punch in the gut?

He swallowed the annoyed sigh that wanted to escape through his lips so that Sky wouldn't misinterpret it. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was annoyed at her. He wasn't. He was just frustrated as fuck, but it wasn't her fault.

Sky, oblivious to Eli's inner torment, was hunched over her notebook, gripping a pen in her fingers with a white knuckle grip. Her curls - however short now - fell partly to her face, covering her eyes from him, but he could tell she was nervous anyway. The line of her jaw was hard, her lips formed a tight line across her face, and the pencil in her fingers looked like it could snap at any moment.

It wouldn't even be the first one. It seemed like whenever Sky got too agitated by math, the pencils were the first to pay for it with their lives.

Now, though—

Sky looked tense, but not in a bad way. If something, she looked concentrated, which gave Eli some hope. He had gone through a couple of examples with her, step by step, but now it was her turn to try solving a problem without his help. Eli tried not to interfere - she needed to learn to do this independently. It wasn't like he was going to be there when she took the test. But watching her try was torture. She was so slow, and he was so impatient. His foot was tapping the floor with a nervous beat, and it took all his willpower not to look at the paper in front of Sky, to see if she had even the slightest idea what she was doing.

Sky brought a hand to brush her hair behind her ear, revealing the frown on her forehead, the red spots that were dancing on her cheeks. Hawk swallowed hard and looked down not to stare. God, she was beautiful— Sometimes it struck him like a bolt of lightning, taking his breath away - especially in moments like this, when she had no clue she looked so good he could barely breathe.

Sometimes being this near to her was unbearable. It reminded him of all the ways he wanted to touch her, and of all the reasons why that wasn't happening, why it never might happen again.

His throat felt thick, his mouth dry. If she could read his thoughts, she'd throw him out of here. For fuck's sake. He knew he was being a horny idiot— and if Sky never wanted a guy near her again after all the crap she'd been through, Eli couldn't blame her.

And yet—

It wasn't like he could just stop feeling the way he did. He was in love with her, and being alone with her like this, being able to spend time with her, to talk to her, to help her— it made it all a thousand times worse.