Through His Eyes

Through His Eyes [23]

{{Dedicated to @randomlydancing for being lovely}}

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Rhea's eyebrows were pulled together in concentration as she secured the back clasp of her earring. It was an early Christmas present and she'd decided to wear it to school on the last day before Christmas break.

Right before they'd parted ways after their impromptu shopping trip, Xander had procured a small velvet box from his coat pocket and passed it to Rhea with a smug smile on his face.

She'd opened the box to find silver snowflake-shaped stud earrings that looked like they cost her entire shopping budget. "Merry Christmas," he'd said as she'd inspected the earrings with an awestruck look.

She couldn't figure out when he'd gotten these when they'd been together for the entirety of the shopping trip but then she'd proceeded to procure the gloves she'd bought for him from the store they'd bought Luke's sweater while he was trying the sweater on to get feel of whether it would fit Luke or not. "Merry Christmas," she'd said as she passed the shopping bag to him. "I didn't have enough time to get them gift-wrapped, because someone was calling out my name from the dressing rooms like an impatient toddler."

They'd both chuckled.

***

School was so slow that day, Rhea felt like ripping her own hair out. She was so ready for a week long break from everything that she was practically counting down the minutes. 

She sat in Chemistry class and listened to Mr. Martin talk and talk and talk.

It was the last period of the day, as well as the last period before Christmas break, so one would expect Mr. Martin to go easy on them, but no, he'd dumped an experiment on them, expecting a report by the end of class, complete with a diagram and all.

She pulled her hair up in a ponytail to get it out of her face, like she always did whenever they were assigned an experiment. She started copying the instructions on the board down to her notebook, her eyebrows pinching together in concentration while Caleb went towards the cabinets to retrieve the necessary equipment.

Just as she was writing down the last words, Caleb returned with one of his arms full of equipment. With the other, he threw a goggle at her, which she managed to catch without effort. This had become a thing for them—sort of a challenge—after the first time she'd hit him square in the face with a pair of goggles to see who would succeed in catching the other off guard. For now, the score was 3-1 in Rhea's favor but Caleb always chalked it up to him being sleep deprived and distracted because of it. Rhea had recently begun calling him out on abusing his sob story to get out of being a loser with no hand-eye coordination. He'd chuckle every time.

Caleb sat down next to her with an exaggerated sigh and said, "If only I got to sleep eight hours every night."

"Please, you still wouldn't know what hit you half the time."

He let out yet another chuckle. "New earrings?" he asked. Then he picked up a graduated cylinder to start measuring the chemicals.

"Yeah," she said, smiling to herself slightly. She felt bad about feeling good that he'd noticed. "Christmas present."

"Yeah? From who?"

"Xander," she answered matter-of-factly.

Upon her proclamation, Caleb looked up from the equipment in his hands with raised eyebrows. "You guys are hanging out?"