Painting Flowers

Chapter 12

Alex led me back downstairs from the roof into his bedroom, quietly saying, “goodbye,” and rubbing at his arm when I opened his window to climb back across our tree.

   “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” I asked, turning back to face him for a second. I desperately wanted to bring the whole almost kissing thing up, but I felt that if I did, then everything would just become awkward and weird.

   Alex grinned at me, tilting his head slightly as he watched me slip through the open window. "Don't you know it."

  I just smiled as I crossed the branches of the tree, and I faintly heard Alex sigh and shut the pane of glass behind me. It just took me a few seconds before I ducked my head into my own room, jumping down onto the carpet, kicking my shoes off so I could feel the soft material under my feet. I sighed and went over to the bed, lying down on top of the mattress and staring up at the ceiling. 

  My mind was racing with general thoughts of "Alex", and I frowned at nowhere in particular as I chewed at the inside of my mouth. So he'd tried to kiss me. Right. Um. (I wasn't really too sure what to think of that; maybe it was just a spur of the moment thing, y'know, 'you're here and I'm here and HEY LET'S MAKE OUT', but I just shook my head. Alex wasn't really a "spur of the moment" guy; he usually always thought things out before he went through with them.) 

  The thing that really weirded me out was the fact that I wanted to kiss him back. The way I noticed how his face curved together when he was lying down, how plush and gentle his lips looked when they were but a few millimetres away from mine, it wasn't... right. I had no idea what had gotten into me, feeling attracted (was that what this was?) to my best friend, but it was really weird. And I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. 

  I wanted to talk about it all with someone, try and explain what I was feeling to someone to see if it would help sort my thoughts out, but the only person I really wanted to talk to about Alex was... Alex. So I sighed and let my eyes slip closed, running the last ten minutes again over in my head to see if they made any sense after I'd analysed it. 

  Nope. 

  Still confusing as shit. 

  I groaned and let my eyes flutter open, pissed off at myself for not being able to come up with a solution to why I was suddenly feeling this way. 

  Honestly, was it really 'sudden', though? What about that time when Alex had ran his hands up and down my thighs and it had made my stomach go all weird? And when I'd been staring at his lips afterwards? And also when we slept together in the same bed, and I let him cuddle against me?

    Really, I was surprised I hadn't picked up on my feelings for Alex earlier. 

  To try and get somewhere with the sudden realisation that I liked my best friend more than a best friend, I picked my cell up from its usual post of underneath my pillow and brought up my contact list, skipping through the names to see if there was anybody I could talk to to try and clear my head a little with this whole thing.

   ‘Alan’; hadn’t talked to him in years.

   ‘Alex :-)’; well, that wasn’t going to happen.

   ‘Austin’; he was probably a druggie now.

   ‘Bob’; no idea who he was.

   ‘Cass’; Rian’s girlfriend. She was nice enough, but if she found out about what I was thinking, she’d probably snitch to the whole of my year. And I didn’t really want that, so I kept on scrolling.

   ‘Dad’; haha, nice fucking joke.

   ‘Emma’; some distant cousin or something.

   ‘Erin’; ex-girlfriend, lost my virginity to her, really not a good story…