Metamorphosis

Chapter 3

I was on my fourth spring roll when Isabel decided that she'd had enough of my silence for one night. Abandoning her place on the couch, she came and joined me by the fireplace, knocking her knee against mine in hopes of striking up conversation. I fiddled with my drink and ignored her for the time being. I wasn't ready to confess that her older brother was a manifestation of my dreams, or that I couldn't stop thinking about how he'd given me his number on the sly. I wasn't even ready to admit these feelings to myself, writing it off as a rush of adrenaline and nothing more, something that would be gone morning come.

            "Something isn't right," noted Izzy when I stayed quiet. "You should be yelling at me right now."

            That was true enough. If I weren't a ball of jumbled nerves, I would be chastising her for getting me involved in something illegal, but the more I thought about everything that happened, the more I realized that I didn't regret any of it. If that wasn't a warning sign that something was wrong with me, then I didn't know what was. I broke the law. I earned money by watching two guys fight. I rode on the back of a motorcycle with a complete stranger and enjoyed it. I normally freaked out when I went five miles over the speed limit, so why was I okay with this?

            "I think I'm sick," I said, matter-of-fact. There was no other explanation for this.

            Isabel's eyes widened. "Was it the food? Do you need some water?"

            I shook my head. What I needed was to stop thinking about Eren, but I couldn't go five seconds without picturing that sexy smile of his that sent my heart into overdrive. What was I even doing? He was way out of my league. He was the type of person that leaped without looking while I lingered back and contemplated the jump at every angle. We might as well live on two separate planets. He'd never want someone like me and usually I'd never want someone like him, but... I wanted him. I wanted him so badly that it physically hurt.

            And I just met him.

            I was so screwed.

            "I fucked up, didn't I?" Isabel said, taking the plate I held and putting it off to the side. She was taking my silence as a bad sign. She couldn't know that I had a raging battle going on inside my head. "I shouldn't have set you up like that. I knew you wouldn't like it, but Eren told me that it was safe, that he wouldn't let anything happen to you."

            Eren hadn't let anything happen to me, even going as far as to follow me home to make sure I got here in one piece. He kept his word, so I had to say something before Isabel thought the worst. Her relationship with him for the past couple of years had been a rocky one. I didn't need to make it any worse.

            "Nothing bad happened while I was with him," I reassured her. "I'm just a little overwhelmed right now. A lot went on." More like I was suffering from a heart wrenching syndrome named Eren Jaeger.

            "Overwhelmed? How?" Now that she knew that I was more or less okay, curiosity settled in and lit up her face. "So the rumors are true then? I heard all kinds of stories about Eren's fighting, but he'll never let me watch him. Was he as good as people say he is?"

            "Good? He was amazing," I said in a breathless way, unable to keep the awe from my voice. Nothing could mask it.

            "Really? So he won?"

            I smiled, feeling proud of him. "Yeah, without even trying. The guy he went up against was twice his size too."

            "Wow. So my big bro really is a badass."