Beauty & The Beast

Nine

As they sat across the table from one another, Elena smiled shyly as she looked down at the table before raising her eyes back to look up at him smirking at her.

"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" She asked him with a grin on her face.

"Because now I finally look at you in the way that I've been looking at you for a long time now," he admitted with a smile, "And now, that wasn't supposed to sound creepy, it's just that the first time that I saw you, I knew that I had to get to know you."

"Well, know you have," she smiled as she leaned forward onto the table, "So, what is that you want to know about me?"

"Tell me something that nobody else knows," he suggested, "Something that you haven't even told Caroline."

"Okay," she nodded, "The reason why we moved to this town was because my mom passed away from her long battle with breast cancer."

"Oh my god," he gasped, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea that she'd passed away, I just thought that you lived with your dad and not your mom."

"No," she smiled sadly, "My mom passed away after her long battle with breast cancer. She was diagnosed four years ago and it finally took her a month before we moved away. My dad wanted to move because he didn't want to live on a farm which he bought with my mom, that they both did together, so we searched around this was the best place that we both decided where we could start off new, start off fresh with our own business. I was gonna go off to university but when my mom was getting worse I thought that I would defer it for a while, but now I can't leave my dad so it's indefinitely because there is no way that I could leave my dad to do the farm all by himself."

"So, you're never gonna go to university?" He asked her curiously.

"No," she shook her head, "Because who would help my dad on the farm? He wouldn't hire anybody because basically he couldn't afford it, so why not have me, his own daughter who doesn't have to pay?" She shrugged her shoulders, "And besides, I don't know if I would be able to cope without Phillipe, he's my world. I've had him since I was a kid, we grew up together." She sighed softly and closed her eyes, "I can't believe that I'm actually gonna admit this to you but when I was younger I found it really hard to make friends because I loved to read," she opened her eyes once more and looked at him who was looking at her with soft eyes, listening to every single word that she was saying to him, "Kids thought that I was weird because I loved to read, by the age of ten years old I was quoting Shakespeare, something that a ten year old shouldn't do and they thought that I was making up some strange language. Yeah," she shrugged her shoulders, "To use his language is strange because it was written in the 16th century, language has changed since then. But is it weird that I was able to read Shakespeare back then?"

"No," he shook his head.

"Are you just saying that because you don't want to upset me?" She asked him with a hooked eyebrow, "Or do you really mean it?"

"I mean it," he nodded, "Because you're not the only person that thought that Shakespeare was cool back when they were a kid. I thought that his stuff was cool."

"Are you taunting me?" She asked him, "Because if you are, then it's not a nice thing to do because I was taunted all of my childhood for liking it."

"I'm not taunting you, Elena," he told her, "Seriously, I was into Shakespeare's writing too. When my aunt used to come around to stay with us with my cousin she would always read Shakespeare, she was an English teacher and when she read it she always had a smile on her face. I asked her to read some of it to me and you know what, I enjoyed it also."