Bookworm

three ➳ p u c k

"Me? Die? Didn't they tell you, Princess? I'm Robin Goodfellow."

(Robin Goodfellow; The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa)

>>>>><<<<<

"Taylor!"

I whirl around on the pavement to face Nicholas jogging towards me in a sweaty shirt and a dimpled smile on his face. It's after 6 in the morning and I'm outside, watching my cat do...nothing. "Oh, hi, wow. You look...cheerful. What's up?" I ask, eyeing him warily.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't really know anyone who's a morning person." Sam's not, and Alex is definitely not. She threatened to throw my cat out the window once when she got licked awake during one of our sleepovers.

He grins. "Ah. Well, I'm an all-hours-of-the-day person." His attention turns to my black cat, Lucky, still sitting on the grass and not doing anything. His eyes go wide. "Holy shit, Taylor! It's a cat!"

"Er--"

"Look at it!" He bends down to pet Lucky and she hisses at him. He has a giant smile on his face anyway. "It's a cat!"

"Yes, I know it's a cat. She's mine. Her name's Lucky."

His head whips to face me. "You named a black cat Lucky?"

I start to answer but he gets a strange look on his face. "Are you wearing contacts under your glasses?"

I freeze. Crap. I brought Lucky out here thinking I wouldn't run into anyone I knew and had completely forgotten about Nicholas; I was wearing my glasses, not my usual brown contacts. And that fully displayed the fact that one of my eyes was blue and one was brown. "Um, no. Why would I wear contacts under my glasses?"

"So then...those are your normal eyes?"

I turn away from him and pick up Lucky, who was finally up and walking around. "I'm gonna go inside and get ready for school--"

"No, Taylor, I wasn't...trying to insult you." Damn him and that impossible face of his. "I was just--surprised, that's all."

"Okay. See you at school," I say, averting my eyes and walking into the house.

When I come out a half hour later (with my contacts on, of course), Nicholas is standing a few paces away from my front door in new clothes and a beanie. "What are you doing here?"

"Can I walk with you?" I blink a few times but nod, because how exactly could I say no I don't want to in a nice way? We start walking and fall into quiet.

I should have made up an excuse not to walk with him. Now I'm stressing out trying to think of something to talk about, and I hate when that happens. Not to mention the way I completely spazzed out earlier about my eyes. Thankfully, he hasn't brought it up and pushed to talk about it. I glance at him from the corner of my eye, and there's still a hint of a smile on his face, so clearly I haven't bored him to death yet with my silence. "When'd you move here?" I ask.

"Just a few weeks ago."

"Why?

He winks at me. "Wouldn't you like to know." We go silent again for some time, mainly because I don't really know how to respond to that. I push my hair in front of my face to cover my scar; it's the middle of September and it's getting cold enough to bother it.