The Gray Case

introduction

He sat. Drunk, at the edge of a sidewalk, his head low and his back bent.

His bronze locks fell on his forehead and his hazel eyes were no were to be found, hidden in the night sky.
Although it was dark, everything about him glowed.

Everybody would turn their heads when he walked in a room, everyone, girls and boys, wanted a piece of him.
Everyone would die for a little bit of his company. He was beyond handsome and no one could ever find a flaw in his looks, even if they tried their hardest.
Everyone noticed him, but that night, he made sure nobody did.

He tried hiding, but she saw him from afar. By then he should've known that someone like him never went unnoticed. The dark helped even more, the dark lit him up.

She heard him. Bottle in between his fingers, slurring words that she couldn't decipher. No one was around.

She contemplated on what to do. She didn't want to leave him out there in the middle of the night, simply hoping he would turn out to be okay. He wasn't lucid, but she was.

And her heart was way too big to not find space to help him. So she got closer and closer, analysing his movements.

"Hey," she whispered, sitting in front of him. That was the moment their eyes finally met. He was breathtaking in every possible way, she couldn't lie.

His sharp jaw clenched while his brows furrowed.

"Who the fuck are you?" Was what he said. She didn't really expect those words, but they didn't change the fact that she felt the need to help.

She slowly removed the bottle from his hand and put it aside.

"You won't remember me tomorrow anyways," she said raising his head from the chin, looking him straight in the eye. They observed each other in silence, before she let her arm wrap around his shoulder delicately, helping him to get up.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking you home," she said while they walked towards her car. She didn't exactly know what she was doing, she just followed her instinct while the breeze followed them, making her natural curls move in the air.

"You know where I live?" he asked.

"No, that's why you'll tell me the address," she said.

"Okay," he simply said before she let him in the car. He gave in quite easily, another thing she didn't expect.
She then hopped on the driver's seat and turned on her car.

"I'm hungry," he said, suddenly, making her chuckle slightly. His voice was quite raspy and deep.

"And what do you want to eat?"

He squinted his eyes as he let his head rest on the chair, thinking.

"I want fries... No, I want a burger," he said slowly. "Actually, I want fries and burger. Five burgers."

She let out a chuckle realizing that he was really buzzed. "Alright," she said.

The ride to the nearest fast food consisted of him saying stupid things that would make her laugh and viceversa. As he got his food, he didn't waste time with it.

The car was silent for a while, after he had told her his address, she drove cautiously to his place.

"Listen to this," she said.

He looked up at her and watched with curious eyes.

"Did you hear about the guy who's left side got cut off? He's all right now," she said.

She watched his lips slowly curve upwards until he burst out laughing. His laugh was joined by hers, the only sounds in that car were the harmonious ones of their laughter.

"I have another one," she said, "I'd tell you a chemistry joke, but I wouldn't get a reaction."

He laughed at that one too and she reckoned that his laugh was probably the best thing her ears had ever heard.

"Well, you definitely did," he said, the alcohol still having an effect on the way he spoke.

"I have one too," he announced as she waited for him to spill.

"You know what a nosy pepper does?" She shook her head. "Get jalapeño business."

She tried to fight her smile that was creeping on her face, but failed letting a little laugh out.

"That was good."

They were almost at his house when he talked, out of the blue.

"I'm going to find him or her. I'm going to find them, I swear," he said. He was looking out of the window, tiredness clear on his face. His words confused her, so she asked.

"Who?"

"I don't know yet."

She didn't understand. She saw his hand closing in a fist and his grip tightened around the paper bag. He later closed his eyes took take a huge breath, making her to refrain her curiosity and not ask further questions.

They finally arrived in front of his house—it was beautiful. At night, faint lights illuminated the garden and brought brightness in the serenity of darkness.

As he opened the car door to leave, she offered him a hand to get in the house, but he refused.

"And one thing... I know we don't know each other, but forget about this night. All of this never happened, okay?" His tone was demanding, but she didn't falter.

"What never happened?" she asked, rhetorically.

"This," he said, with a confused expression on his face.

"And I repeat—what never happened?"

That time, he understood. Smiling slightly before closing the door shut behind him and entering his house.

She smiled too. Little did he know that she actually knew who he was, just like the rest of the school. But he didn't.

He was the football star with the good looks and the warmest smile. It was going to be hard to forget about the time she talked to such a guy and discovered that even if he was no ordinary person, he was a boy like everybody else.

It wasn't a secret between her and him. He wasn't involved in that pact because she knew that he wouldn't have been able to remember her face after that night.

She kept it in her heart, for herself and her only.

That was remembered as the night in which Alexander Gray's eyes met Maya Williams' for the first time.