Ambivalence

          Allison shoots a death glare in Toby’s direction once she heard the words she’s never wanted to hear escape from his lips. Her hands clench into a fist, and she’s ready to punch the living life out of him. “What did you say?” she says, emphasizing each word with enough weight to terrify him.

          He swallows nervously. “I—uh—you look great today, Allie.”

          “Toby.”

          “Seriously, Allie. I don’t even look at you differently in a whole new perspective, do I? Who cares if you love the color pink? I think that’s cool, honestly.” He shifts in his position, taking a step further away from her, because he fully knows that she’s a step closer to raging on to him.

          Ignoring his use of her nickname that tends to be annoying her at the moment, she asks in a threatening tone with her eyes turning into slits, “How did you know that?”

          Toby, mindlessly, rolls his eyes a little, and then rambles, “You always—the majority of times—paint your nails pink, especially the type that’s close to red. If there are objects with different colors to pick, you’d usually pick the pink one, or a color that’s close to pink, like red. Whenever you dress up, there always has to be something pink; even when Lydia picks your outfit. I mean, look, you have this fancy looking pink-close-to-red colored bracelet on your arm.”

          Allison feels her fists unclench, and her stomach twists into a knowing feeling that she’s been having a lot nowadays, and it doesn’t take an idiot to figure out that this always happens when she’s around him, or talking about him. She continues to stare at him dumbstruck, and she can’t help but correct, “Cardinal.”

          Toby blinks. “What?”

          She straightens her back, and looks him straight in the eye with confidence brewing inside her. “It’s not pink-close-to-red. It’s cardinal.”

          “Right, okay,” he murmurs, relieved that she’s not actually going to punch him anymore. “Whatever. Close enough.”

          Allison rolls her eyes.

          Soon, it hits her, that Toby actually knows her favorite color, because he notices. He watches her change in nail polishing colors, her discreet—yet not exactly discreet as she thought it was—choices of usually picking the almost same kind of cardinal color amongst the others, her outfits and accessories. He actually looks at her. He really notices in everything she does, and every change she makes.

          Why doesn’t this make her as creeped out as she should be? Because instead, heat rushes into her cheeks as she turns away from him, and look straight into her TV that’s soon going to be playing a supposed to be cartoon musical starring that same green witch from Wicked, except that green witch is just going to be a voiceover for this animated ice queen named Elsa, or something.

          Even after they’d submitted their project work, Toby still insists on watching musicals with her no matter what. She tries to reject this, but he clearly knows that she’s somehow grown into musicals. Sure, she still talks nonsense about them, but he knows that deep down somewhere in her heart, she actually enjoys it. And that’s because he may or may not sometimes sneak a peek at her while they’re watching, and notices a small escaped tear rolling down her cheek as she hastily yet sneakily wipes it away, or the fact when she lets out a small adorable giggle he secretly adores when there’s a really bad joke being said in the musical, or even when a small curved smile dawns unto her face as her eyes light up with awe.