Fingertips | ✓

six

Dressed to impress, I greeted you at your doorstep with a smile upon my lips and my heart upon my sleeve.

I could barely manage to smile with how rapidly my heart thrashed against my ribcage but I forced it onto my lips, plastering it there. Nervousness wrecked through me, almost like being run over by a car, and all I wanted to do was stand at your doorstep and not move.

But if I didn't move, if I didn't do anything, I would be letting go of the chance to have you. And I wanted to have you, Bradley. All of you. You just had to realise that you needed me in your life as much as I needed you. For all I knew, you had probably been a wreck this entire past month without our casual, almost daily, interactions.

You didn't look like I hoped you did. Instead of devastation or agitation sitting on your strikingly handsome features as you jerked open the door, there was a welcoming smile on your lips. That smile disappeared the instant your eyes met me, your upward turned lips moving in the opposite direction in just a blink of the eye.

"Kareena," you voiced. The shock was evident in your deep voice, vibrating through it as your hand tightened around your door handle, pushing the door slightly close and decreasing the gap as if that would show me how much I was not welcome here.

I had let that slide past. I ignored the momentary sting of your actions which I noticed with wide vigilance, Being in your presence itself made me feel as if I was on a high and having gone weeks without seeing your face made me feel even more dazed as I looked at you. Dazed but very much aware of everything about you.

Did that make me sound obsessive?

Perhaps it did but I was not obsessed with you.

My life did not revolve around you.

Or so I told myself.

"Er, what are you doing here?" you asked as you briefly glanced back through the narrow gap of the opened door. You looked back at me and for ten whole seconds my words got stuck in my throat. With those tantalising grey irises boring into mine with desperate inquisition, with those rough hands that I remembered so well sliding over the ruffles of your hair with agitation, I could not bring myself to answer instantly.

I hated that you held such power over me. You captivated me with just a mere glance. Words were not even needed for me to love you.

I blinked finally, ten seconds passing by in an agonisingly slow pace. The smile that found itself to my lips was forced. I felt rather flustered and I hated that your presence had such an impact on me. I hated it and I loved it.

I hated that I loved it.

You were ruining me and I didn't care.

"I wanted to see you," I replied truthfully, fidgeting with my fingers as I looked down at my plain brown shoes. I could not bring myself to look at you for I knew I'd never say anything if I had to have our gazes interlock, even it be for just a second.

"You didn't answer any of my calls or messages and... Well, I'm worried. I thought that maybe you felt awkward with how things were left between us but you haven't answered me at all in a whole month. So, here I am."

My ramble came to a halt as I gathered every ounce of courage which I had left and lifted my head. You were looking directly at me. With your eyes wide and your lips pressed together in a thin line, I couldn't tell whether my appearance on your doorstep was the good sort of surprising or the bad.

You didn't say anything. You simply stood there, leaning down on one foot as your hand gripped the handle backwards. Silence descended upon us and it crept up my skin, making me tingle with irritation. I was becoming even more flustered by the second, your silence making my anxiety double in its fold.