Aversion & Adoration

Chapter Sixteen

Conner's POV

She looked down at her black chipped nail polish on her fingers. "So, do you want to come up to my room, you know, just to hang out?" She asked timidly.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Sure? I mean why not."

She smiled widely and grabbed my wrist. "I know you've been up there before but you didn't really uhm look around but it's hella cool and just c'mon!" She spoke almost too quickly to which I laughed at as she dragged me up the stairs. As we reached her door she leaned against it and looked up at me. "Prepare for your mind to be blown!" She said child like and threw open the door.

My mouth dropped slightly opened as I actually took in my surroundings. Her floor was wooden instead of plush carpet like mine was. She had a small wooden dresser on the right side of her room and a small black table on the left that had purple, blue, and green lava lamps set on it. She had a few articles of clothing in a pile in front of her closet which was shut off by a frosted glass sliding door. Band posters barely made the dark purple wall visible, and as I looked up I saw little plants in all different kinda of glass shapes hanging from the ceiling a few inches above my head. Since her curtains were pulled back I saw that she had small cactus plants lined up on the window seal. And of course her bed was black with dark purple streaks.

"So, what do you think?" I heard her voice and I turned and looked at her.

"This. Is. So. Cool!" I shouted and immediately ran over to the cactus plants.

"Don't break anything!" She huffed and flopped onto her bed. As I lightly tapped the spikes on the cactus she spoke up again. "Why isn't Sky texting me back?"

I looked at her and grinned. "Maybe because it's before ten o' clock."

She tried to swat at my arm but missed terribly by a few feet. "Ugh, shut up." She groaned.

"Make me." I stuck my tongue out at her.

She seemed to hesitate a moment. "You're not worth my time." She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her phone screen.

I layed right down beside her and looked at her screen. "What're you on?"

"Tumblr." She mumbled and scrolled down her feed. As she continued to scroll down I stopped her and pointed at the screen.

"Hey! Isn't that like the exact thing as your ceiling?" I said and pointed at the plants above our heads.

She looked up then back at the screen. "Well duh. Where do you think I got the idea?"

I shrugged which bumped her arm, knocking her phone out of her hands, earning a glare from her. "I don't know." I smiled. As she looked at her phone again I asked. "So why the cacti?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know."

I poked her cheek. "Yes you do."

She sighed and layed down her phone. "Do you really want to know?" I nodded my head and she continued. "I like the cacti because they have the spikes out to protect themselves from things and I like to think of myself as a cactus because I protect myself and like-" she motioned her fingers into air quotes "I have 'spikes' put up to protect myself from people who could hurt me." She turned back to her phone.

I took a deep breath in and thought about what she said. "But you're hurting others who try to get close to you."

"So? Better to hurt others than them hurt you."

"Nekoda, you've been hurt before, obviously. You know how much that hurts. Don't you realize that they feel that exact same pain when you hurt them?"