She Was Like Magic ✓

Chapter 13: Blue

Ari 

As I kept view of the door, my heart kept thrumming. Like it was following the beat of a fast-paced song with a heavy bass. THUMP THUMP. THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. Until it would eventually calm down again. Until someone walked in again and I was hoping it was her and it happened all over again. Only to let me down because it was not her. 

I put my head in my hands and pulled at my hair. I really had to get a grip on my emotions. I could not scare her away so quickly when I had just got her back. I closed my eyes, trying to take deep breaths. But all I saw was her laughing, her winking at me, her teasing me with her lip-biting. What became the focal point were her words in the ice cream bar "You aren't a fucking idiot. You are a beautiful man that cares about me too much". Her words went through the impenetrable layers of me and etched themselves onto my soul. There was nothing I could have said or done that would have been able to repay her for saying that to me. I know I'm an asshole and a hard guy to get on with. But still she, of all people, sees something in me that's beautiful to her. That is something I will never be able to get over. 

My eyes shot open. I laughed to myself. This girl was going to be the death of me. But if death looked so beautiful and felt so sweet, I didn't mind. 

And then she walked in. Her caramel hair falling in front of her face and the slightest smile on her face as she listened to whoever was talking to her. Her green eye shining with the remnants of that smile lingering on her face. 

I wanted to squeeze the shit out of her as I hugged her and hear her complain about how I am annoying her as I bury my face in her neck and just inhale her smell until it soothes my erratically beating heart. Until I know nothing else but her. Until nothing is left in me but her essence. No darkness, no pain, no demons, no shadows. Just her. 

Franco knew I was losing my shit. Maybe even before I did. He saw the changes. The fact that I talked to her willingly and so much. But also when its just us in our apartment I smile. I don't grumble anymore apparently at the things he would find funny. I actually laugh at them too. I'm more open to doing things with him. He has known me for the longest time. I have bared my soul to him. He is my brother for life. He knows things nobody else does. But he says now it feels like I want to be here, I want to live. And in his words, he is just happy because he now feels that I am and he doesn't have to worry about me so much. 

But I was worried for myself right now, how I was going to stop myself from running to her for the next fifty minutes. 

The class passed. With me staring at her as she stared furiously at the professor in concentration. Her elbow leaning on the table as her hand held her chin. Her eyes blinked every few minutes. She would change her position every ten or so minutes like she couldn't just be or sit still. I just took the opportunity to stare at her without her looking at me funny or putting her defences up. Because that's what she would do if I stared at her too long or got too close to her emotionally. She would laugh it off and change the subject and shut down on me.

I saw how she very rarely handed the control over to anyone else but here she was, listening to Professor Dunkirk and completely mesmerised in what he was saying. Lost. And yet free. 

She was scared when I got too close but she would always cover it up with tenaciousness or confusion like she didn't know what was happening and maybe she really didn't but deep down she did. She just didn't want to recognise it. 

I saw it on her face that day when I ran into her deliberately on campus when she refused to talk to me. I saw the pain swirling around the green irises of her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to hide it from everyone. I saw it and it killed me that she wouldn't let me in so I could take it away from her.