sign {h.s.}

capitolo sei

"FUNNY I SHOULD run into you here." The British accent belonging to my roommate's interpreter is increasingly familiar to me now. The urge to scream or ignore his is strong, but I fight it and instead force a half-hearted—though, obviously fake—smile on my face as I turn around to face him.

What are the odds that I run into Harry at the Starbucks line outside the library, across campus from my dorm, in the middle of the coffee break from my study session? "Aren't you supposed to be with Lola?" I raise an unimpressed eyebrow.

"She didn't need my help anymore," he answers simply.

I open my mouth to interrogate him more, but before I get the chance, his name is called by one of the baristas. He smiles and raises his hand, slipping through the crowd of people to grab his drink. Once he has it secured in his hands, he turns towards the little self serve station where he tears open a packet of sugar and stirs into his drink. Capping it once more, he moves to simply exit the coffee shop.

The nonchalance of his actions are startling; befuddling.

It's obvious to me that he intends on making a clean exit, though maybe this is all part of his game—some sort of reverse-psychology way of making me beg for his company. Unfortunately, I can feel myself biting. "You're not going to say anything else? You're not going to mock me or... I don't know. You're just going to leave?" I can't help the words coming from my lips, surprise colored blatantly across my face.

Harry turns back and looks at me with a smug sort of smirk on his face, a twinkle in his eye as he says, "La disperazione non è mai attraente, cara." His eyes travel up and down my body and I shift under his unreadable gaze. "Anche se su di te è stranamente attraente," his tongue licks along his lips. His body language reads that he is about to leave, though I can tell that he is waiting for me to say something back before he leaves. [Italian: Desperation is never attractive, darling. Even if it is strangely attractive on you.]

"Mind repeating it in English?" I bite to his bait.

"There's beauty in mystery," he winks, turning around without another word. "Are you still with the stronzo?" [Italian: Asshole.]

Though his back is to me, I can still clearly hear the words. Though I have no idea what stronzo means typically, from the tone and context I can assume that the term is derogatory. "His name is Brody."

"Is that what I asked?"

"I mean—well... no," for some reason, his snarky comment seems to have caught me off guard. Internally rolling my eyes at myself, I take a deep breath before answering him, needing the extra second to collect myself. "He's still in the library," I clarify, pointing my finger in the vague direction of the library, "I'm just doing the coffee run."

"Ah." He's hardly paying any attention to me. His phone is in his hands and I know that I am seconds away from losing his gaze to the mobile device. For some reason, that inspires me to try harder.

"Will I get an apology?"

"For?" This manages to pique his interest. His eyes look up at me, curiously; the shade of green so innocent and kind and entirely antithetical to the person that I know him to be. Only slightly his head is cocked to the side and there is a shy smile on the curve of his lips. Almost as though he knows that I have no cards to play.

My jaw slightly drops and I realize finally that he is just playing me. There is no way that he is so far removed from me that he can't admit that his comments before had been poorly intentioned. But from the look on his face and the slight raise of his eyebrow I find myself wondering: wondering whether or not he is serious. Even if only just slightly. So, I ask him just that: "are you serious?"