Fall For You (EDITING + UPDATING)

(17)

"Why are you staring at me?" Alex asks when he notices me watching him.

"No reason." I reply. "It's just you were kinda acting like a robot just then."

"What do you mean?" Alex wears a confused look on his face.

"All of your moves were so precise and calculated. Like one mistake and the world could explode."

"Oh." Alex says. "I didn't mean for them to. It's just..." He begins to tell me something but cuts himself off as though he's giving me too much information.

"Just what?" I ask.

"Nothing." He says dismissively. "Are you going to start the car?"

It takes me a second to realise that we're still sat in the car, in the carpark of Damien's with the engine not even running.

"Yeah." I say and put the key in the ignition.

We pull out of the carpark back onto the main road. However, since it's getting so late, there's no traffic meaning that the car trip back to the university's dorms will be quick.

But I don't want this night to end. Not yet. I need to keep showing the stubborn boy with the brown hair and kind eyes that I can sort of be nice, when I want to be.

"Are we going back to the dorms now?" Alex asks.

"Do you want to?" I counter.

"I think I should." Alex says. "It's getting pretty late."

"Yeah, it is." I agree. It's getting close to midnight and I promised him he'd be back at the dorms before then.

From the corner of my eye, I see Alex look over at me and his mouth moves like he want to say something but he can't. He sits back in his seat and stares out the window.

"A penny for your thoughts?" I ask Alex, using the expression my father always used when I was a child. Whenever I would be upset or lost in thoughts he would literally pull out a dollar from his wallet and hold it up. I'd take it from him and put it in a jar before telling him whatever I was thinking about.

"I don't think you'd be interested." Alex replies, his voice low and gentle.

"Try me."

Alex looks like he's considering this for a moment, considering the possibility of telling me something. The girl who throws sarcastic, bitchy comments his way without even thinking about it.

"You don't have to tell me." I tell him politely, trying to make him as comfortable around me as possible but at the same time, this bet thing isn't going to work if he can't open up to me.

"No it's fine." He says and sucks in a deep breath before continuing. "When I was younger, my parents and I went out for ice cream and I still had some left over. My father told me that I should throw it into the trash since I couldn't eat it all quickly. My mother, she told my father to just let me have it.

He wasn't happy about it but he allowed me to get in the car anyway. We stopped suddenly at a red light and I spilt the ice cream all over myself and the car seat. My father was absolutely furious. He yelled at me for being so clumsy and my mother for persuading him to let me in the car with food.

After that, I was never allowed in the car again with food. The next time we went out for ice cream and I didn't finish it, no matter how much was left, it would end up going in the bin."

My mind fills with images of a boy with brown hair and green eyes crying as a man snatches his ice cream cone out of his hand and throwing it in the bin, causing the boy's eyes to tear up but too afraid to cry in front of his dad.

"You realise you were a kid back then, right?" I ask Alex. "I seriously doubt that now, as an adult, you'd spill food in the car. Even if you did, we'd be able to clean it up. It wouldn't be a big deal."

"It was a big deal to my dad." Alex snaps. "All he could go on about after that was how his brand new leather seats were ruined by vanilla ice cream." Alex says mimicking his dad's deep voice.

Hearing Alex mimic his dad causes me to laugh a little. "You know, I don't know why parents decide to buy new, expensive cars that they're so worried about getting ruined when they have children. Children and new cars are basically a recipe for disaster."

"Exactly." Alex agrees. 

We approach the turn off and this time I don't pass it. Instead I turn onto the road. 

When I park the car in the car park of the dorms, Alex unbuckles his seat belt and turns to face me. "Thanks for tonight." He smiles at me, a kind smile.  A smile that makes my heart flutter.

Alex opens his door and steps out of the car.

"Alex?" I ask as I unbuckle my seat belt. Alex turns around with a surprised look on his face.

"Can I walk you inside?" I ask.

"I'm pretty sure I can manage to get into a building on my own."

"I know that." I say and try to come up with a reason as to why I want to walk him inside that doesn't sound like complete bullshit. I can't exactly say 'Hey, let me walk you inside so that I can spend more time with you to show you what an oh-so nice person I am so you fall in love with me.'

"Sure." Alex says once again surprising me.

"Really?" I question, shocked.

"Yeah." Alex says a little bit too enthusiastically. He notices his excitement and looks down at the ground. "I mean, I suppose you can."

I follow Alex to the building. 

"We should probably be quiet." Alex suggests. "So we don't wake people up."

"Of course." We weren't talking anyway but whatever. 

Alex and I walk down the hallways until we reach his and Harley's room. 

"Well, this is me." Alex says, gesturing to the door awkwardly. 

"Yep." I say, unsure of really what to say or how to end this night. 

"Thanks again for the drive home and the ice cream." Alex says. "I um, I actually wasn't sure if you would ever speak to me again." He admits, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. 

"You've said that before and here we are again, talking to each other."

"Yeah but last weekend was different. This time it was me you got into an argument with I said some stuff about you. Not my parents." Alex says. "I'm sorry, by the way."

"It's fine." I tell him. "I was angry about some stuff and I just let it out on you."

"What were you angry about?" Alex asks. 

"Nothing I'm prepared to talk about" I tell him and he looks disappointed. He shared a story with me about his parents and now I can't tell him what I was angry about. It probably seems unfair. "It's just a long story and it's getting late. I'll tell you about it some other time." I reassure him. I seem to be doing a lot of reassuring and comforting tonight. It's strange and I'm not used to it.

"Okay." Alex says, his eyes looking into mine, like he's trying to read me.

I don't make a move to turn and leave and Alex doesn't either. It's as though I'm being held in place. We just stand and stare at each other as the moments slowly pass by. 

Alex's eyes flicker down to my lips before going back up to my eyes. He takes a step closer to me, the distance between us vanishing. He wraps and arm around my back and pulls by body against his. His head dips towards mine. His face so close that I can feel his warm breath fan across mine. His other hand moves to my neck and gently cradles it. Only milliseconds later, his lips touch mine.