Checked Out

Fair Condition

Fair Condition:

            “Are you at the final part yet?”

            She felt him pacing back and forth before he sunk into a chair close to her. Their knees touched.

            She hummed. “Just a few more pages.” Her words earned her a frustrated sigh as he leaned forward. He wanted to be near her.

            “I’m not distracting you, am I?” His hand found its way to her knee. She liked the tingles his hand shot out. Like electrons meeting her protons. Without failure, every single time.

            “No.” Her head was still buried in the folds and creases.

            “I thought not. I knew you though the book was more interesting than me. I suppose I should have seen it coming.”

            “That’s not true.” She didn’t miss a beat, but she bit his bait.

            His sigh turned into a raise of his eyebrows. They furrowed beneath the mop of hair that laid strategically across his forehead. He needed a haircut. Her attention was once more given to the story in her palm. A small smile danced across her face.

            “You’re smiling. That means you do think the book is more interesting than me.”

            She gave up trying to hide it. He was onto her more than she would ever admit.

            She liked that he was vying for her attention with a book. It made her feel … complete. Like she was the only person in his world. At least the only one he wanted to share his world with.

            He let out mixture of disbelief and resignation with a dash of happiness as he slumped back into the bones of the wood. Each one carved into a piece that he grew up with. He would always love this place. It was full of endless wonder for him, full of worlds he’d never know. He called her name repeatedly. They all blew past her ears like the monsoons of South Asia.

            “Huh?” She stepped aside with reckless abandonment for the characters she got to know, but she refused to look away, absorbed by the world in front of her. He was the world in the front of her.

            “Look at me.”

            She hummed. “I’m kind of busy.” He was a distraction without trying, so she blocked him by holding the book between them.

            He repeated her name like a whimper. It jumped over the cover and through the pages so that she could see it as clear as water in front of her. She liked the way her name sounded as it rippled across his tongue. There was something so elegant about the whole ordeal. One that she had no words for.

            Suddenly, in her line of view and in the invisible lines of the book were a pair of strong, steady arms. She knew that if she fell, she would find herself enclosed in them. She toyed with the possibility.

            “It’s not going to work.” Her curt voice was meant to disrupt his plan of thought.

            He had yet to make a move. He worked the book down, but her eyes followed it wherever he took it. She was fine with wherever he took her. As long as he was there.

            That was when he leaned in and kissed her. She had longed to be kissed like characters in novels. Slow, steady, and most of all, sweet. And then she felt lost because she didn’t know what happened next in the book or where he was taking her. She was scared yet high with adrenaline until he pulled back and walked away without a word, taking her words with him.