Fall For You (EDITING + UPDATING)

(23)

"Don't you have your own place?" Alex asks me as he opens the door to his dorm room and sees that it's me standing in his hallway after I knock.

"Is that any way to treat someone who came to see you?" I smirk at him.

"Yes," Alex says, a smile dancing on his lips. I don't know where this playful side of Alex has come from but I do know that I like it. I like when he's more confident in himself. I like that he feels like he can challenge me. I like that he's no longer stuttering every time he speaks.

"It's not very polite," I say, teasing him with a smirk. "Can I come in?"

"Sure." Alex nods, opening the door wider. I walk inside and sit down on his desk chair, spinning it around. Alex takes a seat on the bed.

"What are you doing here?" He asks me.

"You and Matilda, what's going on there?" I ask, trying to seem casual, like I just want a piece of gossip.

"That's why you're here? To ask about Matilda and I?"

"Yeah. I've seen you with her a few times and I just wanted to know if there was anything, you know, romantic there."

"There isn't." Alex shakes his head. "We're just friends and actually, she has a boyfriend." A boyfriend?  Well, there's a detail Matilda forgot to mention.

"Oh,"  I reply. "How did you two meet?" At this moment, right here, I realise something. I realise that my curiosity makes me sound like Alex, with all the questions that he asks. 

"We met at the cafe. We were in line together and got talking. We've hung out a few times and we also have a few classes together." Alex explains giving me details that I didn't ask for. "I don't know why you're suddenly so interested in who I spend time with," he adds raising an eyebrow.

"I'm just curious. What classes do you have with her?" Gemma, lay off with the interrogation.

"Some of my law electives and now literature."

I had no idea that Matilda wanted to be a Lawyer. I knew that she was probably really smart, considering her father is a doctor or some shit.

"How do you two know each other?" Alex asks, curiously flipping the situation around easily as he assumes the role of detective.

"I don't know her. I've just seen her around campus."

"That's not what she said." She's told him. How could she?

"What did she say?"

"She said that you two knew each other but that it was complicated," Alex says. "How is it complicated?"

"There's nothing complicated about it." I tell him. It's simple really.

Matilda is the daughter of my mother's new boyfriend and I wouldn't have even met Matilda or know who she is if she didn't come to the airport when my mother picked me up when I first moved here from Australia. Apart from the airport, I haven't seen my mother once in the time that I've been here, though she keeps calling me and I see Matilda around the college.

I haven't met my mother's boyfriend though. He didn't come to the airport. I figure he was scared that I was going to scratch his eyes out or create a scene.

"As I said, I've just seen her around," I add. 

The sound of an annoying beep fills the room. It's an alarm. Alex reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, tapping the screen, the beeping stops. 

"Going somewhere?" I ask Alex.

"No," he says. "I was taking a twenty-minute break before I start studying."