OLDER MEN | THE WEEKND

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        SHE'S WALKING BEHIND HIM through the school corridor. Everything about the most prestigious school of Los Angeles seems to her now childish and crippling, — the marks of someone's shoes on the usually polished white walls are embarrassing to her, the pale blue lockers — kid-like, too real. She wants to be unreachable to him, she wants him to envision it that she doesn't go to school or that she doesn't hug her teachers while crying her eyes out into their grey shirts.

    Oh, the look Abel'd given the stunned Archival Dayholt when he entered the classroom minutes before. Bella tore herself away from her geography professor as if he was wildfire and she was dripping with gasoline.

  To say that she's shocked is to say nothing. Shocked into submission — she lets him take her by the shoulder and lead her out of the classroom, his other hand occupied with the Prada bag she carries her school books in. His hand is still resting firmly on the shoulder that is trembling under Hadid's subduing sobs.

  She realizes, when they step out into the gloomy day of late Californian autumn, that her driver — and his car — are gone. She looks quizzically at The Weeknd, who gives her a cold stare in return; as if to ask — what do you want from me, little girl?

  Little girl. That's what she probably looked like to him in that classroom. She shudders at the memory of his eyes boring into hers as she peeled herself away from Mr. Dayholt.

   Abel Tesfaye opens the door of his deep black Bentley, and it flashes with an emerald sheen. Bella notices her stunned expression in the window before finding herself sitting in the comfortable cream-coloured car seat and feeling the door close firmly behind her. She watches as Abel Tesfaye makes his way to the driver door. He's wearing a black bomber jacket and underneath it -—a flashing white shirt. God, she can't help herself, he's so fucking hot.
 
   Bella blinks away the momentary euphoria-infused dizziness once the drivers door opens and she feels rather than sees him slide in next to her, closing the door behind him. 

   Silence lapses over them for a moment before Bella works up the courage to speak.

    "Abel—" her voice breaks—stop embarrassing yourself, she thinks, clearing her throat, "—why are you here?"

Abel starts the engine, roaring it to life, and drives the Bentley out of the parking lot. Bella thanks the skies that there are practically no students left, sliding further down the car seat.

"Put your seatbelt on," he says cooly, eyes   on the road. Cool — like everything about him. Cool like stone, his features are, chiseled perfectly out of amber-tinted marble. She'd say that the shade of his skin is the only warm thing about him, but in the faint light rippling through the dark silver clouds gives his features an edge of angelic blue onyx.

   She tears her eyes away as if it hurts her to watch him.

   (It does.)

Bella puts her seatbelt on. Her skirt seems to her now too short and too childish all at once. She wants to hide from him, and yet —longs for his touch.

Streets flash by as the speed of his Bentley increases steadily and dangerously. Finally, his eyes flicker to her face for a split second, and the stone of his features is broken by a mischievous grin.

  "I like the idea of playing a harmless joke on Mohamed quite a bit."

  "Harmful," Bella interjects bitterly.

He looks at her as if she's a petulant child once more. "Whatever you wish, kitten." 

    She blinks away the daze his pinning gaze envelops her with. "No, you don't understand. I want my father to suffer." The words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself. "He doesn't like the idea of me being with someone like you—"

  The Weeknd chuckles darkly, and yet his eyes are hidden from hers on purpose as he faces the road again.

"—so that's exactly what I'm going to make him think I'm doing."

  "Quite vindictive of you, isn't it?"

  Bella twirls her brown lock around her finger once more — a feeble attempt to calm down her restlessly trembling hands.

    "Quite so," she responds quietly. "Is that why you came here?" She sits up straighter, watching as the sky before them darkens further to the blue of his moods.

Silence lapses over them for a few moments once again.

  "Who was that with you?"

   Her heart clenches for a reason so absurd she cannot unravel it.

"You can't answer my question with a question."

   "Answer mine and I'll answer yours."

    "Professor Dayholt," Bella says lightly, and thinks back to all the diaries stuffed into the back of her closet she definitely needs to burn — primarily because they're all scribbled over with Bella Dayholt in pink sparkly ink. Her cheeks are in a feverish flush — she turns to face the window in an attempt to obscure it.

  "Yes."

She flips her hair back. "Yes— what?"

    His eyes slow their way over to her perfect profile. She knows it is perfect — she'd been told so many times before.

    "Yes, kitten, I hope your father is home to see me dropping you off."

The word kitten on his lips is a caress down her spine.

  "Well then," Bella breathes. Inhale. Exhale. It's simple. It's just a belittlement. "Don't you—" her voice breaks for a second—"don't you have, like, a flashier car? Like a— oh, a yellow Ferrari." Her eyes light up. Her father hates the color yellow. "Or even better, a Porsche. He says that a Porsche is for Russian mafia men who know no taste in automobiles. Despises Porsche. Oh, yes," she licks the top of her teeth in pleasureful excitement rippling her skin.

   She doesn't notice The Weeknd's long look at her innocent posture and disheveled ponytail where Archival Dayholt had pressed her to his chest.