Always loved you

n i n e

"Oh my gosh no you didn't- no way!" I screamed in between breaths. It had been a long time since I'd laughed this hard.

Simon and I were at the cute little cafe five minutes down the road from our school, enjoying a chocolate smoothie and a shared piece of cake. Right after lunch had ended, he dragged me down there claiming it had been a while since it was just the two of us catching up. Though it was probably a bullshit excuse for him to try and get me to open about what had happened at lunch with my brother, I ignored it and went along. As you can clearly see, there isn't much complaining when it comes to hanging around Simon, honestly he really is good company.

He was right in the middle of telling me the story of how he and his brother ended up eating their aunts wedding cake right before their wedding ceremony when they were around nine and ten as a result of being too hungry and not being fed the entire day and had been caught by the entire family stuffing their faces with cake.

"The cake wasn't even that good! At least they learnt their lesson on not to let my brother and I starve for too long," he said as I continued to laugh at the thought of the horrified look on the bride and groom when they had caught Simon and Jonathan in the act, "ever since that day, my parents fed us like pigs so something like that wouldn't happen again."

"Oh yeah for sure you act like a pig," I noted referring to how much food he always tends to have on his plate.

"Trust me babe that's the secret behind maintaining this hot bod," he said proudly pointing to himself. Damn right you're hot.

"Eating like a pig gives you those abs does it?" I asked sarcastically raising my eyebrows, laughing internally at how darn cute he was.

He shifted closer to me and looked dead straight into my eyes and once again, I was lost in their simple yet extraordinary beauty. Putting on his best smirk, he continued, "Come on Patel, don't lie to me. I know you think I'm hot."

"Oh yeah baby, you got me. I just can't stop thinking about how hot you are right now," I said in mock admiration pretending to fan my flushed face.

Within seconds of trying to maintain the seriousness of our eye contact, we both cracked at the same time laughing at how stupid we would seem to a bunch of random spectators.

"Seriously here too?" an angry and familiar voice boomed from a near distance.

I looked up to see, and as fate had it, my arch nemesis. The glint of anger and annoyance in his light green eyes was evident and his hard core glare at the two of us did nothing to hide his sutblty.

"You guys are so gross everywhere you go," he said as he shook his head in disgust and walked to a booth on the other side of the cafe, his little posy of followers trailing him by the heel. Why does it bother him so much? Up until now I thought we a had a mutual unspoken understanding that unless one provokes the other, we aim to stay out of each others way as best as possible and ignore the other. Guess I was wrong.

"What 's up between you two?" Simon questioned in a disapproving tone. It sounded as if the question had bothered him for some time before he asked me.

"We've always been at each others throat for a while now," I shrugged, "It's best just to get used to it."

"Care to share?"

"Trust me, I'd rather not drive myself crazy trying to retell our complicated history."

We spent another half hour or so at the cafe talking about random stuff, with Zayn giving us constant dirty looks throughout our conversation, before Simon had to leave for his first basketball practice with the school team. He offered to drive me back to school so I could get a ride home from Lyla, but I declined saying that I'd rather prefer to stay at the cafe and study for a bit before heading home. Plus It was Tuesday which meant that she would be babysitting tonight and I didn't want to bother her.