I Like Me Better when I'm With You (COMPLETED)

Where friends and strangers sometimes meet

(Notes: Chapter title is from the song Accidently Kelly Street by Frente!)

***

Nico was right.

Octavian was irritating. Annoying. Octavian was that kind of person you had the bad luck of having to share a place with.

Dirty dishes in the sink was just an example. Some fruits that Nico bought and kept in the fridge seemed to disappear magically. Pizza left uneaten laid on the coffee table until some green and white stuffs started sprouting out on the surface.

At least it was individual lease, so Nico knew he wouldn't have to deal with late rent payment.

It was just the first week of classes, and Nico has decided that he would do whatever he could so he wouldn't have to spend more time than necessary in the apartment. Even if he was in the apartment, he usually just stayed in his own room, and let Octavian do whatever in the common area. And that was why Nico wandered around the streets of the downtown area of the small college town where University of Delphi was located, after he just finished all his classes on the first day. He didn't want to go back to his apartment yet and it's just 4 in the afternoon. He thought it was not that late yet to explore the downtown area, which was only about half an hour of leisure walk from campus.

He stopped in front of the display window of a store. From the clothes and some other knick-knacks being displayed, it looked like one of those hipster kind of stores that sold vintage stuff.

Nico lifted his eyes up, reading the words Iris' Place painted in rainbow colors on the wooden plate above the window.

Nico shrugged his shoulders. Who knew what he could find inside.

The bell above the door rang cheerfully as Nico walked into the store. The smell of lavender hit his nostrils. A young girl with red hair who was sitting behind the cash register lifted her head from a book that she was reading. She smiled and nodded at Nico before going back to her book. Nico walked slowly, looking around the store. The store did not seem to be exclusive in selling just one particular kind of thing. It had a little bit of everything. Books, clothes, little figurines, candles. Nico stopped to check some vinyl and pleasantly surprised to see some albums of Ramones and other bands that he likes. After spending about 10 minutes checking out the vinyl's, he moved to another side of the store, and started checking out some T-Shirts.

A sign on the rack saying that the shirts were on sale with a 25% discount. The last time he bought himself a shirt was like two years ago. Nico decided that those were enough reasons for him to buy a new shirt. He was holding two shirts, one with a Ramones logo on it, the other one had a Fall Out Boy logo.

"If I were you, I would pick the one on the left."

Nico quickly turned his head to where the voice came from.

An Asian girl, about the same height as Nico was looking at him, looking half-bored. She was pretty. Nico was as straight as a rainbow, but he could see that this girl was pretty. Not in the sweet girl kind of pretty, more like the fierce kind of pretty.

"Well," Nico said as he shrugged a shoulder. "You were not me."

"I'm not," the girl said as she flicked her long jet black hair. "But it doesn't change the fact that the crow black one would look better than the coal one."

Nico blinked. His eyes darted to the shirt on his left hand, to the one on his right hand, then back to the girl.

"Both of them are black," he said plainly.

The girl exhaled bored sigh. "Yes, but they are different shades of black," she explained. "The one on your left is crow black, because the black has a shade of dark brown in it." She pointed to the shirt o Nico's right hand. "And that one is coal black, which is more dark gray, very dark gray."