Dominoes

Twelve - 11:35 AM

"Convince me of the same thing." 

Tanika scoffed and shook her head in jest. "You're kidding right?"

He was not, and his face held an expression of sheer earnest. "Nope. I helped you out and gave you motivation to continue on this path-" 

 "And now I suppose it's time to pay for the free service that you provided?" She replied, completing his sentence. She crossed her arms, and glared at him pointedly, eyebrows raised.

"Is that what you think it was? And here I thought we were becoming friends." 

She couldn't help the small mocking laugh that escaped her lips. 

"Alright, friend, answer me this then. Why were you in the wrong compartment for almost half of the journey?"

He opened his mouth to reply but whatever he was going to say earlier, it wasn't coming out as words. He chuckled nervously, and rubbed his hands. 

"Uh..so, I can see we're not going to just ignore that topic."

She forced a small mischievous smile to stay off of her face and kept her expression passively neutral. 

"Why would we?"

He shrugged half-heartedly, blushing a deeper shade of red. "I don't know, I guess I thought you'd be kind enough to ignore the weird behaviour of a nice and friendly stranger."

"Oh so we're back to being strangers now? I was just going to commit to us being friends." She pouted with mock sadness for extra effect, and it worked. 

Kabir looked at her with eyes narrowed in annoyance, and Tanika found a small laugh escape from her mouth. It had been quite a while since she'd been in the company of someone she genuinely found even mildly bearable, and the sadistic enjoyment she was getting from annoying him was unparalleled. In response, he groaned and turned away from her in mock childish annoyance - a gesture she found entirely endearing. 

"Alright, sorry about that. Personally, I think it's too soon to call us friends. I mean, we barely know each other. You could be a serial killer for all I know." 

"And are you normally this chummy with serial killers you meet? Or am I the sweet exception?"

His replies were quick, and filled with sarcasm. But she found herself liking this exchange of witty comments that was going on between them at that moment. 

She wiped some sweat off her forehead with the back of her hoodie. It was getting hotter as the morning drew into a sunny afternoon. The sun was right overhead, and Tanika longed to take off her hoodie. She was wearing a thin t-shirt underneath after all. But a subtle warning in the back of her head warned her to avoid doing so and so she left it on, troubled by the thoughts in her head. 

"I'm cautiously friendly with possible serial killers. But I mean, even if you are one, you're horrible at it. You had plenty of chances to carry out your mission but you didn't." 

Kabir let out a short laugh. "I cannot believe I'm being insulted about being a bad serial killer. Just when I thought you couldn't get meaner." 

She raised her eyebrows in mock jest. "How am I mean?" She put her hand over heart dramatically, feigning hurt. "I thought we were friendly strangers, B-4."

"Well, for starters, you keep calling me B-4. That's mean. And you said we aren't friends. That's mean too." He crossed his arms and glared at her.

She scoffed. "What are you, five? B-4 suits you better than Kabir, according to me. And I said we weren't friends, because it's too soon for that. We've just had a few conversations, for the entirety of which you were weirdly and knowingly in the wrong compartment. If anything, I should be dialing the police right now claiming a pretty young boy is stalking me."