And Then, There Was Fire.

two.

Next Day

Lauren vacantly stared at the concrete to her side as her body faced her worst company at this time. He was aware that she stood there idly as he tried convincing her with his own opinions.

"Listen to me, Ren," Aubrey called for her attention but she rudely kept her head turned from him, her arms folded against her chest with her books in between them. "He's not the type of person you need to associate yourself with."

She may have won the battle on ignoring Aubrey's calls and texts last night, when he received the news that she went bar-hopping in the company of Trey, but she failed the battle on avoiding him the very next day on campus.

She continued ignoring him, gazing up from the sidewalk in front of the west wing of the campus, and out into the dispersing parking lot. "Don't ignore me while I'm talking to you."

"Or else what?" She snapped, finally facing him while shifting weight in her feet.

The cold, northern-Virginian February breeze blew her loose curls, causing a few locks to twirl in front of her face. Her arms tightened across her chest in her fitting, black leather jacket.

"Whatever. I don't want to fight with you." His reply made her eyes roll, slowly looking past him again.

His weakness was what irritated her; that and his goody-two-shoes personality. His opinion of Trey made it seem as if he was a child from hell who was going to drag Ren right down along with him. "I'll come meet you here after class, aight?" He asked, bouncing upward to adjust his backpack that hung from one shoulder. He softly took her chin in his hand and placed a soft kiss to her lips, sliding his free hand in the pocket of his sweats.

She couldn't resist the kiss just as any other time he did this, so she kissed him back without agreeing. No one told her what to do, and when one would attempt to, she'd purposely disobey them.

She would never understand why they were together, as he was the water to her torch. Whenever she began firing up, he came to put her out. He believed that he could change her into the moral-behaving woman that he wanted out of her, but she would never know why he chased her to begin with because he knew who she was from day one.

Later in the day, she found herself trying to stay awake in her Torts class. The crashing rain outside only did more damage, causing more students to fall asleep. She managed to cop a seat in the very back corner so that she wouldn't get caught doing what she wasn't supposed to be doing, such as being on her phone, or better yet, texting Trey.

"Drawing a gun to shoot myself. Class is dead today." She replied in response to Trey's typical "The fuck you doing?" text.

It didn't fail. His effort to get a smile across her pink lips each time he did text her, and he knew it too. What he favored most about Lauren was that she always appreciated his company and conversation, no matter how big or small it is. Their friendship with each other grew overtime, but has become a cringe-sight for their mutual friends, as it was becoming obvious that the two tip-toe around the line as a taken man and woman.

"I got in trouble again because of you." He wrote back.

"Because of me? Nice. I just got finished getting barked at by Hitler." She replied.

"Please, he's nowhere near Hitler. He's too soft." She mistakenly laughed at his reply once she received it.

Twenty minutes later, she hadn't noticed that she was still smirking to their long conversations during class. She wasn't even supposed to develop this close of a friendship with him.