Beautiful Boy

nine

I was nervous.

I've said that all the time. I'm always nervous in a new situation.

A guy was walking me home.

A guy I only said hi or bye to.

It's fast isn't it? There's always this slow build up in romance stories, where it takes about fifty chapters for the characters to start going out.

And that does make more sense. The world laughs at us cruelly, making us scared to trust, scared to open up and scared to love.

But the world doesn't laugh at everyone at that age. I'd say that it smirks or murmurs, but laughing? I didn't think it'd do that to me at that time.

We were walking home.

To my house.

Yes, he was just dropping me. There was no reason to get excited.

However, for some reason, there was this warm feeling in my chest. I'd describe the emotion as a jumble of nerves, an echoing heartbeat and yet a warm blanket enveloping my warm body against the cold wind.

It felt something like that.

I stared at him from the corner of my eye, carefully printing his expressions on my mind as he strummed to the tune of the songs playing.

Careful, yet direct.

Gentle, yet a little aggressive.

Soft, yet rough.

All he was was contradictions.

A paradox, I'd say.

In class, he'd smile like nothing was wrong in the world, and yet his eyebrows would be creased slightly, as if he were in pain.

His laughter would be echoing loudly, like music to my ears, and yet, it sparked a slight hint of discomfort.

But now, he was singing softly, humming along to the melody, his mind completely elsewhere.

I thought that I was overthinking then.

'Do people really lie that often?' was my question at that time.

Lying about being fine was something that everyone did.

It must be something like that, I thought at that time, averting my gaze before he noticed me staring at him.

I was wondering, why did I notice this now? It wasn't like I wasn't in the same class as him. It wasn't like I didn't see what he did at school.

So why did I notice those things, right at that moment?

"Am I that good looking?" he asked, right after I averted my eyes.

I immediately started blushing.

This was so awkward.

He gave a small chuckle.

Why was he teasing me like this?

"Yeah, you are," I looked at him directly in the eyes, giving him a small smile while ignoring my raging nerves.

"H-huh?"

"Yeah," I repeated it once more, "you are good looking."

His eyes widened in surprise, like he didn't expect that from me.

Who would, to be honest?

Many people don't really bother to know who I really am, and with most people I talk to, I don't really open up much.

Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't have that many trust issues. Not at that time. I simply didn't know how to open up to people, which was quite funny because I had a lot of acquaintances.

He started blushing like crazy, smiling awkwardly just like I usually did, and then I started blushing like crazy, cannot believing that I said such a statement.

I looked to the side in embarassment, noticing that we were in my street.

And my house was just around the corner.

What a fucking relief.

"That's my house, haha," I mumbled awkwardly, quickly waving a bye. I gave him a small smile while he just stood there, not knowing what to say.

This was the perfect scenario for a kiss, wasn't it?

Think about it.

Right in front of the girl's house, the perfect empty street, the perfect breeze, the perfect ambience-

But my dumbass ran inside the house, quickly squeaking out a bye.

I didn't turn back.

Not once.

How could I?

I shut the door behind me, breathing out loud like I ran a fucking marathon.

I slid down the door, hugging my knees, trying to contain my squeals.

What did I just do?