No Place Like Home ✔

Fourteen

I was pretty sure I liked Adam. I had to have had some sort of feelings for him ; be it jealousy or fondness. I refer to it as fondness because love is a strong word. Too strong of a word. A word that people nowadays throw around like it carries no weight. I also say jealousy, but I'm unsure as to what it means. Jealousy because he leads such a stable life? Jealousy because he isn't living a lie?

No matter how hard I attempted to push these feelings of jealousy and fondness away, it never went my way. It always came back like a boomerang in pursuit of its initial position and hit me right in the heart every time. 

It was frustrating. It was so frustrating, but it felt nice. 

It felt nice to feel something other than disappointment or hatred. 

Hatred - another strong emotion. An emotion I found myself feeling on a daily basis, but what's new? I had come to terms with the fact that I was nothing but a beacon of disappointment. I was the dark clouds that filled the sky before downpour. I was negativity. 

"You don't really say much these days," Adam noted. "Something on your mind?" 

"No," I lied. "There's just nothing to say."

"There's always something to say," he began.

"I'm not in the mood for your philosophy," I interrupted. 

"Sorry," he muttered and I instantly felt horrible for having shut him up like that. 

"That's not what I-," I began with a frustrated huff, rubbing my face with my palms. My distress was evident. It was crystal clear. "Sorry, I'm just not in the best mood."

"Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?" he joked.

"I don't have a bed," I responded.

"Oh," was all he said - and I could immediately notice the guilt in his tone, and so I scurried to fix his mood once again:

"No, it's okay. I'm just joking around," I said with nervous laughter. "I'm trying to make light of my situation, y'know? Surprised you haven't caught on yet."

"I can't help but feel bad," he said with a soft sigh, leaning back only a little, his eyes focused on the sky above. "It's a cold day today."

"Certainly is," I nodded. 

"You look like you want to say something," he noted. 

"How can you tell?"

"Just the emotion you have," he responded with a shrug. "You've had that look on your face for a few days now but I never really thought I should say anything about it till now. What is it? Is anything bothering you?"

There was no getting past him. He always noticed every minor little detail. He always did - and though often times it was relieving because I didn't have to say what I was feeling out loud, sometimes it proved to be quite irking as well. Because there were some things that deserved to go unnoticed, and the way I was feeling right now was one of those things. It should have gone unnoticed. 

"Read me like an open book," I said.

"You're not going to tell me?" he questioned, tossing the keys to his home up in the air before catching them once again, only to repeat the action. "That's okay, you don't have to. Nobody's forcing you."

What did he want to hear from me?

Did he want to hear that I was jealous of the lifestyle he was leading? Did he want to hear that I had feelings for him? Did he want to hear that I was faking being homeless? Did he want to hear about the detailed summary of my troubling past? What was the answer he was yearning for?

I said nothing for those were thoughts I did not wish to share. Instead, I would sit in silence and experience all those emotions at once by myself. 

"It's cold today," he said after a moment of silence. 

"You already said that," I reminded him.

"I know. I'm just hoping it'll bring about another topic we can talk about," he confessed. 

"Like what? Why it's so cold?" I snorted. "Newsflash, seasons change."

"But it's never been this cold here," he noted. "It's always like.. shy coldness, you could say. Like it's borderline cold but not the real thing. The kind of cold where you step out of a hot shower. It stays for a moment then leaves."

"Is that you being philosophical?"

"No," he huffed. "Did that sound philosophical to you?"

"Not really but you said it in that philosophical tone of yours," I shrugged. "You could be talking about the process of human excretion in that tone and it'd sound like the most debated philosophical theory to exist."

I noticed him raising his brow at me from the corner of my eye, "Do you want me to do that then? Describe the process of human excretion to you?"

"I think I already know everything I need to know about excretion," I gagged. "I'd rather not have someone else explain it to me."

"Oh come on, it'll be funny!" he insisted.

"How old are you?" 

"Why does that matter? You're never too old to enjoy a good poop joke."

"Dear God, you did not just say poop," I gasped, narrowing my eyes at him. 

"Oh yes I did. Do you have a problem? Poopoohead."

I pressed my lips into a firm, thin line. Had he really called me a 'poopoohead'?

"You know, if you'd said this to me about a decade ago, I would've been thoroughly offended." 

He let out a laugh that nearly melted my stone cold heart. 

Never had I ever felt these emotions so strongly around anyone else. Scratch that, I'd never felt emotions in such a strong manner. Emotions to me were always something that came and went as they pleased - and only stayed for barely a minute or two; after that, I was back to being the emotionless being I was meant to be. 

But with him, it was different. With him I felt everything a little too much - more than I should have.

He was making me feel things and I didn't like it.