He ruins the peaceful atmosphere by cranking up the radio with loud rap music. The ear-splitting sound of bass and clashing of drums nearly burst out my eardrums. I groan in frustration, dropping the book to my lap and put my palms against my ears in a desperate attempt to block out the sound, but I don’t think a hundred pairs of headphones can.
When he doesn’t even bother to notice my reaction to this…thing he calls music, I glare at him. A smug look stains his face.
“Will you please turn it down?” I ask sweetly.
He acts like he doesn’t hear me.
My smile drops. “Turn it down, Grey!”
He cups a hand around his ear, leaning toward me. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
I lunge forward and twist the knob all the way to the left. “I said, turn it down!” I hesitate in berating him further when I face him.
His face is a mere inch away from mine. Eyes dark like a cooling obsidian rock and breath warm like the breeze whispering through my hair—he is too close. I lean back and swallow the bubbles in my stomach. “That was way too loud.” I can feel his overpowering eyes on me.
“Says you.”
“Can you please just look back on the road? We could crash.” My throat tightens. I’ve been in one crash that altered my life; I don’t need another. Finally, he sits back and chuckles like I said something funny. Like us crashing is funny. “Driving safely isn’t anything to joke about. You can laugh all you want, but once it happens to you, you don’t laugh about it,” I spit out.
His mock laughter is replaced by the sound of the soft purr of the car’s engine. I blink away the tears forming in my eyes. I close them, letting my head lean against the cool surface of the window.
“What happened?” he asks. I try to detect mockery or scorn in his voice, but all I find is sincerity.
I look at him in my peripheral vision. He’s glancing at me from the road. His lips are pulled into a straight line, rather than his usual taunting smirk or intimidating scowl, and his eyebrows are knitted together in interest.
I debate whether I should tell him or not but decide nothing can go wrong if I do. I’m picky when it comes to my painful past, so not many people outside of the immediate family know. And it’s not because I’m ashamed or care about what everyone else would think; I just don’t like shouting it off the rooftops.
“When I was ten, my family and I got into a terrible car accident—drunk driver. My parents and I made it out all right, but uh…” I pause and lick my lips. “My brother, he—he died. Ever since, I’ve been extremely cautious when it comes to driving. I still have nightmares about it to this day…”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that,” he says, putting a hand on my thigh.
That stupid shock of electricity gets me. That seriously needs to stop. It’s giving me the creeps.
I push his hand off, and he doesn’t quip a comment at me. “Can we just not talk about it, please?” I look over at him and pause. “And drive safely. You’re lucky I haven’t had a panic attack with how reckless you’ve been driving.” I should have timed it, because at that moment his lips whip up into a half-crooked smile.
“Only because we’re all alone.” He waggles his eyebrows playfully. It must be a tactic to brighten the mood; surprisingly enough, it works. A small unsure smile makes its way onto my face. “But not in the creepy, I’m-going-to-kill-you-out-here, way. The area just happens to be remote.”
I glance outside and sigh. “That, I can see.” Speaking of which…“Where are we exactly? You know, just so I have something to reference when I text Julia, however grouchy she is. My mysterious death would be able to break down her icy walls, right?” I playfully wave my phone, and he gives off a dry laugh with a roll of his eyes.
“Funny. But you’ll see soon enough.”
“But—”
He puts a finger to my lips with a dangerous slant to his. “I thought you said you trusted me.”
I smack his hand away, and he smiles like he expected me to. “I do…somewhat. But trust me, it’s slowly but surely deteriorating.”
“Fine, I’ll rebuild it soon.” He shrugs. “Maybe even receive a thank you fuck, or hug, depending on your wacky mood.”
I scoff, appalled and heated by his choice of his words. “I do not have a wacky mood.”
He glances at me with an are-you-kidding-me? expression. “You sure about that, Princess?”
“Yes, I am sure. And I told you to stop calling me that,” I scold him, pointing a finger. He leans over and nips at the tip, and I giggle and pull it away. Did I just giggle? He’s shocked and laughs. My cheeks flare with heat, and I sit back in the chair.
“But, oh yes, you do have the most confusing moods. One minute you’re all prud…” I raise an eyebrow, and he taps my nose; I refrain from smiling. “Princess-y, and the next you’re actually fun to be with.”
“Wow, thank you for that amazing compliment.” I lay a hand to my chest. He laughs and sucks in his lower lip while letting his mouth fall to one side. “And that is not true. I’m neither of those things.”
“Aren’t you, though?” He’s pushing me, trying to make me agree. But I hold my ground and shake my head.
“Nope. I’m just determined to do what’s most important in life—getting my education.”
He hums, squinting his eyes, jabbing a finger in the air. “Not exactly. I like the term…uptight.”
I nearly choke on air. “Well, I don’t. So excuse me if I don’t do dumb things like party and waste the opportunities I am given.”
“That’s your problem: you never want to do anything. It’s going to be the death of you.”
“No, it will be my savior, because if I actually think before I do everything and anything, I’ll still be alive. It’s called logical reasoning.”
“Which I am guessing I don’t have?” he inquires, pinching his eyebrows together.
“Judging your willingness to tear your knuckles apart and yesterday, no. The answer is most definitely no,” I answer honestly.
He shrugs, turning down a dirt path. “Then I’m glad I don’t have a mind like yours.” He parks, and without the loud engine, I am highly aware of my shallow breaths and him gripping the steering wheel. “Because I wouldn’t be able to live while being alive. As for the fighting, it’s just always what I’ve done. It’s my life. And I’m okay with it. In fact, I love it. And as for yesterday, I’m going to make up for it right now. So get out, remember you took my hand, and let me do just that.” He winks before swiftly exiting the car.
His words strike an unknown chord in me. I’m partially offended and partially upset because maybe he’s right. Then again, he is Grey. Insubordinate, reckless, and sarcastic Grey.
Nonetheless, I store his words in my mind for later and get out of the car. I find him at the start of the path that leads into the forest, impatiently flicking his lighter, holding it up to the end of a cigarette.
I scrunch up my face. “You should really stop smoking. That’ll only kill you in the long run.”
He takes a deep breath and, around a cloud of smoke, says, “We all gotta die someday, right?”
“That’s a morbid way to think,” I say, watching as he shrugs and nods to the clump of trees.
“We gotta get going before the sun sets or you won’t get any good photos.”
“Photos?”
He looks at me and smiles. “For your project, Princess,” he says, and I’m sure confusion seeps from my mind onto my face. He rolls his eyes like my ignorance is a great inconvenience to him. “If you weren’t dressed like a school teacher, I would think you were as dumb as a door knob. Just follow me, trust that I won’t kill you, and promise not to tell a living soul about this. A dead one, either. That could have been a messy loophole.” He blows out a breath and theatrically slaps a hand on his chest.
“I am not dressed like a school teacher,” I defend, glancing at my appropriate attire. “If anything, it’s delectable.” I’m so busy looking down a
t my ironed skirt that I almost don’t notice he’s begun walking. Hiking my backpack up further, I jog after him as well as I can in my flats. We breach the brushes and step into the forest. The floor is soft, and I almost regret wearing these shoes. Almost.
He snorts unattractively, but the way his jaw tips up and his dark eyes glisten as he glances at me, it actually makes it seem all the more attractive. “If ‘delectable’ means atrocious, then yes. Very delectable indeed.” He slants his thick lips in an unappealing smirk.
I stop walking, but he doesn’t stop. “I’m not going to go God knows where if you’re going to be rude.”
“Fine, risk failing your elective. It won’t be on me, I’ll tell you that,” he obnoxiously sing-songs.
I pause. He’s right. I need to complete this assignment, and I need a pleasant scenery to shoot, which he claims to have access to. “I don’t like you,” I say, realizing I have to go through with this. Following a boy I barely know but am surely starting to dislike into the woods on a make-believe quest to find a scenic area for a project.
“No one said you had to.” He looks back, a conceited smirk smeared across his face. The dying sunlight pouring in through the crooked branches causes irregular shapes to display across his face. “But if you really want to, you can go back to the car. Here, I’ll even click it open for you.” He raises his arm and looks at me with a squint of his eyes as he presses his thumb on the car fob.
I huff out a breath and stomp over to him. “Let’s just get this over with, please.”
He steps back and gestures up along the trail. “Be my guest.”
I roll my eyes and pull out my camera. “Thank you. Not.” To annoy him, I take a wild picture of him with the flash on before giving him the evil eyes. He laughs at me, and I turn around, mumbling curses under my breath.
“Imbecile, huh? I have got to add that to my vocabulary list,” he says from behind me, a smirk no doubt on his face. Sometimes, no, all the time, I feel like swiping it off his smug but cute face. Cute? Cute and Grey do not go hand in hand. I don’t even know why I said that. I shake off the shivers that charge through my body at the thought of him.
On our way to his perfect scenic location, I take snippets of pictures of the sun peeking through the dark leaves on the towering trees. I struggle from time to time with the slippery soles of my flats against stones and unreliable pieces of log needed to stabilize me as I point up high or at a strange angle.
Grey surprisingly stays quiet as I take pictures. I don’t know if it’s because the cigarette keeps him sedated or I’m not doing anything worthy of his mockery. Either way, I appreciate the quiet besides the gleeful chirping of birds in the trees.
Despite the rude boy behind me, I could see myself naturally taking pictures out here in the quiet or even reading a nice book as a warm breeze wraps around me, over there, under the shade of a tree while the sunlight creates a halo in the ground two feet away. I snap a photo. Or over there, on that smooth stump where the light circles around the solid ground. I take another photo. All around I find perfect stills of squirrels that run along trees or a caterpillar hitting the sunlight as its breaking out of its cocoon.
“I think I have enough,” I say as I look through the digital footage.
“Knowing how you’re such a perfectionist, I’m gonna have to disagree,” he says, tugging at my elbow. I open my mouth to ask what he means, but he nods behind me. “Remember to keep this a secret.” He winks and walks ahead of me. I merely shake my head and follow him. It’s quiet as I take little bits here and there. But when we breach the end of the forest and touch firmer ground, I can’t help but let out a little gasp of awe.
We end up at the beginning of a cliff, and as we walk out further, we touch base with the rockiness of it all. There’s a broken-down picnic table to the right and a wide spread of the university’s campus ahead. The sun is beginning to set, the sky a unique shade of cerulean and vivacious orange mingling together, the sun like yellow paint dripping down a mosaic.
A smile slowly spreads over my face, and I take a step forward to take a closer look.
“Whoa there.” An arm is slung around my waist, and I’m pulled back. I look up into a pair of black eyes and a smile that causes my stomach to do tumbles. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one worried about dying?”
Ignoring the recurrent tingles in my spine from his touch, I take a minimal step back and look down at the tiny pebbles falling down below. We have to be a hundred feet high. Down below is a vacant wide stretch of empty land, filled with boulders and massive rocks. If I had taken one more step…
“I didn’t mean to—” I shake my head, and my vision gets blocked by my hair. I lift my head and run my hand through my loose, curly hair. The little black band that was holding it up is cut, laying in my palm. “Dang it. It must have gotten cut while we were exiting the bushes.” I put my all my hair together and try to tie it up into a ponytail, but my hair is too much, and the gel I used to keep it down has worn out, leaving me with a messy mob of curls and sticky palms. “Dang it!”
Grey chuckles. “Say dang it one more time, it’s adorable.”
I swat at his chest, and he dives into deeper laughter. “Stop it.” I step away from him and try again but end up throwing the band away. I turn around and ruffle out the curls, pushing it over my forehead. “Do you have a rubber band on you…?”
When my eyes land on him, I find him staring at me with a peculiar expression. His eyes are cold, and his hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides. “What’d I do?” My voice is unintentionally small and sheepish. I anxiously play with the charms on my charm bracelet.
“Nothing, it’s just—you look really pretty with your hair down,” he says quietly. I did not expect that.
I can’t help but smile and glance around, defensively putting my hands on my hips. “And I look horrendous with it up?”
I expect him to smirk and ridicule me, but he does the opposite. He shakes his head and says, “No, no…you just look…different.”
“Thank you?” I kind of smile while taking off my backpack and laying it against a small boulder. I have to rip my eyes away from his intense look and distract myself with taking pictures of the gleaming town and photogenic sunset, or else I’ll end up like putty in his hands. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me right now. But another part of me is actually eating it up.
“Hey,” I say after taking a decent number of photos. “We should complete another set of the questions while we’re up here and away from distractions.” I walk over to my bag and bend to put the camera away and take out my notebook.
His smirk comes back full-force. “You mean, like, our little pool game?”
I’m glad my back is turned to him, because I’m sure I’m as red as a tomato with a smile curving my lips. “Yes, exactly like that.” I stand and sit on a medium-sized boulder that has a smooth top. It’s kind of hard to get on it because of my skirt, but I manage and face him. “The faster we finish this, the faster we can get out of each other’s lives.”
He sits on the picnic table. “Ouch. And here I thought you liked me.”
“Well, you thought wrong.” I smile widely and drop it while clicking the pen. “Now let’s get started, shall we?” I refrain from smiling as he groans and rolls his head back like a child. “We have to start with the basics since we barely had any time to answer any, due to someone playing pool instead.” I tap the pen against my overlapping knee.
He picks at his fingernail then catches my accusing gaze. “Oh, you mean me?” He points to himself.
I roll my eyes and let out a sigh. “Just answer, please.”
He hesitantly nods. “Shoot.”
“Okay, how was family life?”
“Next question.” Touchy subject, I see.
“Can’t move on until you answer.”
“Next question,” he says in a firmer tone. I lift my eyes and examine the clenching of his teeth and balling of his hands. Pausing, I use my
other hand to brush back my hair behind my ear.
“Okay…sorry,” I murmur, writing down: Rough. “How about we start with something lighter?” I try on a smile to lift the mood, but he still looks pissed off. Whatever happened during his childhood must have been really bad if it’s got him so upset like this. “Favorite color?”
“This doesn’t really sound like a psychology-related question,” he points out.
“Just answer the question, please,” I whine.
“Don’t have one,” he says, rolling his shoulders. “Yours?”
“I can’t pick, so I’ll say black and white.”
His scowl drops and is replaced by a smug look. “Are you serious?”
When I sheepishly nod, he chuckles, and I find myself doing the same, examining the way his cheeks indent with a deep dimple and his black eyes glimmer.
“Oh, yeah. Judging me is fair,” I say. “At least I have a favorite color, two at that.”
He waves a hand at me. “I just don’t have a specific color that catches my eyes. But if I did have a favorite, it’d be the color of your eyes,” he says, winking at me.
“Corny.” I laugh, and he shrugs as I shake my head in disdain. I try to pick up a sign to tell if he’s joking or not, but I find none.
“And at least I don’t see the world as only black and white like you do,” he defends himself.
I scoff. “I do not see the world in only those colors.”
“Yes, you do. And I think, for your sake, you should discover the middle ground.”
My breath hitches in my throat. “You mean…Grey?”
He smiles more genuinely than ever. “Yes, me, goofball. And don’t think I didn’t see that smile or the fidgeting with your bracelet, which I’m learning is your adorable little nervous tick. Although you don’t see me…I see you.”
It grows quiet, like all the crickets and birds know the moment demands absolute silence.
“All right, enough with the sentimental bullshit,” he says. “Let’s move on to another question. How about…why you chose photography.”
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