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I looked around the hallway we were standing in. “I guess we should start in the square.”
He nodded and headed in that direction.
Neil was wearing shorts today, and a regular tee. Some black Vans. It was completely throwing me off. It was stupid, for something that minute to make me feel like I was seeing him through yet another lens, but...
He looked good in casual. Or different. I didn’t know.
I helped him carry the cart down two flights of stairs into the square, avoiding his gaze. I could feel his eyes on me, though. Two laser beams searing straight through me. Could he see right through me as well? Could he see that something in me, was attracted to something about him, even though I still had no clue what it was, and I was confused as hell about it?
No. No way. I was way too good at putting up a front.
But if that was the case, then why did it feel like all of that was stripped away when Neil was standing in front of me?
Maybe it was because we’d known each other as kids, before too much life intervened and forced us to need fronts at all. He’d already seen me, and known me, on some level, before any of that existed.
That had to be it. It made sense.
But that was a long time ago.
“Should we start here?” Neil’s voice untangled the knotted thoughts in my brain until they disintegrated into nothing.
“Huh?” I asked.
“This wall here…” He gestured to the wall beside us, the one that stood center in the square, sitting between the two doorways of the library. “We can put the biggest one here.”
“Yeah, that’s smart.” Everyone would see it there no matter where their classes were. I held up one side while he held the other, and we placed it against the wall. Holding my arm full of tape out to him, he reached over and pulled a piece, leaning down to tear it off with his teeth.
Yeah, not going there.Or the million-and-one other devious places my mind had just gone.
After securing down the poster, we moved down the way, attaching a few more to the walls that closed in the square. I definitely wasn’t at a loss for words as I inconspicuously watched him—his arms lifting, flexing, tearing pieces of tape from my arm. Nope. Not me.
I cleared my throat, looking away. “So, what movie did you see on Friday?” I asked him.
“Oh, uh…” He finished smoothing out a poster against yet another wall before sliding his hands into his pockets. “Demon Daze.”
“Nice.” I nodded my head in approval. “What did you think of it?”
“It was alright.” He shrugged. “I think they missed a few opportunities for something gorier, but I liked it enough.”
“Mmhmm.” I bit back a smile. Everyone else I’d talked to about it had hated it.
“Did you see it?” he asked.
“I did.”
“And what did you think?”
“I think they skimped on the gore, for sure, but the concept was pretty cool. I liked it.”
“I agree,” he stated confidently, curling his hands over the edge of the cart. I stood there and stared at him, distinguishing four different shades of brown that melded together in his eyes. Mocha near the iris, caramel and honey in the center, and nearly onyx at the rim that edged them.
He blinked away and started pulling the cart down the last hill of the square and toward the gym, landing me right on my metaphorical ass of reality.
Mocha and honey?What in the actual fuck, Olivia?
Call me mortified. Because I was. Mortified. At my own traitorous thoughts.
I shook my head, banished them away, and followed him.