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Ha! I knew it. “I knew it.” I smirked. “Wait,what?Did you say Slytherin?” He smirked right back, and my mouth actually fell open. Neil. Slytherin.
Okay, yeah, I could totally see that now. But wow. “Okay. Color me shocked. Moving on. What house do you think I am?”
He chuckled, folding his hands beneath his chin, elbows on the table. “If you’re not Slytherin, then I don’t know anything about life, Liv,” he joked.
“That’s right,” I said cockily, nodding in approval as I flashed him one of my rare, genuine smiles. It was one that clearly conveyed my growing fondness for him, whether I wanted him to see it or not.
I was going to have to keep that in check, wasn’t I?
“Do you want to go to the movies this weekend?” he intruded my thoughts, and I scoffed in response.
“Of course I do,” I answered. Not just because it would be with Neil, though that was definitely a plus, but because I was up for watching movies any day of the week, really. “When?”
“Do you work Friday night?”
“I do.”
“Saturday?”
I shook my head.
“Saturday then.”
“Saturday then,” I echoed, smiling again and ducking my head so he couldn’t see it this time. He watched the whole thing play out, though, an identical smile curving his lips.
They were dangerous, these kinds of smiles.
We went to the movies (twice) that weekend, grabbed dinner (once), and were hanging out during (most of) our lunches now.
It was easy with Neil, almost so easy that it didn’t seem real.
I was used to the rush of thoughts and panic of time, intentionally filling the spaces in my life with noise, but the more I hung out with Neil, the more I was forced to take notice of the way he was content in just being still sometimes.
He was relaxed, confident, and easy-going.
I’d once said I wanted to peek inside his world, and now that I was, now that he’d given me the permission to, all I saw wascalm.
Calm skies, calm breeze, calm waters.
It was the complete opposite of what existed inside of mine: Fires burning, empty spaces filled with nothing, traffic jams of thought, spinning in circles of laughter with Sydney, loud music and parties drowning out sound, writing, working, and questions. So many questions I didn’t have the answers to.
Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want my future to look like? What am I going to do after graduation?
What are Neil and I even doing?
There were a thousand more questions behind that, hence the mental traffic jam.
I wanted to slip completely out of mine and into his, for just a little while. To lie back in his silent waters and watch the sky slowly changing colors, the sun quietly creeping beyond the horizon.
I thought I might be able to find some of my answers there, because I’d already found a little bit of peace in his calm.
I’d already found some silence in his quiet.
Full honesty, it was terrifying.
Chapter 13
Crazy, I Know