Chapter 20: Sometimes It's a Thin Line Between Hate and Love
Monday morning had never been my favorite day. Out of all seven days, Monday was the one I hated with most passion. It was the reminder that my whole life wasn’t dedicated into sleeping and getting comfy in my bed. It was the reminder that I still had school and work and my lifestyle wasn’t exactly ideal.
And now, it was the reminder that I needed to see Alec freaking Blaze 12 hours per day.
Colorful choices of curses escaped my mouth as I walked through the hallway, going to our shared locker. I decided to come to school as late as possible, maybe not coming if I got the choice. It wasn’t bad enough that I needed to see him in class and his house, I also happened to share a fucking locker with him.
After making sure that there was no tall, lean, dark-haired, green-eyed boy around, I fumbled with the locker combination and flung the front door open.
Okay, wait.
Tall, lean, dark-haired, green eyed?
I needed to stop describing him like he affected me that much.
When I gathered my books, I saw a piece of paper that wasn’t supposed to be there.
To the stubborn person who shares my locker:
Just admit it. Okay?
With every amount of hatred that I could muster, I turned the paper around so that I didn’t need to read Alec’s handwriting. But then, turns out that there was more on the back.
Why are you so in denial, Andrea?
Are you afraid of me?
Fully realizing that my strength had heightened tenfold due to anger, I squeezed the piece of paper until it shrunk into the size of an MnM and left it on the locker.
I hoped that it was a clear enough message for him to understand.
School went on like usual, and I could actually concentrate in the class. First, because I hated to have my mind filled with the constant surge of Alec and his moss green eyes, tuft of dark hair, and mostly, his lips. Second, because the subject of question didn’t attend the classes that I attended today.
Suddenly, my love for Monday elevated through the roof.
The happiness didn’t last long, unfortunately, for when I just went out from my second period class, Tatiana and Hannah strode towards me and took either of my arms in theirs.
This didn’t happen in daily basis. True, we were the best of friends, but both Tatiana and Hannah weren’t what you’d call clingy. I didn’t hang out with them all the time, although the times in which we spend our time together, we did it with great intensity.
So, I concluded, something big must be going on.
“New freshman,” Hannah began. “Cute as a buttercup.”
“Curly hair like cherub,” Tatiana recited her version of said ‘cute’ freshman. “Arms like Fabio. I want to lick him so bad my tongue’s feeling itchy.”
Okay. I didn’t need to hear the last part.
“He’s a freshman. I thought you guys are into college guys?”
“The thing is, Andrea. That guy doesn’t look like a freshman at all it’s crazy. His movement is as graceful as college guys. He doesn’t have flabby arms like most guys in freshmen do. I’m pretty sure he’s working out daily or else how in the hell can he maintain those arms?” Tatiana was losing it. That I could deal with because it happened nearly everytime we saw guys rated 8 and above passing our ways.
I looked at Hannah to confirm everything the ditzy brunette said. As cheeky and erratic she was, Hannah somehow possessed considerably more sense than Tatiana.
Hannah nodded. “No exaggeration detected.”
“Oh God.” Being forced to look at a new guy was the last thing I wanted, especially when I had guy-problems myself. I’d steeled myself to say ‘no’ to Alec. At least, until he decided that he was worth of a yes. But then, for that plan to actually work, I needed to distance myself as far as I could from him, because he had what I called a nasty chase-her-until-you-get-her syndrome that had gotten him so many girls in Merryweather high prancing to his lap.
Automatically, my fingers darted to my lips, and upon a trigger of touch, once again I was relished of the memories of our kiss. I groaned inwardly, hating and liking the memory all too much. It’s no wonder that girls had fallen hopelessly in love with him. He was such a good kisser it’s like a crime.
“Oh! Oh! There he is, oh shit! There he is!” Hannah was bouncing up and down as excitement got the best of her.
We waited at the corner of the hallways as the grubby freshmen scrambled out of their classroom. The boys were short and the girls looked awkward. But then, one person stood out from the rest. He was taller, slightly darker, better looking, and had already free from a bad case of pimples.
I felt my jaw unhinged as I recognized him.
Gabriel!
Instinctively, I ducked behind Tatiana and Hannah. They didn’t notice this as both of them were ogling Gabriel with their hungry eyes. I was sure that if they lost the last vestige of their self-control, they would have been drooling.
Many of the freshmen flocked around him, both boys and girls. All of them had a clear sign of admiration as they could have been waggling their tails toward the poor guy. Gabriel, on the other hand, looked bothered by the amount of attention that he was getting, but as always, he always maintained to be polite. He smiled to each of them and then struggled to walk towards his next class.
Oh, so this was what his private business about yesterday. Getting to school. Starting afresh as a freshman.
I admired his bravery.
It was the first time I saw him out from his cook-uniform, and with a simple t-shirt and ripped jeans, his body thrived. No one in Merryweather High, not even the athlete, possessed the amount of mass that he’d accumulated with years of handling cakes (or maybe I should ask him of his secret once again. I was sure that he was jesting when he said that baking was the sole reason he grew big). With his amass of curly hair and neverending eyelashes, he was a novelty.
I glanced at my two bestfriend, still swooning.
Yeah. A hell of a novelty.
-Hannah couldn’t stop rambling as we both tried to reach our locker. The matter of her subject was vast, ranging from how she spent her weekend (not surprisingly, by shopping designer bags) to what she was looking for a man. I’d tuned out the moment she said ‘a big dong’, and just pretended to listen as I put on a huge smile and nodded when she paused longer than a millisecond.
As we got there, I found that Alec had already been waiting near the locker. His arms crossed in front of his chest and I could see that he was holding the crumpled piece of paper that I’d bestowed to him this morning.
When he saw both of us, the look of concentration from his face was wiped away and replaced with the golden smile that he so often used to dazzle people. Fucking two-faced manslut.
“Hey Hannah,” he smiled at her, and Hannah smiled back. “Andrea.”
I managed to stop the urge to make a nasty nasal sound. “Can I open it? Or will it be too weird for you?”
He knew I was referring to the locker. “I’ll open it for you.” He said, as he, very deliberately outstretched his hand and brushed his fingers against mine. The slight touch of his hand burnt my skin, and I jerked away from him.
Noticing my reaction, he smirked a little as he fumbled with the combination.
“It’s so sweet that you guys are still sharing the same locker,” Hannah commented. Clearly the fact that we had just shared a moment of electromagnetivity was unnoticed by her. “Like, you know that Andrea’s locker probably won’t smell like eggs anymore, but you still lend her yours.”
Alec beamed at Hannah like he was about to seduce her. But then again, maybe that was his nervous tick,
beaming a flirty smile to anyone who would see. “My encounters with Andrea has always been interesting, so it’s okay for me.”
I mumbled curses under my breath. “I’ll be migrating my books soon.”
“Oh?” there was a bit of hurt hidden in his green eyes, but Alec was a goddamn good actor. “Seriously, so soon? I thought that we had something special.”
Hannah laughed. For her, it was just a joke. And Alec had made it look like a joke. Only I, the only one who actually knew what was going on, caught the hidden message.
“Maybe your locker’s not big enough for my books. Maybe I need some time and space to sort my books.”
His smile was still embellishing on his face, but his eyes darkened. “Your books are going to be just fine in my locker. I assure you.”
“Well, your locker will be full of other books soon, Alec,” I said, staring straight at him. “Maybe other people’s books. Maybe porn. Maybe the porn would feature pornstars with whitetrash names that always end with ‘y’, like, I don’t know… Cady?”
I was venturing to a danger zone here, but I couldn’t help myself. By this time, Alec could no longer hold his golden-boy smile and looked at me with intensity that I’d never seen in his eyes before. But still no words came out from his mouth. I saw his shoulder twitch when I mentioned his ex’s name, though.
Noticing the budding tension between us, Hannah put a hand on my shoulder. She knew than to let me go off being pissed for a period of time. “Hey, it’s just books, okay? And besides, I think Cady’s a pretty good name.”
Alec’s fingers strayed to his hair, and my eyes automatically followed the way his hair pushed his hair back. I didn’t notice this before, but he did it when he was frustrated. Like right now.
“Oh! Oh! The new meat’s coming!” Hannah had gotten back her previous energy as she saw Gabriel. As always, he was surrounded with hordes and hordes of appreciative freshmen, although now I recognized some of the sophomores started following him, too. His thick eyebrows were furrowed as he fend off all the naughty hands, but he still treated everyone with good grace.
“Can you believe how hot he is?” Hannah sighed.
Alec’s mouth opened wide as he saw his patisserie walking down the hallways, unknowingly gathering fans and spreading love to every single female population in this school. “Gabriel?” he hissed to me. “He’s shitting me.”
“Gabriel,” I confirmed. “He shit you not.”
“Out of all school…” he began but didn’t finish.
Gabriel was laughing at something that one of his new sycophants was saying, when his eyes strayed towards me.
The way his brown eyes regained the twinkles that I so liked in him amazed me. Without hesitation, he lifted his hand and waved at me.
“Andrea!” he said. “Hey, finally I can meet you!”
At this point, Hannah looked like she had just seen an alien landing on earth. Her eyes were three times her original sizes and her cheeks turned pallid.
Without any care of any of his adoring fans, Gabriel walked towards me. Of course, he nodded as an
acknowledgement of Alec, and Alec did the same. But the reality that the new hot freshman with cherub-like ringlets and Fabio-worthy arms knew me was more of shocking news to Hannah.
“He’s coming here, he’s coming here, Andrea.”
“Relax, I know him,” I whispered back to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!?!” She nearly shrieked quietly.
I couldn’t answer, as Gabriel was already in front of me. Up close, I could see how the t-shirt made a subtle preview of his impressive chest. Wow. Remind me to ask where he got his source of protein.
“Can’t believe that you finally enroll to a school!” I punched him lightly at his arm. It still felt like it made of wood.
“Yeah,” he sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “Well, you kinda inspired me when you asked me why I didn’t go to school, so… yeah, thanks.”
“Must be hard to fend off all those young fans?”
Gabriel grinned shyly, splotches of red appeared through his face to his ears. The fact that he got himself instant fans hadn’t been instilled clearly to his humble head. “Anyway, since I hadn’t gotten any form of education since a long time ago, I started out as a freshman…”
“You’ll live,” I smiled at him.
“Um, excuse me,” Hannah was elbowing my side violently, which was another way of her saying ‘introduce me, you frickin byotch!’.
“Anyway, this is Hannah,” I said, elbowing back at her as I grabbed Hannah’s hand so that it was outstretched on the air. Gabriel shook it firmly.
“Gabriel.”
“Should I also introduce myself?” Alec said in a bored tone.
Much to my annoyance, Alec put his arm around my shoulder. Gabriel’s eyes followed his arm, an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m Alec.”
“I know,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” Alec wasn’t one who would use crude voice at school. He had always been the sweet, good boy that everyone couldn’t help but like. But towards Gabriel and their childhood animosity, he couldn’t carry on with his persona.
“Studying,” Gabriel somehow managed a smile, which made Alec gripped my shoulder harder than before. “You might want to remove your hand, because I can see you’re hurting her.”
“Such a gentleman!” Hannah was obliviously blissful. “So how come you three know each other and I don’t know about it?”
The three of us looked at one another in frantic.
Gabriel was the first to speak up. “Well-“
“It’s really not important-“ at the same time Alec talked.
“Um…” was all I could manage.
“It’s from a party,” Alec finally let out a coherent sentence. “So there was a private party for-“ there was a pause that would have looked suspicious if he let it on any longer.
“Bakers,” blessed his soul, Gabriel caught on fast. He winked at me as he continued the story, fully knowing that it wasn’t in my best interest to tell anyone that both him and I were Alec’s helps. “Anyway, I love to bake, and turns out that these two fella have hidden passions.”
“Especially Alec,” I said, not able to pass this moment up. “You have to see, Hannah, how he squealed when he saw the colorful sprinkles.”
His face slightly pink, Alec still managed to smile. “And Andrea acted like she’s a 6 year old with her crying after the party’s done.”
Hannah bought the story like a baby getting spoon fed. After a while, though, Gabriel said his goodbyes and went on to his next class. As he trotted away, though, Hannah suddenly clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh my God, Andrea,” she exclaimed like there was something so important. “Oh my God, Andrea!”
“What?”
“It’s the guy you liked, right?” her eyes were open wide as she said it, and she didn’t in the very least minded Alec hearing all of this supposedly private conversation. “You know, the guy you talked to me about before weekend. Curly hair, bushy eyebrows, sexy as hell! That should be him!”
I stared at her blankly, not quite grasping a single word that she had been rattling. But then, something dark started to shine inside my buried memories. It was a mistake that I’d done in order to make Hannah shut up, a mistake that haunted me back.
Now, everything dawned on me.
He was the guy that I was describing to Hannah!
Ohhhh shiiiiiiitt. Shiiiiittt.
“You naughty girl! You got an eye on him before any of us got the chance!” Hannah tweaked my nose playfully, and to my horror, she let out another squeal. “I will tell Tatiana and the others about this! God knows she’s about to set her claws on his yummy abs. Oops!”
My hands weak, I tried to hold a giggling Hannah from running her ass off to Tatiana and the other girls. Oh damn. Now everyone would think that I liked Gabriel. Now everyone would think that I finally get off from my staunch man-hater position because the new meat was so irresistible. It would do a huge dent on my reputation.
“Oh is that so?” Alec’s voice was dripping with the kind of tone that was unfamiliar to me.
Now Alec would think that I indeed like Gabriel.
I couldn’t look at his eyes, but I didn’t give him any answer.
Alec was searching for me, but I kept averting my gaze off him. In a swift movement, somehow my back was on the locker and one of his hands was on the side of my head. The distance between my chest and his chest was close enough to make me able to inhale his scent.
That wasn’t a good position for me to think.
“So you do like him,” he said darkly. “Huh?”
He was still looking for any sign of affirmation, or denial. And I wasn’t sure whether to give him a yes or a no.
I was surprised as I felt his hot hand grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. “How can you kiss me like that when you like another guy, Andrea?”
“Get your hands off me,” I said.
“You answer me,” he was as obstinate as I was.
I hated the way his finger rooted burns and tingles on my jaw and cheeks. I hated how weak he’d rendered me, and especially I hated how his eyes always made me feel like I was naked around him.
“You kissed me first, motherfucker,” I reminded him.
He leant onto me, there was no smile on his lips as it inched closer and closer to mine. When he spoke, all the hairs on my skin rose like no tomorrow.
“And you kissed me back, bitch.”
I jerked my head so that he’d release his hand, and a second before followed my instinct and headbutt him, something else came to my mind.
“You have Cady,” I said to him.
“She’s no one. How many times do I have to tell you?” he cursed again. “Will you answer me already?”
I concentrated my whole energy to my mouth to form the sweetest smile I could do as I voiced out. “I might like him.”
And that was it. That was all it took to see Alec’s face fell. I felt like an absolute bitch as I saw his eyes closed and he inhaled sharply. But he didn’t back down. One trait that Alec and I shared to our grave was our obstinacy.
And that was it. That was all it took to see Alec’s face fell. I felt like an absolute bitch as I saw his eyes closed and he inhaled sharply. But he didn’t back down. One trait that Alec and I shared to our grave was our obstinacy.