chapter 6 :the kiss we almost shared
661 Words
There are moments that don’t feel like moments when they happen.
They feel small. Harmless. A shared seat. A late text.
A breath too long. A heartbeat too loud.
But looking back — they’re everything.
---
It started after school, the week of the Inter-House Sports event.
The sky was bleeding orange, and the field was almost empty, except for a few lingering students and a whistle-blowing P.E. teacher too tired to care.
Elisa sat on the bleachers, tying her shoelaces.
Alex walked over, hair messy, shirt untucked, his water bottle dripping down one arm. He had just finished a race, but he wasn’t panting. Just... watching her.
She didn’t look up.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked, tightening the knot on her sneakers.
“You have mud on your cheek.”
She wiped it off quickly, face flushing. “Don’t you have friends to go brag to or something?”
He sat beside her. “They’re boring.”
She rolled her eyes. “And I’m what? Chaos?”
He smirked. “Beautiful chaos.”
Elisa turned to him then — really turned.
He’d never called her that before.
Not beautiful. Not anything close.
Her heart stuttered. He noticed. Of course he did. His gaze lingered on her lips just a moment too long.
“I wasn’t flirting,” he said. Quietly.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I just meant…” He scratched the back of his neck. “You’re different now.”
“So are you.”
---
They didn’t speak for a while after that.
They just sat there, letting the silence stretch between them like a tightrope neither wanted to fall from.
Then he said, “I think about you a lot.”
She turned again, sharply this time. “Alex…”
He didn’t look at her. He just kept staring straight ahead, as if saying it out loud was already killing him.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” he said. “With this… thing. You. Us. I keep pretending we’re still enemies. I keep calling you names, making jokes, but—”
His voice cracked. “It’s not funny anymore. None of it is.”
Elisa felt something twist deep in her chest. Something sharp. Something that tasted like fear and hope at once.
She reached out, slowly, and touched his hand. He looked down at it like it was a holy thing.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
---
That was the moment it could’ve happened.
The kiss.
The beginning.
The one memory they might’ve looked back on years later and said — that was the night we stopped pretending.
But then—
“Elisa!”
A voice rang across the field. Sharp. Female. Angry.
Her aunt. Standing at the school gate with arms crossed, looking like she had seen a ghost.
Elisa jumped back. Let go of his hand. Her eyes widened in panic.
“I have to go,” she said, standing too quickly.
“Elisa—”
She shook her head. “Please. Don’t say anything else.”
And just like that, she was gone.
---
That night, she lay awake in bed, Alex’s voice echoing inside her like thunder in a locked room.
“It’s not funny anymore.”
“I think about you a lot.”
“So am I.”
She stared at the ceiling. Heart beating so loud it hurt.
What scared her wasn’t how much she felt for him.
It was how much she already knew —
If she let him in,
there would be no way back.
---
Alex, meanwhile, sat by his window, sketchbook in hand, drawing the moment she touched him.
Not the kiss they almost shared.
Not the confession he couldn’t finish.
Just her fingers on his.
It was the only part he wanted to remember.
Because he knew…
Moments like that don’t come twice.
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