Hide Me In Your Thoughts

Chapter 8- Keyword: Almost

Song- Anchor by Novo Amor

…/…

Ian has strangely compelling blue eyes and his hair looks as soft and shiny as silk. I was right about his build. He’s muscular but not completely buff, so he looks like he’s about to pop. His jaw is well defined and he has freckles that spread over the bridge of his nose and a little to his left cheek, but it’s not so much.

It isn’t until Joyce shakes my entire frame that I am brought back from my reverie. “Lily,” she drags out. I shook my head slowly only to see his hand still stretched forward, hoping to meet someone else’s. “Hi, you’re fine…I mean, you’re Ian,” I quickly added to save myself from further embarrassment.

“Oh yeah, and you’re Lily,” he says to reply to me. I smile in embarrassment and say yes. “Cool,” he replies. I could feel the heat all over my face, but especially in my cheeks. I looked in Mace’s direction to see him staring at me with an expression I couldn’t yet decipher.

“So what do you guys do for fun around here?” Ian asks. “Well, this place is pretty boring, there’s only so much you can do. There’s the beach, and the cinema, even though both Mace and Lily have one in their houses, a basketball court down the road, and a pitch for football. The best part, however, is getting to beat a lot of guys at school at video games. You do play video games, right?”.

Carl continued to indulge Ian when I leaned over and whispered in Mace’s ear, “He’s beautiful”. “So that’s why you completely fooled yourself,” he replied. I sucked in air and said, “I did not,” subtly throwing in a fake British accent. “You did too,” Mace replied casually.

Then he proceeds to add that my mouth was open and there might have been saliva dripping from the corners of my mouth. “You embarrassed both of us there Lily”. At that point, I was clutching my stomach and laughing out loud because his facial expression was terrible.

I playfully smack his face and say, “You suck”. “Are those two going out?” I hear from across the circle. I turn my head so fast to see Ian pointing at Mace and me. “Nope,” Joyce replies. “But they might as well be,” Collin adds. I stretch to smack him on his shoulder and then lean in to whisper, “ He has a girlfriend, remember?”. “Yeah, of course, that,” he replies.

“I was just saying the truth though,” he mutters as he rubs the spot I hit him on. I turned to Ian and said, “Joyce mentioned that you have a sister. Where is she?”

“Joyce talked about me? Wow! Uhm, she went out with her friends to the mall”. “She has friends already?” I asked. “Yeah, from school,” he replied. I looked between Ian and Joyce and no one could miss what was going on between the two, something had definitely happened or was happening, and it was looking like Chemistry.

Harry stood up from where he was seated and took a seat beside me. I wondered why for a few seconds but then he says in my ear, “Does Joyce like Ian?”. I looked at him to see what particular look was on his face. I needed to know if he was just being nosy or if he was concerned, because if he was concerned, then that’d be a game-changer.

“You’ve been quiet for a while, you know something, tell me”. I sighed because he was just being nosy and there was nothing special to that. Collin and Harry have always been suckers for drama in the most subtle manner ever known to man. Some days, they’re not so subtle.

“I actually have no idea,” that statement sounded wrong as it came out of my mouth, mostly because Joyce and I always tell each other everything. I started to think of reasons she would hold back from me and the first one I could come up with was because I did not disclose the identity of my crush.

Looking at Joyce and Ian sitting side by side, I could almost bet my entire future fortune that something had happened. “Joyce, could we talk?, like in private,” I asked her, using my head to point in the direction in which we’d go. “Sure,” she says, as she stands up.

We walked for a while. I watch as the waves hit the ocean shore and she does too, then when I stop, she stops. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” I ask. “What’s going on where?”. “Don’t do this Joyce,” I whine, then she asks, “Do what?”. I avert my gaze at her face and say, “It’s not funny anymore”. “What’s not funny anymore?”

I stopped talking and whining because of what she said to stare at her with no emotion on my face. Both of us don't say anything for close to two minutes, then she budges. “Fine, Nothing really happened. Honestly, I didn’t want to tell you because it sounded too ridiculous to me”.

“I won’t judge,” I told her, as I squeezed her left shoulder with my right hand for reassurance. She sighs and says, “We almost kissed”. My eyes open wide, it takes every fiber in my body for me not to scream out loud and run around. “Keyword, Almost,” she says, when she noticed that I hadn’t calmed down.

“You were going to keep this from me? Joyce, this is huge. This is the kind of content that our relationship feeds on. You have to promise to always tell me stuff like that. I mean, what are best friends for?”

“Fine, I promise. Now, will you calm down so I can tell you the whole thing? Feels good to be able to say it out loud”. “I’m all ears”.

“So, it happened last week on Wednesday. He’s supposed to transfer to our school but he hasn’t been able to yet because he has issues with his previous school, something about them not wanting him to resume at Kinston. He came to my house on Monday, wanting me to lend him a bread knife. We ended up talking and I realized that I had judged him quickly. I mean, I still couldn’t stand him, but it wasn’t as bad.

He came on Tuesday too, but on Wednesday when he came, he looked gloomy, so I had to ask what was wrong out of courtesy, not that I cared so much about it. He talked about how he had to break up with his girlfriend because of the distance and how he never wanted to move from his previous school and perfect life.

He was really sad about ending things with her, but the worst part was when he said that she got over him in a day and now, she’s dating his best friend”.

“She didn’t?” I said after gasping. “Oh! She did alright. Anyway, explaining the whole situation made him sadder and he looked like he was going to tear up right in front of me. Seeing him cry was definitely going to make me cry, so I moved over to where he was seated on the couch and hugged him.

We hugged for five minutes. His head was resting on my shoulder. It wasn’t too discomforting, but yeah, it was. So, I broke away, but then, there wasn’t so much space between our faces. The atmosphere for kissing had been set. There was no escaping Lily, no escaping! Definitely, he leaned forward, and honestly, I found myself leaning in too.

When his face was mere inches away from mine, I leaned back, shouted “I’m coming!” and ran to my room”. “You did not!” I exclaimed, with both my hands covering my mouth this time. “I so did! It was mortifying. I should’ve just told him that it wouldn’t have been the best option at that time, or I could’ve said no or something, not pretending to hear my name, and he knew pretty well that we were the only two people in the house”.

We both sat in silence, watching the waves hit the shore. “But you guys seem fine now,” I said, wondering what had happened since then. “Well, that surprisingly didn’t stop him from coming over, but we haven’t talked about it since”.

“Are we going to tell the guys about this?” I asked. “Nope, I’d never hear the last of it. They’d tease me to death”. “But you know you’re gonna have to talk to him about it, right?”. “I know. Not just now,” she replied.

“I agree”. We both jump out of our skins when we hear the unexpected voice from behind us.