Secret obsession

CHAPTER 3

Oh my God! What is he doing here? I thought he was going to call me. I never thought that he would come to my house at this time of the night. I didn’t know what to do or how to react to that, and my emotions were not helping at all.

My phone starts to ring again, and I put it on silent and wait a few minutes to put myself in order before I answer.

“He- hello” I answered nervously.

“You are the cutest!” Henry says, trying to hold a laugh “I just wanted to see you one more time, did I surprise you that much?”

I look through the window and I see him there standing next to the small trees that are on the yard to mark a division between the neighbor’s land. Seconds later he is coming close to my balcony. “I never thought that you would be coming to my house, you surprised me”, I say finally relaxing and coming out without making any noise and standing on the balcony.

“There you are baby!” he exclaims, looking up at me and showing me his pretty smile while saying “how have you been doing?” he adds without preoccupation that my parents could be listening to us.

“Good… by the way, are you crazy? How can you come at this time of the night? If my parents listen to us, I will be dead!” I murmur to him, so he can understand the situation that I’m in because of him.

“Ok, ok” he says looking at my house like he is searching for something, then he looks up at me again and articulates, without talking, something that I totally understand, “I’m coming up” and hangs up.

“What?!” I shout covering my mouth with my hand and looking behind me to make sure that my parents were not waking up. I got closer to the railing to look at Henry who is now climbing up using the living room window to support himself. “What are you doing? What if someone sees you?” I murmur to him, still holding my cellphone, forgetting that he had already hung up.

I step back while I hear Henry sobbing to finally step inside my balcony. I look at him clapping his hands together as a way to keep them clean. While he does that, I just stand there without words, nervous, trying to understand this weird guy, this handsome weird guy that is now in front of me. I raise my head to look at his face, he raises both eyebrows, tilting his head a little with his half smile. I blush instantly and look down nervous.

“The call was over minutes ago, Erin” he says, getting my phone out of my hand, making me look at him, raising my head holding my chin with his index finger. We stare at each other for a moment until he starts to get close to me slowly, so slow that it makes me close my eyes for some reason. I can hear his breathing close to my face and I can smell his perfume so delicious that my heart starts pounding.

I feel him closer. That makes me anxious when I hear him say in my ear very softly “you can breathe now.”

I open my eyes frenetically, and I exhale surprised because I did not know I was holding my breath. I look at him feeling embarrassed, blushing because of my reaction. He just chuckles and pets me on the head, moving away from me and sitting on the floor of the balcony still holding my phone in his hand.

“Come sit with me precious” he says, clapping on the space on the floor next to him, “let’s check what kind of music you have in this thing”. He unlocks my phone and the first thing that appears is the message folder. I run to his side to try to take my phone out of his hands.

“Wait!” I say too late when he moves his hand away so I cannot reach it. Now I’m too close to him, almost hugging him, trying to get my phone out of his left hand, which is too far from mine. He looks at me surprised, raising one of his eyebrows with an amused smile.

“Weird Guy?” he asks with a playful expression that melts my heart.

I feel embarrassed now that he knows what I call him. I sit where he told me to quietly, looking down at the yard, feeling my face so red that I thank my cousin now for breaking the light.

“I think you just hurt my feelings baby” he says, touching his chest, acting like if his heart was broken, “but don’t worry, this is something I can fix”. He grabs my phone with both hands and starts to save his number with a new name. “Here you go!” he gives me my cellphone back, letting me see what changes he made.

I look down to see what he did, and I read that instead of ‘Weird Guy’ his new name is ‘The Most Handsome’. I chuckle and turn my face to look at him, he is giving me a big smile, and for a brief moment I take the time to see that, indeed, he is the most handsome. He is a brunet guy with not-too-short, not too-long wavy hair, his eyes are very expressive dark brown ones with pretty eyelashes, his nose is fine and someway pointy. His lips (I like to see his lips), they are thick enough to make me blush thinking about them.

“I will keep your name like that if it is so important to you” I lie, because I know I want to call him that for now on.

“Well, thank you baby! For being so considerate of me”, he fakes his voice, making me laugh a little “you have a pretty laugh, did you know that?” he asks, looking at me so concentrated on my mouth.

I blush again, recovering fast when I remember that Jake told me the same thing long time ago. “Yes”, I say excitedly, “my friend Jake told me that when we started to be friends”, my happy voice makes him look away from me.

“Your friend Jake… I saw that he sends you a lot of texts”. He stops to think something "he does have a girlfriend, right?” He looks at me waiting for my answer with so much curiosity in his eyes.

“Yes, my friend Kim, they are both my best friends, and they have been together for two years now. Actually tomorrow will be their anniversary. I’m so happy for them”, I say smiling.

We both stayed quiet for a moment, me thinking about my friends that I forgot that Henry was staring at me.

“Ok! Enough about the friends” he says, taking me out of my thoughts "I will play some rock for you from my cellphone, and you will thank me later for changing your life!” He takes his phone out of his pocket and when he unlocks it I manage to snatch it out of his hand.

“Ha!” I shout “you changed your name on my cellphone, now I will do the same thing in yours”. I move far from him to start looking at his contact list smiling, I scroll down so many girls' names that my smile starts to fade away. I never found my name “my name is not in it”. I say upset, staring at him now with the big question mark on my face again. If he wasn’t going to add my number, why did he ask for it in the first place?

“Are you sure you looked for the right name?” he starts to get close to me, taking his phone out of my hands and typing in the search bar at a short distance from my face so I could see ‘Beautiful Erin’. Then he press call and after seconds my phone was buzzing, showing in the screen a coming call from ‘The Most Handsome’.

I feel bad for doubting him, but I feel worse, noting that my heart was a little bit hurt when I didn’t find my name at first. I think I really like him and knowing that he saved my name as ‘Beautiful Erin’ makes me fly out of happiness, and then I go down to earth realizing that I’m smiling like a fool while he is looking at me.

“Does that really make you feel happy?” he asks while moving a lock of hair out of my face and placing it behind my ear. He stays a moment rubbing my earlobe and I can sense how he is looking at my face, like studying it. I’m so nervous that I don’t know what to say. “You are really beautiful” he murmurs with a calm voice.

That’s enough! My heart is beating harder than I can control, my hands are sweating and even when it's dark I’m pretty sure he can notice how blushed I am. I need to do something that helps me change this situation. I don’t know what to do, this is completely new to me... I get it! Maybe if I ask him to go with me to the school festival tomorrow, this awkward situation might be over.

I look at him, ready to ask “Hey do you wan…”

“I will start playing something soft alright?” he starts talking, interrupting me, like if nothing happened, I’m really bad at this kinds of things, so I decide to play along with him and listen to the music he likes. “This is a excellent song, not so heavy for beginners like you” he winks at me playing the song in a low volume that mix well with us sitting on the balcony at night, breathing the spring breeze. Once the song is over, I dare to ask the name of the song “is called ‘Nothing else matters’ of ‘Metallica’ do you like it?”

“I do actually, it was nice” I say nodding a little bit.

“Good baby because this is only the beginning” he says, laying on the floor searching for another song to play. I follow him and rest next to him. I turn my face a little bit to look at what he is doing. I am very close, and I take the time to breathe and enjoy his delicious aroma.

We spent a lot of time listening to rock music both on the floor with our heads touching, me asking a lot of questions, and he's laughing at each one of them answering in a humorous way. We also spend time talking about school, about what we like to eat, and movies. I am getting to know him better. He likes to play basketball, most of his friends go to another school, he is an only child and has three dogs: Chief, Rusty, and Mickey. He also likes Disney movies, but I promised him I will not talk about that with anybody.

I am having a perfect time with him, we have a lot of things in common, except for the music, which by the way, is not that bad. The lyrics are good, the music is good. I think I like it, as well as I like him, the more I know him, the more I want to be by his side.

We keep talking and laughing when the music stops a little bit because he got a text. He pauses the music to open the message and I get to read what it says.

‘Honey are you not coming home? – Mom’

‘I’ll be there soon Mom’ he answers back. How sweet, he is a momma’s boy. He doesn’t play music again, but instead he sits turning to look at me, waiting for me to sit too.

“I guess I have to leave now precious”, he gives me his half smile and I notice a hint of sadness “plus, it's really late, you should go to sleep… I don’t understand why you made me come to your house just because you wanted to see me” he sighs playfully with his big smile.

“I did make you come?” I say in surprise and laughing too. “You are the one that decided to be a stalker” I reply while both stand up, getting in front of each other.

“A stalker uh?” he caresses my chin with his thumb “I like that!” he laughs, and I cannot help but laugh with him too. “. But don’t forget baby,”. He set his seductive eyes on mine “I am ‘the most handsome”. He gets closer to me and gives me a soft peak on the cheek. I froze surprised, and I blush instantly, he has that effect on me now.

When he is back in front of me, he gives me the warmest smile. There is no doubt now, I like him a lot, I don’t want him to go.

“Are you sure you have to go now” I ask without realizing what time it is.

“Don’t worry babe” he sobs while climbing the railing of the balcony. “I will call you tomorrow”

I get close to him, hopping for him to steal one kiss from me. I guess I have that desire written all in my face because he looks at me tilting his head a little bit with his playful smile, a reaction that I adore now, then he just naughtily says to me.

“Sweet dreams Erin” and starts to climb down. I look down to see him heading down the street waving a goodbye without looking back.

I feel so happy that I don’t think I will be able to sleep; I know Kim is asleep so I can’t call her to let her know what just happened. I look at the clock on my nightstand, 12:45. It is late, I just curl up in bed and start to think that maybe he likes me too. I start to imagine cheesy situations so happy while I fall asleep.