Page 80 of Toxic Wishes
“Hey, hey..” He reaches for my hand, and I slowly lock eyes with him. He quickly pulls his hand away. I need to cut myself off after this drink. I keep imagining all these sparks we are having, and it will only make me look dumb when I snap to my senses.
He clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “It’s obviously something. You can tell to me. We are kinda-roommates now.”
His lip curls at one end, and a little dimple forms, and I swear, time stops. Those damn succulent lips, the way his thick eyebrows hover over his eyes like…like he’s claiming me in one look, and I can’t help but savor it.
I play off these stupid butterflies that swarm my stomach when he’s around and pull my glass close to me, taking a sip.
“Nothing, it’s nothing. I hate taking pictures.”
“Oh, here we go. Do I need to pull out your camera and show you that that’s false?”
“No, definitely not,” I say quickly.
“Oh c’mon, you know you're proud of that, how can you not be?” He motions up and down with one hand.
Of course, he’s talking about my body, which I wasn’t mad about, but when it’s the one thing that drives your demons to keep moving this train bus, it tires out the wheels quickly.
“Ya, my body, sure, but it’s a whole other ball game when that’s all you have. All you hold on to make you feel pretty or hot.” I say with quotation marks.
He scrunches his face in confusion.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I murmur.
“Uh, ya, I don’t think anyone would because you're crazy.”
“Am I?’ I hold my gaze with his.
“Yes, and why are you trying to do this mind fucking thing. Is this part of being a zodiac freak?”
I can’t help but laugh, and before I see it coming, he snaps a photo of me.
“Hey!” I immediately reached for his phone. “You better delete that.”
“Never.” He taunts, pulling his phone to his chest.
I get up from my seat and try to snatch his phone from his grip. But he quickly holds his phone up way above his head. I'm touching his broad shoulders, trying to get to it, hoping he doesn’t notice how hard I grip them with my hand.
“Why don’t you just start telling yourself you are the most beautiful girl and you love yourself, like your cousin does.”
I freeze and stare at him in dismay. He didn’t say cousins, he said cousin, so I know who he referring to, Naomi.
“Just because I’m a jock doesn’t mean I don’t notice things or I can’t read people, even without knowing their zodiac sign.” He quirks his lip to the side as he looks down at me
“No, I’m just in shock you even said-.”
“It’s no mystery, I’m sure. She posts a million pictures on Facebook. Half the time, I had no idea she was posting them while we dated since I never get on social media like that, but when I did, I noticed she posted a bunch even when we weren't together. She just wanted to make us look like we were, so she kept posting pictures from months ago. Pissed me off.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because it’s not my Facebook. And people believe what they want to see anyway. I don’t have time to waste my energy on that stuff.”
“Ya, true.” I stopped trying to grab his phone and looked down at his watered-down drink. “I’ll just be ready to leave whenever Josh is. I’m hoping h-”
“About that,” Colt says, interrupting me.
“He isn’t leaving anytime soon, so he told me to bring you home again since we are going to the same place.”
“He did?”