Before The Confession
Hey, I’m back from home. Let’s hang out.
He said it casually. Too casually for someone who had disappeared for two weeks and somehow still expected me to show up the second he asked.
Still, I replied instantly.
Yes. Be there in 10.
And like an idiot, I smiled at my phone.
Excited to see his dark, perfectly messy hair, his annoyingly expressive eyes, and the prettiest smile ever created, I practically ran out of the house.
Theo Hart.
My ambivalent for the last eight years.
I hated him more than I hated capsicum, and that was saying something. I was also completely sure he hated me too.
Ironically, I hated being away from him even more.
For eight years, he had irritated me endlessly. For eight years, he had also stayed.
Even on days when I yelled at him to leave me alone. Even on days when I made it difficult to care about me.
My phone buzzed again.
Cough Syrup
Come fast. Why do you always waste my time?
I rolled my eyes instantly.
Typical Theo. Calls me at the last moment but expects me to teleport to him.
Yes, coming.
By the time I reached his apartment building, rain had already started pouring heavily.
“Theo!” I yelled while banging on the door. “Open the door, it’s raining outside!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he shouted from inside. “And don’t get wet this time. I don’t have many tissues left.”
I glared the second he opened the door.
“Shut up.”
He smirked, stepping aside to let me in.
“So,” I said, taking off my damp jacket, “why exactly did you call me? We literally never hang out.”
“Obviously, Clara Brooks.”
There it was.
My full name.
He used it whenever he wanted to annoy me because apparently my name sounded like I should be organizing ancient books in a haunted library somewhere.
“Don’t say my full name like that,” I complained.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re introducing a nineteenth-century novelist.”
He looked down at me with that irritatingly calm expression.
“Well,” he shrugged, “you do dress like you write letters with ink pens and cry near windows dramatically.”
“I do not cry near windows.”
“Right,” he nodded seriously. “Only near tissues.”
I threw the nearest cushion at him immediately.
He caught it easily, laughing under his breath.
And there it was again.
That stupid feeling.
The one that made my chest warm despite every logical reason not to like him.
Theo noticed me staring for half a second too long.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Creepy.”
“Your face is creepy, Cough Syrup.”
“Still came to see it in ten minutes though, Wet Tissue.”