Chapter Five:

"Maddy, Maddy, Maddy!" I hear a voice yell repeating my name. I wake up and see Gabriel over me.

"Jesus, fuck... she is okay Angelica!" He calls out. Everything is a little blurry... I remember falling then a figure... Gabriel. He saved me, once again.

"How do you always end up getting yourself in these tricky situations?" He whispers to me,

"I'm glad your okay." He adds.

I cough up the water that was stuck in my lungs. Gabriel helps me up and hands me his dry T-shirt,

"Put it on." He instructs.

I put it over my wet swimsuit, and it covers a little below my bikini bottom. Angelica races to give me a hug.

"I'm so sorry." She says.

I stare at Gabriel and in a blink of an eye I see him throwing a punch at Jason. People started crowding around him as he beat the shit out the fucking asshole and part of me wanted to stop him but the part I listened to wanted to watch that guy beg Gabriel for mercy.

Jason got one or two punches in and hit Gabriel in the face and at that point someone finally broke them up.

"You better stay the fuck away from her!" He yells.

Why is he getting so worked up? Gabriel never cared about me once before, we haven't even gotten along the past six days we have known each other so why is he defending me? I walk over to Jason who was crawling to safety on the ground and I step on him that makes him groan in pain. I thought about saying something but I didn't because he really isn't worth it but also I think Gabriel got the point across.

I turn to find Gabriel that is sitting down... he has a busted lip and his knuckles are a little red... I should help him. It's the least I can do since he got in a fight because of me. I walk over and sit beside him.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?" He laughs.

"Can I help you clean that up?"

"There's no way to help me, we're at a beach."

God does he have to be such a smart ass?

"Just let me do something." I tell him.

"Fine, I live right down the street. Walking distance."

"I have to tell Angelica I'm leaving." I tell him and he nods.

I go look for her and finally find her taking shots.

"Angelica, I'm leaving with Gabriel." I tell her and she says, "Okay, but warn him if he touches you I will kill him." She is obviously drunk.

"Okay, I'll text you."

In the span of a week, I hung from a bridge and almost drowned... what a great start in a new town.

I see Gabriel waiting for me at the exact spot he was at before and I walk to him. He seemed to grab my stuff for me since it was sitting right next to him and I put on my shorts before leaving.

He wasn't lying when he said his house was walking distance. It wasn't far at all. His house looks surprisingly similar to mine but a little smaller.

"No one is home." He tells me and I nod.

He takes me to a washroom, and I grab a cloth and wet it. I can feel his eyes on me the whole time but I say nothing. "Your going to have to sit down, I cant reach your face." I laugh awkwardly at him.

"Oh yeah I forgot your short." He sits down on the toilet seat, "I'm not short, you're just weirdly tall."

I'm actually average height.

"Yeah, okay." I shush him and place the wet cloth on his lip, "Try rinsing with salt water after." I tell him.

"How do you know how to do this?"

I don't answer him.

"Are you secretly a nurse or something?" He laughs,

"Why did you stand up for me anyways, I thought you hated me?" I ask changing the subject,

"I don't hate you, Maddie. I just hate that your weirdly fun to talk to... and that you have an attitude problem."  I laugh a little at his response,

  "I have an attitude problem?"

"But why did you care so much about my well being?"

He shrugs. "I don't know, what about you? Why did you want to help me so bad? Why do you care?"

"I don't know... I just have a feeling not many people do." We both go silent for a moment, not knowing what to say to each other. I continue to clean his lip and apply pressure to stop the bleeding,

"Thank you for saving me... both times." I say,

"Don't thank me... I'll always be here to save you, even if you don't want me to."

"And I'll always be here to help you when you get in a fight." I smile.

"Anyways, I'm all done."  I look away from him and leave the cloth hanging on the faucet to dry,

"Why cant you swim?" He asks me,

"I use to be able to, I almost drowned as a kid and I haven't swam in the ocean or any deep bodies of water in years. Hot tubs and shallow pool's I don't mind but anything deep I cant do." I explain.

"You can't be afraid of that shit for the rest of your life, because what if one day something similar happens and you do what you did out there, absolutely nothing." He tells me.

"You don't know shit about what I fucking did out there, I tried to pull myself up even though I was afraid I tried!" I say defending myself,

"Look I don't know what the fuck is your problem but you don't have to be so defensive all the time, I told you the truth and you don't want to hear it."

God, I don't know how someone could be so nice then mean then annoying in the span of five minutes. I'm actually convinced he actually  has mood swings.

"Can we talk about something else and maybe not in a tiny washroom?"

He get's up and walks closer to me, trapping me in between him and the door. He looks me up and down,

"You don't want to be close to me?" I feel my heart beating fast... what is happening to me?

"I... uh don't... I mean I don't want to." I find myself scrambling for words and he laughs biting his lip.

"Nervous doesn't suit you."

He moves out of the way and I let out a deep breath.

"You're annoying." I tell him.

He opens the door for me and I walk out first.

"Do you want to hang out for a bit or something? I don't really have a lot of food in the house but I'm sure I can find something." He asks totally ignoring what he just did to me. "Yeah, I can stay for a bit. I'm not really hungry though." I tell him.

He brings me upstairs to the top floor that was all his bedroom. It looks like they turned the attic into a room. It was nice, what I would expect his room to look like actually. The colour pallet was mostly white and dark grey, but what caught my eye was the drum set in the corner of the room. I walk over to it and take a seat, grabbing the drumsticks. Starting to bang on the metal plates.

"Can you be careful with those?" He practically begs, I smile at him and put down the drumsticks.

"Your room is nice." I say scanning the room.

I wouldn't expect him to have such a clean room, he seems like the untidy type. He looks like he is enjoying watching me look around, observing everything. "Where are your parents?" I dare to ask.

"Out."

Well, that was so much information.

"I guess we both don't like talking a lot about ourselves." I laugh but he doesn't find it funny at all... I thought it was fucking hilarious. He is so dry.

We have been sitting her for a little more than an hour and its awkward as fuck. We have been both quiet as shit and all he is doing is reading his stupid book and staring at me occasion-ally like a stalker.

"What are you reading?" I ask him.

"The shining."

God, he likes scary books? What a weirdo. All books suck but those are the worse type of books. Is this what he does when he has guest in his house? Shuts himself out? He asked ME to come here and stay for a bit and he is barely talking to me. He says one word every ten minutes.

"What else do you read?" I ask.

"Shakespeare." The One to two word answers are really starting to pick me off. God he is antisocial.

That night I finally found a way to escape his house. I made up some dumb excuse that my parent's are calling me. I don't think I've had a more awkward encounter with someone in my life that is weird because at first it wasn't awkward at all, we were actually getting along... well before we got into a "argument" but I think things got awkward after that whole bathroom situation, I'm not even one hundred percent sure what happened in there, all I know it's not something I want to reenact or in fact remember. Now as it is Sunday, my run with Leandro is finally here. I did end up calling him out through text last night and asked why he didn't tell me about his family but I tried to be as delicate about it as possible. He explained simply that he didn't want that to define him and that was the end of it, no hard feelings.

"I'm leaving now!" I announce even though my family are all sleeping, even though its like one in the afternoon. When I get out of my house, I am shocked to see Leandro sitting on my porch. "Good afternoon ." He cheerfully says once he realizes I'm there. I wave to him and decide to him him a hug,

"You ready?" I ask and he nods.

We jog and talk, I told him what happened yesterday and he tried to be as positive about it as much he could... it actually made me feel better but I left Gabriel out of the whole story. I don't know why really, I just don't really want to mention him to Leandro. Is that bad? I know he saved my life... twice but I just don't really want to mention him. I don't know, it's stupid but it's too late to tell him now. We run all across town until we end up back at my house and at that point I'm exhausted. I like running but I usually don't go very far.

"We should do this again sometime." I tell him,

"Yeah we should... have a good rest of your day."

"Thanks, you too."

See, I wish talking to Gabriel was as easy as talking to Leandro. It's not awkward at all with Leandro but with him it's so complicated and I feel like were complete strangers... and I know we don't know much about each other but we're not strangers. At least I wouldn't call us that. A stranger is someone you don't know at all and I know Gabriel and some things about him. He is very closed off, worse than me. It seems like he is afraid to open up and be nice to people and I'm like that too but not afraid more just don't want to show weakness but him, I see the fear in his eyes... he is scared to admit he cares about people, I can imagine how difficult it was for him to admit he was glad I was okay. I don't even know why I'm thinking about him, I had a great afternoon with Leandro and I'm letting him take over my mind. I doubt he ever thinks about me the way I for some reason think about him. I doubt he is trying to figure me out like I'm trying to figure him out. I wish it wasn't so damn hard to do so, and I also don't know why I want to. The only actually thing I know about him that isn't anything to do with his personality is that he likes to voluntarily read, oh and he plays the drums. I really do wish I knew more, that could help me reach my goal of figuring him out but it seems like he doesn't want to be figured out. He wants to stay a mystery in everyone minds. I wonder if there is even one person who really knows him. God, can he just get out of my mind?! Why am I doing this to myself? I should just think about people that I can figure out. Like Leandro or Angelica. I can figure them out just fine. Why am I so drawn to the only mystery is this town?