CATS, CLICHÉ, CLASSIC

My breathing falters and I glare at him once again at which he simply bites his lip to fight back a laugh. That jerk!

I try to remove his hand but the touch only aggravates the situation. His hand is warm, rough and soft in the perfect mixture and I have to remove my hand instantly.

I swallow nervously and burst my knuckles in agitation. Zach’s small but sensually torturous gesture is turning me on like hell.

His palm slowly trails up, over my thigh and he plays with the lace on the end of my black A-line dress.

I clutch the lapels of my denim jacket not concerned that I’m creasing them as his fingers delicately play with the lace occasionally giving me feather touches.

I concentrate hard to keep my face composed and prevent my eyes from rolling back and closing. His fingers trail further reaching the apex of my thighs and I stand up abruptly with a shocked gasp.

My skin turns cold immediately and still shivers with the lingering touch. I dare not even imagine my face that has turned too warm presumably with all the adrenaline.

I smoothen my dress lightly and find numerous pairs of eyes looking at me incredulously.

Say something Alanna dammit.

“Uh, I’m sorry. I’ll just bring that.” Dean Brandon looks at me like suddenly I’m the fish in dress pants and so does everyone else around the table.

And I don’t blame them. Bring what?

“Bring what exactly, Miss Callister?”

“Uh, whatever it is you need. I mean, if you need anything at all. Some paperwork, or anything? I just had a, um, catch, in my leg.”

I catch a glimpse of an amused Zach while I try to sound reasonable to my own ears.

After a few minutes though, Dean Brandon speaks up and I’m relieved to get out of this situation.

“Ah, a list of the colleges and the games involved would be good, Miss Callister. You’ll find them with the librarian.”

“Right. I’ll just be a minute.” I turn instantly, so fast I almost get a whiplash and somehow my legs try to embarrass me more than I already was by winding up against the leg of my own chair making me stumble.

I save myself just in time with a simultaneous gasp of surprise all around.

“Adalanna, are you okay?” Dean Brandon speaks up while Nathaniel half stands up to help me and Zach sits unfazed looking straight ahead. Smirking, for all I know. That stupid monkey!

I mumble a small ‘I’m okay’ and scurry off to the librarian, asking her for the required papers and she takes enough time which gives me breath to relax and think.

Personal favourite of a pastime. Replay past incidents, overthink about the conclusions and berate myself for not opting the other badass options available. The ones I would have, could have, should have opted.

Zach Hayden is a total asshole. Period. Exclamation mark.

I just don’t know what gets into him suddenly. He’s bipolar. No, MULTIPOLAR. That’s it.

Minutes tick by and the librarian hands me some papers with a smile that I return.

I pat the papers into a shaped bundle and walk off towards the table when suddenly a hand slides me between one of the shelves!

My first instinct is to scream and I would have, had it not been for the hand on my mouth.

Panic arises shortly which intensifies as I recognise the chocolate brown eyes of my attacker. I glare at him hard and motion towards my mouth. He continues to stare at me hard, and after a while lowers his hand slowly.

“What the living hell do you think you’re doing Hayden?”

The first thing that my mind registers is that he’s standing close. Too close. And I’m angry at him. His grip on my wrist is still firm and tight.

“It was taking you long enough. So I just decided to check if you managed to survive. You’re welcome by the way.”

I want to amputate his lips and submit it to the biology lab as a specimen. Is he even human? First he does all that and now all this. And then he wants a thank you?! Oh, give me a break!

“I’m just gonna die of surprise on your sudden concern.” I deadpan while Zach smiles a slow soft smile.

Heart, calm down. People smile all the time. Have you seen Alanna Callister's, magical that one, I tell you.

“I thought you appreciated decency, Callister. Why the sudden change?”

Can he not talk from a distance? Proximity, that too with Zach is a default disadvantage.

“Decency from you is a dream, Hayden.”

“Dreamers often lie.” His eyes shine with an unnamed emotion and my breath falters for a moment, as I stare into him.

“Act 1, Scene 4. Zach Hayden, quoting William Shakespeare. Killed me, already?”

“Oh yes. Welcome to hell.” He whispers it slow, lazy and seductive, into my ear and my eyes close on its own accord.

He moves back in a beat, and I open them back again, lost and unbalanced.

“I would have said I’m good with my literature if not for the quotation just behind you displaying the line.” He says with a smirk and I blink.

I turn around stupidly to indeed see a copy of Romeo and Juliet on the shelf that carried the sticker of the quotation on the shelf.

One of my favourites. Cliché, but classic. I had read it numerous times, and I still love it with the same intensity.

I never considered the works of Shakespeare merely academic, and that, Lily said was proof that I was a dangerous person.

The turning around though had brought me unknowingly closer to Zach who was now breathing lightly in my hair. The hair on my neck stiffens and I go dead still. Oh my.

“Adalanna, what happened that day-“

“Is something I don’t want to talk about Zach.”

“I was angry.”

“Which is no excuse.”

“It’s no excuse.” His whispered breaths fan my hair and I glare deep into the book in front of me.

“So, why say it?”

“You wanted a justification.”

And that’s when I turn around. My brows knit up in shocked confusion.

Zach’s intense gaze holds me in place as the incident replays in my mind.

“Right. Kissing around people forcefully because you’re angry. Not many would agree but yeah why not. That’s a great justification. It’s what everyone does, I’m sure.”

“Forcefully? You kissed me back.”

“The second mistake of my life.” The first was and always will be, falling for him.

His look changes suddenly into something I can’t quite understand but I know he has had the idea of my first too.

He moves backwards, his hands still in his pockets never looking away from me. His eyes have turned a bit distant.

And though this person has been nothing less than an absolute jerk to me, I’m still the idiot to hope I didn’t hurt him.

“I was correct. You don’t deserve the justification.” I look at him incredulously. And I have had enough.

“Okay, you know what Zach? I’m just sick of you. DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND half the things you do when you’re doing them? You walk out of the auditorium, seething in anger and I being the least of a human being decide to check up on you.

You yell at me, hurt me, insult me, kiss me and then insult me again.

You don’t give any explanation for your behaviour and then you pull up the stunt on the table.

Sure. I’ve never known a person who’s been more correct.”

I let out a deep breath and move to leave when Zach holds my wrist again with an understanding look on his face.

“Listen – “

“No, I’m done listening Zach. I’m just done. And I would prefer if this is the last I see of you.” He searches my face softly and licks his lips nervously before I hear his small voice.

“You don’t mean that, Adalanna.”

“I do, Zach. You don’t get your way every time. Especially not this time.” I wriggle my hand out of his hold and he lets me.

Zach Hayden is bad news Alanna. You have to walk out of it while you still can. I was wrong to believe that our equation would change. Because we don’t have an equation to begin with. We have nothing.

*

“Oh my God, that is so amazing!”

Lily squeals excitedly for the fourth time, admiring the badge with the words ‘Chairperson, Student Council’ with the year.

We had just received them after the meeting and two periods hadn’t been enough for Lily to get over it, even though she had the Convener one herself.

“Oh, by the way, you know Steve has football try-outs the next two periods. I’m totally flunking calculus.”

“Well, I didn’t take him to be the sports type.” I reply with a small muffled smile as I scribble the next problem on my notebook.

Math is gonna kill me some day.

“Oh, he so is. Speaking of sports type, where’s your golden, blue-eyed vanilla? Haven’t seen him around.” I roll my eyes and let out a quiet groan.

“Don’t even ask. I haven’t seen him since the library meeting. He does take algebra right?”

“Shouldn’t you be knowing better?” I glare at her with a ‘really?’ look.

“Why don’t you sit and decide for once, whom you’re going to tease me for.”

“Yeah, well considering your ventures that’s not really an easy decision.”

Mr. Hoffman continues with his sums even though he must have known no one’s really paying attention.

The next minute though, a green clothed figure comes bustling in and I mentally face palm myself.

“Tardy again, Hayden. This is becoming a habit.”

“Last time, Professor.”

Zach shuffles into the seat next to mine. The one he never takes. He is always, always bloody late. To everywhere. And his every time is last time. Is he ever on time?

I hear Lily holding back a laugh. “Boy, do I love your life." I hear her whisper and glare at her murderously.

“Care to conclude our conversation?” I hear his voice as he stares straight ahead and I look down at my notebook.

“Can’t. Did that already.”

“You just left. I wanted to talk.”

“There was nothing left to talk.”

“Do you really have to be so stubborn, Alanna?”

“Yes. Because you have to be so difficult.”

“What the hell is your problem, just tell me for once.” Zach says out louder than expected.

Who am I kidding, he had bloody shouted exasperatedly at the top of his lungs and the whole class turns to look at us with a gasp.

Oh God.

I look down instantly. I suddenly want the Earth to open up and swallow me as I find my page very interesting.

“Hayden! Detention. Meet me after class. And don’t you dare raise your voice again.” Tiny little 4 ft. professor Hoffman yells loud enough for someone his age.

Oh look! The page is white. Isn’t that so interesting?

“You are getting out of hand day by day. I shouldn’t get another opportunity to correct you.”

I glide my pen across the page and a blue line appears. Ah, would you look at that, God!

Professor returns to his humdrum and I let out a deep breath. I’m super ecstatic about Zach getting detention though! Call me sadistic.

“The problem is in you. At least I don’t go around kissing people randomly.”

He sighs visibly and grips the pen so tight that his knuckles turn white. I glare at my page, imagine his face on it and bang my pen on his fudging eye with a thud!

“It wasn’t random, Adalanna.”

I pause my hand momentarily as his soft voice echoes within my system. He is good. He is too good at this.

Beside me I hear constant suppression of laughter and I silently swear to give her a piece of my mind back at home.

“You’re not supposed to stress the hand. The wound is still not completely cured.”

“And you say I’m the one who’s difficult.”

“A belief I still hold.”

“Why the sudden concern then? You’re just impossible to understand.”

“Why to understand a parasite at all?” I flinch slightly remembering his earlier words filling me with fresh hurt and anger.

I sense him turning his head to look at mine while I look straight ahead and a pause follows.

“I didn’t mean to say all of that.”

Oh how convenient. How very convenient. What does he even think of himself, or of me. That he’ll treat me as a fudging doormat and then come saying that he didn’t mean to.

I bang the pen on my page again, this time at his bloody, no good, lying-through-its-teeth clownface nose!

“But you did, Zach. Without any concern of how it would affect me. I don’t know if you noticed but I’m not one of your pimps. And that’s the exact reason I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

Zach clenches his jaw and opens his mouth to reply just when the bell goes and I stomp off before he says anything.

“Why aren’t you a cat?” I look at my side to find a laughing Lily and give her the most incredulous look.

“What?”

“Yeah, you do know cats have nine lives right? So, if you had been one I could have actually exchanged one of yours with mine.”

I close my eyes in utmost irritation.

*

Author's note:

You lose your head when you’re with something you want so bad. And it’s okay to give in sometimes, only to the point of it being healthy though.

Lily needs to crack better jokes. **eye roll**

Who else loves Romeo and Juliet, by the way?

Like, vote, comment.