Something more

Olivia and Olive step out of 'piquant and peppery', leaving all four of us, alone and face to face after years.

"You scoundrel," Maria yells at Alas, as she leaps out of her seat and grabs him by his throat.

"Calm down man, what did I do?" Alas yelps, grabbing her hands.

Placing more force on her hands, she tightens her hold on him more. "Calm down? You tell me to calm down after you not only returned after so many years but didn't inform us about your arrival. You bastard didn't even tell us you have a girlfriend."

Something in me crashed, like a small glass being broken. Like the thorns on roses. Pretty insignificant. But still, it stung, a little, as if two of the thorns pricked me. Just a little.

"I-I don't—ugh" Alas chokes as Maria starts pulling him out of his chair.

"You are so dead today," she murmurs

"Lisa," Alas looks at me, making his superior puppy-eyed face, pretty deftly, knowing very well how I can't ever refuse him when he has that countenance on him.

"Okay guys, stop," I say, with a sigh.

"What's this, Lisa?" Maria says, scrunching her brows. "This isn't fair. How can he just torture us like this?"

"When he doesn't even care about people he'd promised stuff before leaving," I look at them, and make my eyes stagger on him for a little. "How can you expect them to recall other

little trivial matters?" Saying this, I go to them, holding Maria.

Looking beside where she was, I look at the brown-haired fool, who doesn't even know what a big fool he is. "Get up."

"Thank you," he smiles.

"And no, you are wrong." Alas says as we settle down again. "She," pointing at the door, "isn't my girlfriend."

As our eyes intersect, he says "yet."

'That means he is still not going out with her, but he will. Right? That's what he meant?' I think to myself.

"Luc you say something," Maria nudges him.

"What do I say?" He looks up. Up until now, I didn't quite realise when, but he was doing something on his phone.

"Hey, what are you doing on your phone now?" I ask him.

He turns and looks at me. "What do people do with their phones?"

Hearing him, I kept staring at him, before turning my head away. 'Why was he acting rude?'

"Okay so," Maria says, looking at Alas. "She is not your girlfriend?"

"Nope," Alas says. "Not yet."

"Hey, what do you mean not yet?" Maria yells.

Hearing Maria scream Lucas looks at him and asks, "You like her or not?"

"I—" Looking down, Alas shifts the place of his straw, and submerges its tip deep into the drink. "I don't know."

"How many days are you staying?" I ask.

"Days? You don't want me here for years?"

I look at him. "It's your wish, right? You come and go as you wish. Why would you have to heed someone else's desires."

"What if I do care about that someone's wishes and desires?" He says. "I mean, we all gotta care about people close to us, right? Or else how are we going to build relationships?"

"You seem interested in building relationships all of a sudden?" I say.

"I always was, just that someone was too busy to notice it."

***

"hi,"

I look beside me, and I see him leaning against the veranda railings, in a soft blue-toned t-shirt and a dark grey hoodie, perfectly fitted with his broad shoulders.

"Hi," I replied. I rub my hands, holding them on top of the balustrade, hoping to warm them up from the friction. "Here," he says, though I don't quite understand what he means, at first.

"Huh?" But before I could ask, he shifts his body to the side a bit and snuggles out of his hoodie.

Stepping behind me, he closes the distance between us and takes my hand, and snugs it into the hoodie, before taking the second hand. "Dude, you don't have to–" I say, trying to open it up.

He holds my hand and looks at me. "I am sorry, Lisa."

"For what?" I ask. He was still standing behind me, and he was close. We were a few inches apart at this moment, and I could smell the familiar musky, muscular fragrance near me. The hot breaths that he inhaled, seemed to be kissing my skin, through the small fragment of my skin which wasn't covered with my hair. In this cold weather, they were weirdly sensationalizing me, making it hard to focus.

"Did you take a shower before coming here?" I ask, absentmindedly sniffing his fragrance, while trying my very best not to move.

"Mhm," he hummed. That's when I stopped feeling his warm breaths on my neck. Instead, I started feeling warmth, on my neck and head, as a soft cap covered it.

Turning around, I see him looking at me, tucking his hands in his pants. "Why did you ask, though?" He asks, looking at me, with playfulness hidden in his eyes.

"I–I just wanted to see if you've forgotten old habits or not," I say, turning around, and looking outside. I try my best not to look nervous and show him as if this was really what I asked him for.

"It's not always easy to detach yourself from the past. A lot of important memories, days and people are involved in those old days." He says, standing beside me. "It takes all that a man has, ever had, to forget them all."

As I listen to him, an unknown source of warmth spreads somewhere deep in me, enfolding around an indefinite hole of indeterminate emptiness.

"If you ever have a girlfriend, which I believe you don't at the moment," I say, not looking at him. "Dare you not leave her, ever."

I hear him chuckling, softly. "I didn't say anything funny," I say, narrowing my eyes.

"No it's not that," he says, trying to resist laughing. "It's adorable."

"What?" I ask, scowling almost.

"You are thinking about my girlfriend. It's adorable." Alas, smiles.

"Oh, is it?" I say, turning my head "Huh, nice. I say serious stuff and you find that 'serious' thing 'adorable'!"

"Yes ma'am," he says. "It's adorable because it's coming from YOU, and it's directed to my future girlfriend." For some unknown reason, he emphasized the word 'future', and 'you' when he addressed me.