Page 44 of Avenged

She was going to go hide in my room again. It was what she had done every night since she’d been living in my house. It was what she had done almost every day since we’d lived together, first at Mandy and Leena’s, and now here. I didn’t want her to hide anymore. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her. The good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly. I needed to know like I hadn’t needed anything in a very long time, and I didn’t know why I felt that way. I just did.

When she flipped back around after I called her out on it, there was a fire in her eyes that wasn’t always there. A lot of the time, she looked like she was just skating invisibly through life so no one would notice her, and to do that, you had to be emotionless. You couldn’t be full of laughter or anger and still be invisible. But I wasn’t sorry I’d made the fire show up, because, cliché as it was, it lit her up from the inside out.

“Going to the room isn’t running,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t believe it herself.

“Is it me?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do I scare you?”

She scoffed and looked away, her fingers immediately twisting her ring, and I knew I was onto something.

“I do,” I said and hoped I scared her because of her body’s reaction to me rather than scared her because she didn’t think she could trust me after everything we’d already been through together.

“Hardly,” she responded.

“Then stay and watch a movie with me. I’ll even let you pick.” I threw it out as a challenge, hoping like hell she’d say yes, but fully expecting a scathing remark and a retreat.

She looked at the TV, and then to the couch, and then to the hallway, all the scenarios flowing through her brain, and I wondered if one of the scenarios was she and I tangled together on the couch where I’d been sleeping since she moved into my room with her sister.

She blew out an exasperated breath, unwilling to back down and have my point be made. She was independent and stubborn and beautiful. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“I think that’s what I just said.” She rubbed her forehead as if she couldn’t believe she’d agreed.

“Okay, you look through the collection while I change out of my uniform,” I said, opening the door of the cabinet which held all the DVDs I’d taken from my grandparents’ place. Then, I walked past her, our shoulders touching, my awareness of her scent and her body increasing a hundredfold as our bodies brushed each other.

I hurried into my room, pulling my uniform shirt off as I went, throwing it into the hamper by the dresser without thought, and then pulling on a T-shirt. I stripped down the rest of my body, pulling on a pair of workout shorts I was using as if they were pajamas these days. I was still unused to sleeping in anything but my underwear, but I was terrified Violet would walk out and find me showing off all of my body parts while I slept.

When I got back, Jersey was tucked up in one corner of the couch, feet curled up underneath her. I sat down, but I didn’t resort to the corner like I should have. Instead, I sat close enough for the air between us to be charged. I was playing a dangerous game. We both knew it, because she glanced at me, the limited space between us, and then away again.

“What did you choose?” I asked, picking up the remotes and turning on the theater quality sound system as well as the TV.

The screen came up, and I inwardly groaned. It was the original Hellboy. While it wasn’t a horror movie, it was certainly up there with the movies I didn’t watch. The only reason it was in the cabinet was because of Dawson’s love for it.

“Did you just whimper?” Jersey asked, and I couldn’t help a small smile. “This isn’t a horror movie,” she added on.

“Might as well be with a name like Hellboy,” I responded.

“They did a halfway decent job with it compared to the comics.”

“Don’t agree.”

“Have you even read the comics?”

“I’ve read a couple of them.”

She literally huffed, and it was adorable. “Then don’t bash it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But her reaction made me want to bash it more just so I could continue to see the Jersey who became visible to the world. The one who was passionate about the things that mattered to her. “Please, the way they displayed Liz,” I said.

That did it. She sat up and started expanding on every nuance of the comic and the movie. The things they got right, the things they didn’t, and I just watched as her arms went every which way to emphasize her point. God, she was gorgeous like this.

She stopped mid-sentence, a blush falling over her white cheeks. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Finish what you were saying,” I said.

---