Page 22 of Spring Awakening

She frowns. “Then why are you here?”

“It’s raining,” he replies, like that would make any sense to her.

“Yeah,” she groans. “Wait…” Here it is. “Did you come back here to gloat?”

She doesn’t seem mad at it if he was. She stands up straight, and her top gets caught in the scrunch of her arms. The sliver of skin that taunts him every day is showing, and his mouth goes dry. So, obviously, he doesn’t respond, and before he knows it, the toes of her boots tap against his trainers. She’s so close he has to look down at her, and she’s stupidly cute from this angle.

“Zachariah probably has a middle name Azan, did you come here to mock me?”

He smiles, not even attempting to tell her not to call him that. He doesn’t mind it so much when it comes from her mouth. It’s like that’s how it was always supposed to be said.

“I, Zachariah Asabi Azan, am innocent,” he replies, and she laughs. An actual laugh. A head titling back, he can see the long expense of her neck, laughing just for the two of them laugh. He smiles wider, and Mali gasps.

“You do smile!”

Zach turns around so she can’t see. “I smile all the time!”

“Fibber,” she replies. Her fingers rest against his back, and the urge to lean into her has forced its way to the front of his mind. Before he has the chance to tense, she spins around him, her fingers never leaving his body.

“Zach, turn around. I’m missing the one time in my life when you’re going to smile at me. I need to memorise your dimple!”

When she stops, she’s facing him again, placing herself between him and the low wall that separates the main office from the kitchen. He looks down at her again, and she’s looking at him with so much wonderment that he wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop smiling.

“You’re so cute, oh my God.”

Zach frowns. “Cute is not how I want to be described.”

“Why not? Cute is good.” He hums, but she speaks before he can say anything else. “What would you want to be called if you’re not cute?”

His mouth goes dry, and embarrassingly, he thinks about all the things she must have called him in her head. A rude loser, probably.

“Hot? Sexy? Grumpy as fuck but still annoyingly attractive?” she asks, and he wonders if she truly thinks that. But earlier she said he wasn’t grumpy, so maybe she thinks Ezra is cute. She could call him anything if she said it while looking at him like that.

“Pretty?” she continues. “Something with ‘bro’ tacked to the end?”

Zach rolls his eyes. “Did everyone leave at, like, three?” Zach knows she rambles when she hasn’t spoken to someone in twelve seconds.

Mali nods with a small pout. “How did you know?”

“Wild guess.” He smirks, and she frowns at him.

“Why are you here?”

“To take you home.”

Her arms drop to her sides. “What?”

“It’s raining.”

“So?”

“Is someone else coming to get you?”

“No, but I live just around the corner.”

“I know where you live.”

“Stalker.”

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