Page 29 of Clichés & Curses

Sitting down in one of the chairs, I took off my sandals and lifted both my legs, bringing them to my chest. I placed my crossed arms on my knees and rested my head on top of them.Closing my eyes, I let the night breeze cool off the warmth on my skin.

Moments later, I heard movement come right next to me, seeming like someone had just taken a seat in the chair beside mine.

I lifted my head, and an unfamiliar warm feeling settled inside me when my eyes landed on a face I didn’t think I would be seeing that night.

An unfamiliar warm feeling?

It’s probably the alcohol.

Colton smiled at me when our gazes locked.

I smiled at him in return. The almost silence enclosing us in its embrace.

Choosing to not break the silence, Colton signed to me instead.

‘Hey, partner,’ he signed.

I smiled at him, signing back, ‘hey, partner.’

Although we had been learning ASL for weeks, we were mostly still learning new words as there was a lot left to cover. We were only recently introduced to how sentences in ASL were structured, and asking questions in ASL was in our syllabus for a future class. So, instead of signing it perfectly, Colton just signed each word to me and added a question mark at the end.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

I arched a brow at him, slightly amused by the way he was signing, and gave a nod. ‘Just tired,’ I signed back to him.

Colton nodded, then signed. ‘You want me to go?’

I shook my head at him. ‘Stay.’

Seconds passed by as I waited for Colton to say something, but he didn’t. His head was turned upwards, looking at the night sky. I followed suit, admiring the full moon along with the stars.

We just sat like that, enjoying each other’s presence in comfortable silence, stuck in our own little world.

The only thing that would have made that moment better was if Colton had his arm around me and my head was on his shoulder.

I immediately stopped my train of thought—shaking my head as if I was trying to physically remove the visual of it from my mind.

That can’t happen, you know it can’t.

I let out a wistful sigh.

The needle to burst our little bubble came in the sound of my phone buzzing against my pocket. I took it out and saw that it was an incoming call from Nina.

I answered it right away.

‘Where are you?’ Nina asked, worry in her voice.

I let out a wince, I must have been out there longer than I had thought. ‘I’m outside, in the backyard.’

‘Oh, thank god,’ she breathed out. ‘We couldn’t find you anywhere, so we thought you left.’

‘Nope, just getting some fresh air,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ll meet you inside.’

‘We were actually about to leave.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Beer pong got a bit out of hand,’ she trailed off. ‘They added vodka into the drinks to level up the game, and I think Claudia overestimated her alcohol tolerance again.’

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