19

Elijah was carrying Duke. I really  missed Duke and I guess he missed me too because he jumped me.

"Hey Dukey toots!" I said after I had successfully caught him and was putting him in my hair. He squealed and I was happy. Elijah got up in front of me and brushed himself down.

"What do you want to talk about, then?"

And just like that, all the faux courage and confidence I had built up within me dissolved like sodium chloride in water. Instead of focusing on Elijah, I focused on Duke who was turning the same colour as my orange nail polish as I spoke.

"Oh, er, I-"

He looked at his watch. "There's a bus coming in three minutes."

"Shall we take it?"

"We could."

After he said this, we both just stood around and looked at each other. That is, until Elijah gestured in front of me, signalling he was waiting for me to go in front of him. I did and we made our way to the bus stop, where it said a bus was due. We waited for a few moments before boarding the bus and sitting down. At first, I wondered if he was going to sit away from me, but to my surprise, he sat next to me with ease.

I cleared my throat and began to speak. "Elijah West, I -"

"Let's not talk on the bus, Diane Young."

"Then when?"

"When we get off."

"... Where are we getting off?"

"When I want to."

I remembered the fact that it was useless to question Elijah West on journey's, because he'd never give a straight answer and instead opted for keeping locations secret. Soon enough though, I realised that we were heading towards the movie theatre's direction and looked to Elijah questionably. He met my gaze with a slight smile that I didn't know whether to return or not.

"Why are we heading here?"

"To get popcorn of course. Popcorn from a theatre is the best thing for talking to people. "

"Only if they have strawberry flavoured popcorn."

"But of course."

They didn't have strawberry flavoured popcorn, but they did have pink popcorn and that was kind of the same thing. Well, according to Elijah it was.

We were sat outside the theatre eating our popcorn in silence. He cleared his throat, I sniffled in response. When we had been silent for more than ten minutes, I sighed, figuring that it was getting ridiculous. 

"I just need to say I'm - Why didn't you tell me about Ellie?" I blurted out instead. He glanced over me with a neutral expression.

"Oh, you found out?"

"Yeah, today."

"And what did you do?"

"I- I didn't do anything. There's nothing for me to do?"

He shrugged. "If you say so."

"Why didn't you just straight up tell me though? Could've saved you a lot of odd situations where you withheld the information." I said. 

Elijah West turned towards me and grinned momentarily. "It was more fun watching you piece it together and flounder about with all the clues I dropped."

I snorted, which rewarded me with an utterly peculiar look from Elijah. "It was in no way, shape or form even a little teeny weeny ounce of fun." To reinforce my point, I held up my index finger and thumb finger and pressed them together tightly. "This is how much fun it was."

"You sure about that?"

"Yep."

"Oh Diane Young, stop being so self centered!" He complained. 

"Me? Self centered? You're the most pretentious and self centered person I know?"

"Thank you." He almost snapped.

I looked at him holding the popcorn bag in his hands and the firm set of his jaw (and protruding jaw line out of nowhere) and I couldn't help it. I started laughing. He looked towards me, slightly bewildered and majorly confused and I couldn't even blame him.

"What's wrong?"

"I think I've missed you, Elijah West." I said, and to my surprise, I gave him a very spontaneous and slightly irrational hug. 

"Are you having an out of body experience?" He asked me, but then he hugged me back, and I ended up imprinting one of the metal buttons on his denim jacket on my arm.

When we pulled apart, I finally said sorry.

"Sorry for ditching you that day."

"It's not okay, but for the time being, I'll say it was. Sorry for flipping out at you irrationally like I did."

"It's okay. And I'm not just saying that because I missed Duke."

"You're saying it because you missed me, obviously." He dismissed. 

"Obviously it's that simple."

"Of course!"

The next day, when I was heading outside to finally talk to Ellie at her grave (and attack her with questions she couldn't possibly answer, unless the heavens opened and she descended (but that was a perk reserved for Jesus only - sadly)), I walked into Elijah West who was holding the very familiar sugar container in his hands. 

"I need -" He started before I stopped him. 

"Yeah, yeah, come on in."

He barged in, looked around and then headed to the kitchen. "When the hell did you get a keyboard?" He said, going into the kitchen.

"It's my brothers." I said leaning on the kitchen door frame. My brother ambled out of his room at that moment, holding an empty cup of coffee and yawning. He squinted at me and smiled, looking as if he had just woken up... even though it was past eleven.

"What's up D?" He said to me when he heard Elijah ransacking the kitchen.

"Elijah West is just borrowing sugar." I explained.

"HELLO!" Elijah called when he heard his name. My brother raised his eyebrows.

"Isn't it a little bit too early to have your boyfriend over?" I felt my ears reddening. 

"He's not my boyfriend, Roo. We're just very good friends brought together via the death of a mutual friend. Nothing more."

"Yeah, yeah." I could tell he didn't believe me by the tone of his voice, but neither of us said anything. Instead, we just watched Elijah look for sugar.

Elijah came out of the room, a little bit of sugar dusted in his hair and on the shoulders of his black shirt. "Diane Young, thank you so much. Audry's going to be insanely happy now."

"Glad I could help." 

He looked at my brother and smiled. "Your sister is brilliantly alive, even though her name is a pun for death."

My brother blinked at him as Elijah saluted and started leaving the house. 

"Oh, and Diane Young?" He said before he left.

"What's up?"

"Don't go outside yet. I'm not ready." Then he grinned once more and then left. 

"Not your boyfriend, huh?" Ruben nudged me playfully.

I whacked him on the shoulder, blushing slightly as he laughed. "Shut up." 

a/n: so sorry this was very late

I am so sorry

very sorry about it

and I have another day to write this story !! I'm leaving for camp on Monday and I just found out that on Saturday I'll have more time than I reckoned 

so maybe I'll finish then you never know