Two days passed by in a blink with me walking around on thin ice. I searched for Aelius with longing eyes and a curious mind. All because there was no sign of Aelius and his wicked smiles at school or the soccer ground, and I didn't want to rush to his house like I was desperate to see him. Although, that's what I was feeling on the third day.

So, before my classes began, I took a sneak peek into the boy's locker room. Because one, I saw Aelius's bike in the school parking, and two, I caught a glimpse of him among the sweaty athletes walking towards the locker room. I knew I had to be as discreet as possible. The boys had just returned from a field practice and were changing, probably half-naked, and though it would be fun to see those eye candies with nice form, it wasn't helpful that Aelius Carter Hayes would be among one of them.

"Are you looking for your kissing tutor?" Shelby's voice startled me just before I was about to peek into the room.

"Jeez, girl. Can you be any louder?" I placed a hand over my heart and stepped away from the changing room right away.

"You should see your face. It's ten shades of red right now." Her giggles filled the hallway as we turned towards our first class. So, no chance of getting a visual of Aelius before class.

"Shut up! And please stop announcing my kissing situation to everyone."

"Relax, D," she rolled her eyes and stood by the water fountain as I filled up my water bottle. "It's not a crime to kiss someone you like."

"Kiss someone you like?" I stopped, her words echoing in my brain like a voyeur record. I pinned her with a glare and then went back to filling water. "Shelby, we both know that's total bullshit in my case. I didn't kiss Aelius because I like him. I kissed him because I needed to learn how to kiss."

There was a total silence from her end, which was weird because I expected her to convince me that I was speaking nonsense. "Why are you not-saying-something-"

My voice died inside my throat as I tilted my chin up to see her surprisingly embarrassed face. She wasn't looking at me. Just in time, I heard a door open to my left, and Shelby's face lost all colors. When I turned to follow her gaze, my heart dropped to my stomach.

All I could take in was his retreating back as Aelius stepped inside the Computer Lab and closed the door with a loud thud. The possibility that he might have heard my heartless proclamation about our kiss spiked my blood with a high dosage of anxiety. I didn't want him to hear. Hell! I didn't even know why I didn't want that. A sense of dread turned my limbs to lead.

I leaned forward, talking low. "Shel, I was too loud, wasn't I?"

She pressed her lips in a tight line and gave me a hopeless nod. "Too loud and too rude."

I sighed. "On a scale of one to ten, how bad did it sound?"

"A solid nine n a half!" Shelby sounded upset. She shook her head and looked in the direction of the room where Aelius went. "God, D, get your shit together. You might've stepped on his heart for all I saw in his eyes."

"It's all your fault, Shelby Jones." I groaned, thudding my head against the wall. "You were the one who convinced me to go with this stupid 'Get Kissing lessons from Aelius' thing. Now, I'm the bad guy here."

"Yeah?" Shelby crossed her arms across her chest and clicked her tongue. A sign that I had managed to piss her off too. "So, you're telling me you didn't like kissing Aelius?"

I glowered at her.

"Okay, so you do like him, but you're not sure about your feelings," Shelby said, throwing her hand over my shoulder as we walked the hallway. "Did I get this one right?"

"You don't understand, do you?" I pushed her hand away and stared down at my hands. "I've never kissed anyone before, not even Alex, who was my boyfriend just until last month. It's entirely new for me. I did like kissing Aelius. Hell, it was the most amazing feeling in the whole world. But what if this is just the teenage hormones speaking. I've already let my guards down once, and look where it got me. I asked a random dude to teach me how to kiss."

"For the billionth time, Aelius is not a random dude." She gritted out.

"Yes, I know he is the best kisser-"

"No, Daisy Eve," she said, holding my shoulder to look into my eyes. "He's the guy you've always admired. Even though you don't want to accept it."

I gaped at her.

She exhaled a relented sigh. "Do you remember the game of truth and dare we played at the start of Junior year?"

I frowned at her with genuine curiosity. "Yeah, what about it?"

"And do you remember spending the night at my place?" Shelby had a wicked smile on her face as I nodded. "You were a little drunk, so I'm not sure if you remember this part, but right after the game, right after you kissed Aelius for a dare, you kept mumbling to me the whole night that - I shouldn't like Aelius, but I like him a lot. He is like moonlight dipped in mint-scented pool water, and I want to keep swimming in his haze."

I blinked at her once, twice, and then wished I could maybe conveniently vanish from the face of the earth or something. But no, we were not in a Disney movie.

Shelby patted my shoulder and nodded her head to assert her words. Deep down, I knew she was speaking the truth. I might have hidden that distant, unacknowledged memory into some dark corner of my mind, and now that it was out in the open, I didn't know what to feel. "Maybe, it's time to move on from the what-ifs, D, and take that leap of faith."

***

When you walk around with a double-edged knife placed on your neck, there's nothing left but the what-ifs. There is something unholy about being let down. It feels like raw fire surging through your veins, melting every happy bone in your body, and you can feel the metallic taste of regret on your tongue.

And it hurts. It hurts so much that you can't even acknowledge the pain to its fullest.

The following two days had been the absolute worst, even though I had successfully managed avoiding Aelius ever since he heard my harsh words about our kiss. In reality, I was being cowardly to confront him.

I missed him. I missed him a lot. It felt like something was missing from my life, something very vital.

Although I didn't miss my lunch, even when we weren't talking and hanging out together. Aelius would always secretly sneak in that blue SpongeBob lunch box no matter where I decided to spend the lunch hours those two days.

The first day had been in the library when I purposefully chose the far end to take a quick nap. However, when I opened my eyes, the blue lunchbox was waiting for me. I quickly gathered it in my hands and searched every corner of the library. He wasn't there. Aelius wasn't there.

The next day, I wanted to stay awake and pretend to be asleep to catch him if he decided to show up while I spent the lunch hours on the rooftop. I was alert and was rather excited about it. But all that excitement washed away when a junior girl walked through the rooftop entrance and handed me that damn blue lunchbox.

I cursed while eating the delicious sweet milk bread he had packed for me. How did he know I liked them?

By the third day, I decided to end that uncomfortable silence and maybe convince him that things between us go back to as before. I knew my words had hurt him for some reason but weren't it the reality of our situation. Maybe, that's what I needed to make him understand, or he did understand it. But then why were we avoiding each other?

My mind was still a mess when I pulled myself out of the pool after practice, only to bump against a hard chest. The impact had my leg slip on the wet floor, and I fell back into the water, dragging the person along.

"Shit!" I pulled my head out of the water and pushed my hair back to come face to face with a dripping wet Alex. My mind stuttered for two solid seconds as he stood in the middle of the pool with me, wet hair sticking on his forehead and eyes looking straight into my soul. For a moment, I caught up in the possibility that he would be mine again, or maybe, the possible reason I wasn't sure about Aelius was I still liked Alex. So, to test the waters, I went with it.

I didn't step away when he swam and covered the distance between us. I didn't move away when he reached to brush a strand of wet hair behind my ear. I willed myself to feel the way I used to feel around him. And I did.

I felt the differences. Alex was handsome through and through, with ragged edges and a sharp jawline, but he didn't have those starry glints in his brown eyes, or dimples on his cheeks when he smiled, or even the gentle warmth I had come to like when his hands came to hold my shoulders. I felt like a total stranger for the affection he showed.

And I felt like an absolute idiot when I looked up and saw Aelius watching us from the doorway, his hand around the door handle and his face stormy like the big black cloud on a rainy day.

I backed away from Alex in a blink and catapulted out of the water. Although, I was probably too late to distance myself from Alex. Dread settled on my skin like molten lava. I wasn't sure what to do next when Aelius slowly released his hold from the handle, turned, and walked away. I pulled the towel lying on my bag, wiped the excessive water from my face, and ran out into the hallway to catch Aelius, but I wasn't fast enough. He was already gone.

I leaned my head against my locker and held my hair so tight that my scalps hurt as the thoughts of how it might have looked to him infiltrated my mind. Even though Alex and I hadn't been doing anything, for someone who knew how obsessed I had been with him, it might look like a whole lot of something.

After all, if the tables turned and I found Aelius with Micaela or any other girl, for that matter, my heart would crush into a million pieces.

Did Aelius feel the same?

***

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