The Bookworm

Chapter 2 (edited)

Amara

Four Years Later

I was rereading the Harry Potter series.

Something about this particular series was so relaxing. Maybe because I had adored it since I was a child, or because it reminded me of a period in my life when innocence, ignorance, and simplicity were all there was for me. I love the effect it had on me and how far back it took me, and I really needed it in my life at the moment.

One of them was Marcus, a very delicate and complicated situation.

Once, years ago, when I looked at him, all I could see was a good and comfortable friend. We had long and interesting conversations about books, movies, and once and every blue moon music. We helped each other with our studies, too, when necessary. I used to like what we had, and even though I didn't consider him my very best friend, it still had been nice to have him around. We had similar interests, and I liked that, still, we were only friends. Nothing more.

With time, though, I began missing our close friendship, and the more I missed him, the more I realized I had developed feelings for him... I liked Marcus. Things that I used to find indifferent about him became progressively cute, and although we didn't spend time together anymore, I found myself missing his long talks about comics and superheroes. Even his glasses and stuttering were enduring to me. And thoughts of him holding my hand and kissing me were growing on me gradually. The only issue there was in these continuously growing feelings was Marcus himself.

I was inexperienced in flirting, love, or anything romance-related, but I wasn't stupid. I could see how he was looking at me, usually a bit longer than necessary. I could feel him nervous when we were a bit closer to each other or touched accidentally in gym class. He usually stuttered when he thought he embarrassed himself in front of me as if my opinion of him was uncommonly important to him.

If only that day hadn't happened...

I was a little girl, maybe no more than six or seven years old, when I realized Noah Wilson despised me. At first, it bothered me that someone could make out another person just by absorbing them from afar to determine their worth. It was unfair, and it angered me once and a while when I thought of it or was unmistakably confronted with it, whenever we happened to cross paths. I suppose my less than enthusiastic appearance had something to do with that particular reaction, but I decided to push it aside and continue on with my life. I couldn't be doubting myself or take on board other people's feelings about me just because they existed. Guarding, and protecting myself above all the crap at school, had become second nature to me, and that included him, too. He wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last person I had received disapproving looks from. Or stares, in his case.

It was four years ago, though, on Valentine's day, when hostility started to nest in my heart for him.

I remember the school day was over, and I was ready to put my stuff back into my locker and walk back home when Marcus approached me almost immediately (come to think of it, he followed me) and asked to speak to me privately. I accepted. I remember he stood there awkwardly, with a card in his right hand and with a small well-wrapped box in the other, in silence. When I saw how uncomfortably he stood there, trying to make himself speak, sweating and almost shaking with nerves, I realized, it wasn't help he needed or a small favor. It was something entirely different, and I was unsure how to react. To be honest, I hadn't realized he liked me that way, and I didn't have an answer for him, had he had the chance to ask me.