Not interested

Part 24. Alex

With the exception of you, I dislike everyone in the room...

Undoubtedly, it was her.

There was no thing Alex could be so certain of, raising his glance in the lively atmosphere of the late evening bar. Nothing could've moved him like that. Nothing could've had the power. Nothing could've made his body freeze for a moment as the pair of well-familiar emerald green eyes spotted him, pinned him to the floor, and took away the courage.

Sure, seeing Lili was nothing he expected that pretty ordinary party night.

It was about a few days since he got back in town. It was about a few days since they all got back in town, to be precise and a few days since he decided to forget about any chance of seeing Lili's glance. Lili's face, Lili's hair, Lili's waist, and Lili's legs. Forget about the possibility of hearing her voice and the fact that they used to know each other.

The comeback was supposed to be a new page, even though Alex never ripped off all the previous ones.

He knew there was a possibility of meeting her. Damn, some part of him was only thinking about it since the second he'd landed in the airport. He could imagine bumping into her in the street or seeing her sitting in her favorite restaurant, maybe, even breaking into the public library where she often wrote. Of course, he should've cared less, he should've made it all a past. Or at least, try to?

It was successful at most. Even this party thrown by their friends in the bar where they were making performance was a good addition to the plan. A lot of people, some beauties that asked for his attention and the drinks. A perfect mixture. A familiar treatment from the women Alex used to love or perhaps, thought he did, and the smell of the perfume of the girl he flirted with was nothing but healing. He liked the conversation, he was thinking about the girl's lips, he needed nothing and no one at that moment.

Why, though, nobody warned him that forgetting Lili in that city was nearly delusional?

Those days on tour, he was constantly thinking about the image of her from the last night they'd spent together. The shiny eyes full of feeling and the touch full of tenderness and urge. For all that time, being apart, the only thing he couldn't forget for real was the hold of her fingers on his arms and the gently parted lips as she said "I love you". The things he forbid himself to think of but sometimes couldn't fight, hopelessly succumbing to the cruel charms of the memory.

And now, right in front of his eyes, Lili was looking right into his pupils.

Oh Lord, there she was. Standing on the stairs of the entering door in her silky creamy dress on the contrast of the slightly tanned skin. Milk chocolate hair, short but bushy eyelashes that he couldn't see in the caramel light of the bar but remembered perfectly. The legs... The lips... And glance he used to chase. Green eyes looking at him through the endless bar crowd.

It was all about the details and the whole image of her at once. The cherry glossy lipstick and the waves in her hair he used to adore so much. The choice of her style, a dress, a wrap dress, and black patent boots. It was all too much to take in and not enough to look at. He didn't know what was so special, so magnetizing in all of it.

But the single realization of seeing Lili's face again ruined the sandcastles he'd been trying so hard to build up.

'Alex, what's wrong? You kinda zoned out for a moment.'

He heard the voice of the girl next to him through the thick layer of silence in his ears. He realized he was staring, shamelessly staring at Lili without any plan on what to do, and the girl next to him suddenly became foreign, completely alien. She didn't lose her taste, her beauty. She just suddenly felt miles and miles away from him as if they'd never known each other.