Burnt Out | J. Kirstein

|06|

After getting back to campus, you had avoided Jean like the Plague. It's been almost two weeks since you've seen him, but unfortunately the streak was broken when you found yourself at the library.

You looked around for somewhere to sit, but all the tables were full and you could only blame yourself for getting there late Sunday night. Everyone had work due by twelve, including you.

"Hey," you feel your throat tighten as your words seep out in a hushed tone.

Jean lifts his eyes from the laptop in front of him, a pained expression hidden in his gaze. When he see's you looming in front of him, his face softens.

"Oh, hey," he sits back in his chair, giving you all of his attention. "Did you... need something?"

"A place to study," you look at the table with three empty chairs. "Can I?"

He nods and tries to clear half the table by shuffling his papers into piles and moving his notebook and highlighters closer to him. "Of course."

It's not that you had been intentionally avoiding him or anything.

No. That's a lie.

You have.

Reiner asked you over a week in a half ago, but once you found out Jean was going to be there, you canceled in a heartbeat. Or when you were craving an iced chai tea latte from Emily's and saw Jean sitting on the same yellow couch you occupied a week before, you left, the craving suddenly gone.

He made you feel something 

Something real.

It was scary to know that someone could control something that you couldn't. He had broken some sort of rule that he didn't even know about, but you still blamed him wholeheartedly. It's not his fault though. It is. But it isn't.

He probably didn't mean to make your heart warm up like a candle wick being lit for the first time. There were no motives on his part to cause a flutter inside your chest.

It was a simple sentence.

"I'd like it if this place was just our little secret."

There's no way you could go back there now. Not when the thought of the open sea and sandy beach brings his voice back inside your head.

But the thing you noticed most since that day, was that his voice took over all the bad memories that occasionally resurfaced when you let your guard down.

It's been two weeks and hardly any images of that day has crossed your mind. Your dreams though, they're still prominent there. Jean hasn't worked his way into your subconscious yet.

"Thank you," you sit across from him and place your bag onto the chair beside you.

Jean POV

How am I supposed to concentrate on my work with her sitting in front of me? The way her lips part when she concentrates or how her thick eyelashes conceal her eyes as she casts them down onto her text book.

I'm in complete awe of her and my history notes couldn't be more grotesque to look at. Not when she's right here in front of me.

It's hard, but I'm able to keep from staring. That doesn't mean I don't take the occasional glance that lingers a few seconds too long, but I try to keep to myself. I don't want to break her concentration.