unrequited love.

Chapter 4

Theo:

'Can I sit here?' I ask the girl. She doesn't look up, i'm guessing she can't hear me because of her headphones so I tap her shoulder. She turns her head to me and gives me a startled look.

'Sorry, can I sit here?' I ask again.

'Oh, yeah sure', she replies. She looks a little bit embarrassed and turns back to her notes she was writing from before, although it didn't look like she had done much work.

I plop my bag on the floor and open the zip, pull out my homework and pencil case and slam it a little to loudly on the desk, the girl jumped. She gives me another awkward glance and I felt bad for startling her so I give her a one sided smile. She doesn't smile back, just holds her head down and carries on writing.

'It's a little jam packed in here isn't it?' I say, trying to fix my awkward introduction.

'What?' she questions, revealing an ear from under her headphones, clearly she didn't hear me again.

'It's busy in here', I say with a laugh. She seems a little bit more comfortable now and gives me a polite smile.

'Yeah I know, I almost couldn't find a desk with all of these people around'.

'Me neither, sorry if I invaded your space or anything, I just need to get this done or my teacher will fucking flip', I say.

She smiles back and takes off her headphones, letting them hang round her neck. She starts rustling around her bag, looking for something.

'Shit!', she murmurs.

'Do you need something?' I question.

'A pencil, if you're giving them out?'

I hesitated to give her one since all of mine had been chewed to death, due to my constant gnawing on them in lessons when ideas are flowing.

'Oh yeah, no problem', I answer, and hand her one of the less nibbled ones from my pencil case.

'Thank you so much', the girl responded, her voice slightly breaking and she went red. It was cute.

'You got a name?' I blurted out, shit that was smooth.

'Nevaeh'
That is the most beautiful name i've ever heard.

'I'm Theo, hi.' I hold out my hand for her to shake it. My tummy churns at my formality, I look so stupid.

She laughs at my gesture but shakes it anyway, it was charming. Nevaeh has these eyes, these bright green eyes that I could stare at for days- and this smile that outshines all the other smiles in the world. She's beautiful.

She looks at the pencil a little too long and i'm wondering if she's noticed the bite marks, so I start getting sweaty. Eventually she begins to draw little diagrams of castles and weapons in her book so i'm guessing it's her history homework. She notices my staring.

'Are you okay Theo?'
Shit, she definitely thinks i'm a creep for staring.

'Yeah, yeah i'm fine- just watching you draw. You like art?', I ask to try and save myself from embarrassment.

'No actually i'm pretty shit' She replies, laughing at herself. The sun coming in from the library window is shining on her face now, I can tell she has one of those stupid teenage girl skincare routines, she's glowing.

'No way, that shield looks so real what are you on about?' I joke, it looked ridiculous.

'Okay okay, shut your mouth asshole' She smirked and nudged my shoulder softly. She was sweet but I knew she was something deeper than that, there's always something deeper.

Before I could say anything else, the bell rang for third period. I'm not going to lie I really didn't want to leave the library. I wanted to stay there and talk to her for longer, get to know her and stuff- probably embarrass myself some more while i'm at it. Nevaeh left in such a hurry she accidentally picked up my pencil whilst she was packing her things away. I didn't say anything, even though I wanted to- something stopped me. She brought out this feeling I can't quite explain nor have I ever felt before. It was nice.