Steal my Heart.

7

I don't turn around or say anything. I just stand still in the same position I'd stopped. Alastair appears beside me and keeps his hand on his hips, breathing heavily but nowhere near panting as hard as I was when I came running.

"Grace listen to me-" he starts and I cut him off.
"Only loved ones call me Grace."
He stands up straighter and cocks his head, such that the last rays of sun hitting my face get blocked by his head.
"Okay. So Gracie. Gracie Hyde. Or should I say Miss Gracie Hyde?"
"Gracie is okay." I say and start walking off.

Surprisingly, he starts walking along with me.
"Gracie, it's nothing like what you saw back there. Sassy, she was pushing herself on to me. I didn't do anything actually." He explains and I turn to look into his hazel eyes.
"Why do you care so much to explain things to me? It's your life, you can do anything you want." I shrug my shoulders.

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea."
My mind whirrs at that statement and I face him completely, playing with the straps of my bag.
"Again, how does it matter what types of ideas I get?"
"I just don't want a tarnished reputation. Specially with Sassy. I shouldn't say this, but that girl is way too clingy." He says and my heart drops. What did I expect? That Alastair doesn't want me to think he has anything going on with Sassy? Sometimes I just think too highly of myself, I'm not that good that a guy like him will want to date me.

"But you were definitely enjoying the attention. You could have pushed her off." I tease him to push the attention off myself and he laughs. A beautiful, ringing laugh that I keep on staring at him. He looks so joyous, so free, he has nothing to lose.

"Well boys do need to keep flirting and be at the top of their game." He says and I frown.
"Why do you need to flirt? It isn't that important, or is it?" My eyes move to his hazel eyes to his defined nose down to his plump lips. He is really handsome.
"Well, it is important, it's a part of our charm. Hot girls are irresistible you know?"

"You shouldn't do that. It gives girls false hopes. Specially the serious ones." I say idly.
"The ones like you?"
"What's wrong with being like me?" I arch my eyebrow at him, challenging him to go ahead with whatever he was saying.

"Girls like you are meant to be a wife, not just a girlfriend. You deserve to be taken to a guy's house to meet his mother, to cherish and to keep in his heart." He says that looking straight at me. Butterflies hover around in my tummy and I look down to avoid showing him my blush.

"What's wrong with Sassy? Guys love her." I point out and he shrugs. I'm around five feet nine and he still towers above me.
"I don't like girls like that. Apparently, everyone has a type. I like good girls." He winks at me and I giggle.

"Cliché. Bad boys always like good girls." I say and he furrows his eyebrows at me.
"But I'm not a bad boy."
"Do you know what you are known as? Alastair Kerr, bad boy of the Presidency." I quote with inverted commas in the air.

"That's a stupid reputation I have. Just because I ride a bike, wear jackets and black clothes, I become a bad boy? Idiotic logic, you know? I don't like that term." He says and I just look at him. He's so endearing, I'm talking to him for the first time and yet it feels like I've known him for years. He has something, something no other person seems to posess. He talks like a kid, yet the things he says are mature.

"You're also a jerk to people." I want to say but I keep quiet. Maybe some other time, right now, we're having a great conversation. I'm quite astonished at how I can talk so easily to him. It doesn't feel like it's the first time we're speaking to each other.

"You're also the quintessential good girl, what about that?" He wiggles his eyebrows and I look up at him with a twinkle in my eye.
"I'm not. You know, girls aren't divided into two groups, good and bad." I say. There's a gap between Alastair and me, we haven't even touched each other yet. It's like there's this magnetic force pulling us, but at the same time, we don't want to.

"Then what are the types?" He asks, still walking towards the parking lot. I calculate the time we'll need to reach there and I'm actually surprised at my disappointment that we're nearing our destination too soon.

"There are good girls, the bad ones, then there are some that are a mixture of both and some that are none of the two types." I say and he smiles down at me.
I don't notice when we already reached the parking lot.
"Which type are you Miss Gracie Hyde?" He asks as he cocks his head to the side. His expression makes me blush unintentionally and forces me to smile.

"I haven't figured that out yet. I don't know myself." I say somewhat shyly.
He smiles and I look into his eyes. He isn't the typical guy after all. He isn't cocky or sarcastic, but so simple and humble. He doesn't boast or act arrogant about having many girls, maybe John is right, all I need to give him is some time.

"You should. Spend as much time on yourself Gracie, as much as you spend thinking about other people." He says and I frown, even though his words hit a chord somewhere.
"How do you know? I mean, I do notice people but that's not because I don't think about myself, it's just that I'm an observant person. How can you say that? You hardly know me." I say, my own defense sounding weak to my ears. I sit on my scooter and put on my helmet.

"I know that you don't care about yourself at all. Maybe I've noticed you a bit too." He says and pulling his lower lip between his teeth, he winks at me and runs off, leaving me trying to make sense of his words.

•••

All the Indians here, I had written a dialogue from YJHD in this chapter. But I later changed it. Even though it may seem inspired from that movie, it isn't. It's something my mom told me when I was young. The dialogue has been edited and changed now.