Voodoo [H.S.]

Sixteen

July 5th, 2022

Settling into conversation with Cassie was surprisingly easy.

She talks wildly with her hands. She laughs, a lot. She knows how to keep a conversation going. She believes crystals have powers. She's smart. She blinks a lot.

She's intimidatingly beautiful.

It's like she doesn't even have to try, although I can tell she put effort into her appearance for today. I'm past the point of denying my attraction towards her, obviously. Her pull on me was too strong for me to ignore, and I had to try.

I haven't said much, but she doesn't seem to mind. I've always been quiet. It takes me a lot of time to warm up to people. I can enjoy a good, real conversation with Zayn easily, but with people I'm not familiar with it's like the part of my brain that controls my speech shuts off. It didn't really matter to me that I never had close friends because of it, just Zayn and a few acquaintances had always been good enough.

But as I sit here next to Cassie while she talks animatedly next to me about how she misses the summer heat back home, I wish I could provide more than the occasional question and head nods. I wish I had the capacity to tell her that I want to try harder to give her more, it's just going to take time.

"So where are we going to eat?" Cassie bounces from the previous topic, reaching down to change the song on her phone.

"Don't worry about it," I wave her off, purposely avoiding the topic. What she doesn't know is I've already been to the garden today. I didn't want to half ass this. I decided in the spur of the moment on Sunday to test the waters with Cassie and since I started it and I was lucky enough for her to agree, I'm going to try to do this right.

"You're always so vague," she rolls her eyes. "Will you ever answer any of my questions with more than just enough to get me to stop talking?"

"Maybe," I smirk at her, laughing when she frowns at my response. The small pout that sits on her lips almost dares to make the heat rise on my cheeks, but luckily we pull into our destination effectively ending the conversation.

Cassie looks a little confused upon pulling up on the side of the dirt road to park outside of the garden, but doesn't question anything. We step out of her ugly ass car at the same time and she dramatically stretches her arms out like we've been driving for days, even though it couldn't have been longer than thirty minutes. I'm immediately grateful for the time I had chosen for this seeing her glow under the afternoon light, her blue eyes twinkling when she catches my gaze, a sly smile forming on her face as she looks me up and down.

"Staring, are we?" Cassie brushes her pink hair out of her face before walking toward me, her arm slightly outstretched.

"In your dreams," I retort, taking a step back towards the entrance of the garden.