❝There's a thin line between love and hate.❞
You will fall in love with a beautiful girl with hair so rich it looks like red flaming embers, and a past so haunting you can see it in her eyes. She'll love you, you know, long before you ever love h...
I act like I don't fucking care, cause i'm so fucking scared.
Listen to Still Into You by Hannah Trigwell for this chapter
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Mike walked next to Eleven, hands looped through hers, it was Saturday afternoon, and instead of going to the arcade, like they usually would have done they decided to go the Starcourt mall which had just recently opened. Mike took a glance at El, she was exactly how he had remembered, he still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that she was here, in front of him, the El he fell in love with, his El.
But somewhere hidden in the deepest part of him, a place where the darkness overruled the light, he could feel a slight crack in his armor, he had plunged into the darkness, and El had helped him get back on his feet, but he saw a distant glow, almost like a ray of light, and he felt compelled to go towards, he knew he needed to, hell he wanted to, but it felt like if he did everything he had ever remembered would fall away in to fragments, leaving him vulnerable and alone, and he wasn't ready to face that.
Not yet.
So he held on, in fact, he held on so hard, he sometimes forgot what it was that terrified him so much, but then, that smile. That smile would fill his vision, the one he rarely got to see, but that filled him with so much warmth, he swore he had never felt more loved and cherished by just a simple gesture, and that smile was her's. But it wasn't El's smile that had caused even the loneliest parts of him to feel content, it was her's. It was the girl sitting in the ice cream parlor, a small smile pulling at her lips, her untied red vans peeking out underneath the table.
It was Maxine Mayfield's.
Mike told himself one thing - it wasn't love or even remotely close to it. It was simply infatuation, driven by interest and fueled by human desire. He did not have the capacity to care so deeply for someone else, let alone the one girl he promised he wouldn't.
El brought him out his thoughts, her hand lightly tugging on his sweater, "Are you okay?"
Her voice held no menace, but one look at her face told him she knew exactly what he was looking at, more specifically, who he was looking it. He debated shrugging it off and making a prude comment about Max, but he just didn't have the heart to, he was too tired to pull off the facade of being an asshole, besides El would just see through it, she always did, she was wise beyond her years.
Instead, he stood quietly, not saying anything, eyes planted on the ground, the silence spoke louder than his words ever could.
"Mike" El once again spoke, her voice soft and endearing.
