—like violent melodies still capable of lulling the ears. "What is it that you want me to do?"

Quite frankly, neither did I know and nor could I bother to think. With no project as an excuse to my presence at his place in the first place, a bizarre heat surged through my chest at the mere thought of just about anything. "That's. . .something we still need to figure out," I said with a silly grin, to which he laughed.

"Okay, then," he was still standing a couple steps away, hands tucked in his pockets and hair a disoriented mess. "Let's play twenty questions."

I narrowed my eyes. "What?"

He shrugged. "Do you have something better in mind?"

I did not. I had nothing up my sleeve at all, and uneasiness sat at the bottom of my stomach for a reason I didn't even want to know. So, I just sighed. "What if I don't want to answer the question?"

"We haven't even started," he rolled his eyes. "Be a little optimistic, Edwards."

I know. I could, but something about the atmosphere had drastically changed, and so had the glint in his eye. "Fine," I managed to say, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. "You go first."

He smiled. "Dogs or cats?"

"Both," I thought, and then: "no, dogs. How about you?"

"Me too," he replied, and then proceeded to walk out of the room, flicking two fingers in the air, a way of signaling me to follow. "Then I guess you'd like meeting Daisy."

The door closed softly behind me, and I rose a confused brow. "Who's—wait."

A big Labrador stood in front of us at the bottom of the stairs, wagging its tail relentlessly. My mouth had parted seconds before I could even let anything make sense, and I found myself punching Evan's arm lightly. "You did not tell me you have a pet!"

"Well, now you know," he had said with a couple more phrases following that, but I couldn't care less as I rushed past the stairs to pet Daisy—the cutest little (not so little) dog I had ever seen. "Oh my God!"

I could sense the roll of his eyes from meters away. "Guess she likes you," someone said, and my movements halted at the sound: a voice way softer and definitely not Evan's. I glanced up, eyes meeting a pair similar to the blue ones I let myself get lost in more often than not. A girl. Shorter, definitely younger, and lips twitched in the smallest smile. "Laura, right?"

"Oh, right," Evan walked beside me, the action causing his arm to brush past mine. "This is Evelyn, my sister. Evelyn, this is Laura."

"Hello, Evelyn," I waved politely at a girl who looked at her brother like she wanted to stab him, pure fury tugging at her features. "I. . .didn't know you had a sister."

"Yeah, it was obvious," she barked a laugh, and then rolled her eyes. They were siblings: confirmed. She was pissed: set in stone. "I told him to tell you, but he forgets everything when you're around, I guess."

My eyes widened. Evan grunted beside me, hands tied in his curls. "Don't run your mouth unnecessarily," he said sharply. "And where were you off to, now?"

"Friend's house," she replied nonchalantly, petting Daisy's head before letting go of the leash. "Anyways. Hi, Laura, it's nice to finally meet you. I hope you haven't sworn off of all Parker's in existence because of this douche, because that would make me very upset."

The grin on her face was sincere. The two features the siblings shared clear as day were the indigo eyes and the lips which were almost always thinned out in a line unless they were genuinely pleased. Apart from that, the air around her was reserved, but in a different way to Evan's—hair pale and long, completely contrasting his.

I figured that as long as we bonded over our mutual hate for the guy beside us, this would be perfect.

"Strange as it is, I haven't," I replied with, lips twitching, and her eyes crinkled in sunflower warmth. "Would be a shame if I lost out onto you, a potential friend, because of him, you know?"

Evan coughed. "Too early to gang up on me."

"Too late." Evelyn grinned. "She's my friend now, as she should be. After all, I know just enough about her because you never shut up—"

"Shut up," I barely recognized Evan's voice. It was a mix of all tones I had never heard him use, syllables piercing through the heart like a dagger. If I was her, I'd have been too stunned and would've proceeded to cry at the raise of his voice. "What did I say? Don't run your mouth unnecessarily."

And then there was this—other thing. One that remained prominent on his face even after he tried to brush it off with a steely gaze, like it was highlighted a billion times over after the use of sparkly stickers. Embarrassment.

My cheeks turned red. He coughed. "Don't mind her."

"Just saying things how they are, hermanos."

"Go do your homework," he said with a scowl on his lips, jaw set. "Don't you have anything to do?"

"I'd like to spend some time with the friend I just made—"

"No," was his answer, and the aftermath was a hand roughly grabbing me by the wrist and my feet racing on their own, an involuntary gasp accompanying the sprint. And holy shit, I thought, because we really were running—bolts of air hitting my face until our steps had slowed, both of our eyes wide and lungs panting and world frenzied.

"Sorry about that," his grip stayed put on my wrists, inadvertently backing me up until the roughness of the wall had hit my back. Curls aligning on his forehead like constellations, this boy had the audacity to grin while he had me trapped between the wall and his towering frame, and. . .that tilt of his lips—that goddamned smile of his was like cherry dreams, like dancing in the rain, like getting wine drunk at 3 A.M.—swerving me instantly. "But I can't let her have you yet."

I didn't even listen to what he'd spoken. My heart went thump, thump, thump, and not necessarily because we'd just raced down the hall for no apparent reason. Any words I wanted to voice were a complex muddle throw far, far behind in my head, and he was still close, so close, that I could trace his features with my fingers if I wanted to; draw in a breath which would smell both foreign and like home. Exactly how he smelled.

He snapped his fingers in front of my face.

"Did you just zone out?"

I stilled, eyes still wide and back still in contact with the wall, only to be met under his scrutiny. He didn't move an inch, eyes slightly enlarged and face passive, as if he just realized how the space between us was slim to none.

Sighing, I rubbed my temples and took a step to the right. Noticing me, he let go off my wrist, taking three steps back. "Sorry," he muttered, but my gaze was captured by the many paintings hanging in the specific hallway he made us chase after, chaos ruling my mind.

"Why—what was the need for that run? I'm sure she would've understood either way."

"She wouldn't have," he argued back. "She's so overbearing."

"Says you."

He glared. "Anyways," he motioned to a room a couple feet away from us, and brought his eyes back to meet mine. "So, your question?"

What? It took me a couple too many seconds to apprehend that he was talking about the game of twenty questions we were playing, and in the meantime, he was rolling his eyes. "Uh, right. Okay. Then. . .what's your favourite colour?"

"That day on call, you told me that you felt like you didn't know me," he paused, eyes bright like starlight. "And when being given the opportunity, this is the question you ask?"

"Hey," I hit his chest lightly, lips in a frown. "I don't do too well under pressure, and I literally cannot come up with one. Give me time to think, okay?"

He just laughed before we had continued to walk, and the squeeze in my chest was too unfamiliar: bright and hot and liquid gold, warmth of all the ashes and magma settling between brittle bones—and I had to remind myself that despite feeling the utter opposite, it wasn't anything at all. Because being beside him was like tiptoeing under moonlight and wishing on shooting stars, only to anticipate the sky to fall down.

▂

His eyes were fixated on books in the shelf stood in front of him, and I didn't have the nerve to interrupt him. The library that he had been hiding from me was ginormous, books pouring out from every corner of the room. For someone who wanted to get back into reading, the spark in my eyes was justifiable—and when I told him that, he offered me any book I'd have liked in the vast expanse of shelves in front of my eyes.

I had been glaring at book spines for a little less than half an hour now. His attention was focused, too, but his elbows knocked with mine from time-to-time, baby blue eyes a gleaming splendour. "So, what you're saying is that you aren't looking for any book in particular? That's too vague, Edwards."

I nodded, smile intact and fingers still hovering over inked pages. "Once I start, I just don't. . ."

From the corner of my eye, something caught all my attention—immediately making the words in my mouth dissolve. Evan snapped his eyes to mine, brows furrowed, and I had already rushed to the other side. "I lied," I said, teeth slightly nibbing on my bottom lip. "I really have been wanting to read this one," I flipped it over so he could see what the title read: A Thousand Splendid Suns.

I flipped it over to read the blurb on the back, and then lifted my eyes to find his smiling. "You should definitely read it. Do you want to keep looking for more?"

"No," I said, because more books meant a division of my attention. "One at a time."

"One at a time," he repeated what I had said with unfathomable gentleness, only for the calmness in his eyes to be replaced by raging thunderstorms. "Wait. I must've annotated that book."

The book was snatched from my hands in a heartbeat, and flipping over a couple pages, what he said proved right. But—distress lined his shoulders in shades of blue for a reason unknown, lips frowned—and he looked so damn adorable that I had to raise both eyebrows, lips quirked up.

"Sorry about that. We can find you another one?"

"Why are you apologizing?" I laughed. "I'm going to read that one if you allow me to." I'm looking forward to your annotations. "Because you know, you'll have to lend it and. . .yeah." I'll know what you thought of certain pages, portions, paragraphs. "If not, that's cool too. I'll—"

"Of course I'll lend it to you," he said like it was a matter-of-fact, eyes drawn to my face in a half-glare. "You can even keep it."

Heat rose to the tip of my ears. "No, no. I'll return it to you in a couple days, if that's okay."

His gaze had turned into a complete scowl, head shaking in disregard. "You don't have to be all—that," he twisted his rings, and I let my eyes fall onto his hands for some time: slender, long fingers, and silver metal coiled around them. "Don't be like that, okay?"

"Okay."

He laughed. My stomach made a noise—a small one—and yet. And yet. It was too fucking loud. Scarlet dusted my cheeks in the darkest shade, but before he could let a word slip past his twisted mouth, I rose a hand.

"Got a question, finally," I jutted my jaw, and then glared dramatically. "Is this how you treat your guests?"

"Just say that you want me to make you waffles, sweetheart."

▂

God knows I didn't. His hand hadn't magically healed in a couple hours, and perhaps opening my mouth to ask anything at all was a recipe for disaster, because he had made me waffles: chocolate ones. Despite my apprehension and all the things I did, nothing had worked. He'd carefully measure the ingredients of the batter and let me stay by his side, eyes focused and lips in a straight line—and while doing a task as simple as that, he looked like the stars and the moon and the sun and all other ethereal things, all at once.

We sucked at playing twenty questions. He'd dismissed it with a tilt of his lips, adding, "It'll resume any day, so be ready, Edwards."

I had rolled my eyes.

Because of the challenge he had accepted (which now excluded cooking, because he'd already done that), I didn't let him work on the project anymore, leaving it where we left off a couple hours ago—midway. I left, then, and soon after huddled up in my bed reading the very same book I had borrowed. Amidst four hours of uninterrupted reading, violet sky faded into murky fullness where moonshine excelled. From the very start the book drew me in, the Vectors module laying unheeded on my table. A few tears were spilled, I admitted, which was shocking in its own, because I wasn't the one to cry over books.

Evan remained in my head persistently. It was like a math problem, where the variables altered throughout, but the constant—him—remained rooted as a focal point. I should've known this was coming, and that it was futile to be even mildly infuriated. Yet, anger: red and fiery, panic: purple and ashen, seized my body entirely.

It was raining outside, chaos brewing.

And maybe taking a day off of school for absolutely no reason was the perfect plan for the storm tomorrow could bring.

evelyn is the superior sibling tbh

i hope you enjoyed reading because i thoroughly enjoyed writing this one! thoughts? i love y'all, you're golden.