I sat up immediately as I heard Bear barking. There was someone in my room.
"Knock it off, mutt!" the person snapped, moving toward him.
"Don't you dare touch my dog!" I yelled, launching myself at the intruder. We wrestled for a few moments, Bear snarling and whimpering just a couple of feet away as fury burned my blood. I looked down at the boy I was pinning. "What in the actual hell are you doing here, Corey?"
"Hello to you too."
I glared at him.
He looked back up at me, completely unbothered by having been tackled to the ground.
"Get out of my house."
"Nope."
"I'll call the police."
"No you won't."
"Says you."
He smirked. "Damn straight says me."
I realized that he was quoting me and glared again, my heart beat beginning to slow down once more. "Freak," I muttered under my breath, rolling myself off of him. The second I rolled off of him, he was on top of me, this time being the one to pin me down. I felt his warmth against the fabric of my shirt, and his dark green eyes were staring deep in to mine. I didn't move. My flight or fight response seemed to be stuck on stupid. "Let me up."
"I don't think you should keep telling me what to do."
I glared. "Bite me."
A smirk played over his features and he leaned in suddenly. I gasped quietly as I felt his lips barely brush over my neck, and goosebumps shot through my entire body. Frozen, my brain began to work a thousand times faster. Or, slower. Either way, I was noticing about a thousand things right now. One, I was home alone with a boy that I had known for two days. Two, he was pinning me to my bedroom floor with his lips against, well, near my neck. Three, he smelled really really good.
His head and weight disappeared from me and he pulled me to my feet. Corey had a slight smirk on his face, but the expression didn't carry to his eyes. "You look tired. Do you want coffee or something?"
"I need something stronger than coffee but a little weaker than cocaine," I grumbled.
Suddenly, he began laughing.
Not in an arrogant way. Not in a mean way. Not in a you-just-embarrassed-yourself way. Just...a genuine, pleasant laugh. It caught me off guard to enjoy it so much. "Yeah, yeah, very funny," I muttered to cover up my smile.
"Holy hell," he said suddenly.
I blinked. "What?"
"You smiled."
I glared at him. "I smile a lot. Just not around you."
"You should smile more. It's healthy."
"Bite m--" I stopped as a mischievous look cast across his face.
"I'm sorry, what?" he asked dangerously.
"Nothing,"Â I muttered finally.
"See? You're learning."
* * * * *
After three hours, I couldn't get him out of my house. So, I gave in, and decided that he could stay until Kelsey came. When she got there, he would leave; we both agreed to that.
"Pick a movie." I pointed to the case below my TV screen.
He walked over and opened one of the wooden doors, then his eyes widened in amazement. "You have a ton of movies. Like, every movie I've ever seen, and then some." Corey looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. "You watch historical movies? I wouldn't have pegged you for that kind of girl." Ignoring my mutters of irritation, he went back to browsing. "Damn. Given the area of this...you should probably have over five hundred movies in here, am I close?"
"Six hundred and twelve," I corrected. "Plus the ones I keep upstairs."
"Damn," he said, shaking his head. "You have no life."
"No. I don't." My voice came out more bitter than I had intended it to, and he looked at me in surprise. I avoided his gaze by looking at the movies. "I watch a lot of movies," I muttered after a couple minutes of awkward silence.
Finally, he picked Red Baron, and put it on. "I got tired of reading descriptions. What's this about?"
I loved his movie. I sat up, more straight in my posture, and looked at the screen intently. "It's about the Red Baron. He's a pilot, and he doesn't believe in shooting down pilots to kill them. Just to win the war. He doesn't want to kill anyone. Baron falls in love with a French nurse; he doesn't have a problem with the other countries." As I continued explaining, Corey gradually turned away from the TV to face me, his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward, his eyes focused on me. Finally, I got around to the ending part of the summary. "Then, at the end, he dies. I think he was shot down by the same man that he shot down twice earlier in the movie. No one hears from the French nurse again. Then they just go through and show the different people in the movie and what they represent." I blinked and looked at the screen. The movie hadn't even started, and I had explained the entire plot to Corey.
"You like that movie a lot," he commented quietly.
"I've seen it more than fifty times," I muttered. "Um...do you want to pick a new one? Since you kind of already know what's going to happen?"
"No. I want to watch it and see what you like so much." He hit play.
We sat in comfortable silence, and toward the end of the movie, I was sitting with a pillow hugged to my chest as I sat sideways across my couch. I was mouthing the words along with the actors at this point, unable to help myself. My eyes teared up a little bit like they always did when it got to the scene where Baron said goodbye to his French lover and promised not to die.
Because he did die. Even though he promised he wouldn't.
No one can keep promises.
My eyes welled up more than they normally did as memories flooded me, and I bit down on my tongue hard to keep from crying. "I'll be right back," I said suddenly, pushing myself from my couch and going to the bathroom. When I got in there, I sat on the side of the bathtub and put my head in my hands, looking at the ground.
There was a knock. "You alright?"
"I said I would be right back,"Â I muttered. I had intended to sound scary, but instead I sounded pathetic. Like I was crying. Which, now, I was.
"Can you unlock the door?"
"So you can come in? No thanks, perv,"Â I said, attempting to make a joke.
"Let me in."
"No."
"I will break the door, Ryder."
I sat, weighing my options, then finally wiped my eyes on my shirt and opened the door. Thank god I wasn't an ugly crier, or else he might have been able to tell. "What?"
"You were crying."
"No I wasn't. I don't cry. Now shut up and pick another movie, or I'm kicking you out before Kelsey gets here."
We ended up watching four more movies. When I looked at the clock, it was ten at night. Kelsey had never come over. I looked over at Corey, whose eyes were set on the screen of the television. He looked tired.
"Go home," I muttered quietly. "You're tired."
"I'll leave when Kelsey gets here."
"She's not coming."
"That's not my problem."
I sighed and looked at him for a few more moments. "You can stay for one more movie."
"Deal."
Or, it would have been, if he hadn't fallen asleep twenty minutes later. Great.
I walked over to him when the movie was over, tempted to wake him up, but I noticed something. His hood was falling down. Gently, carefully, I began sliding it the rest of the way off. I wanted to know what his hair looked like.
A hand caught my wrist.
Damn.
"What do you think you're doing, Ryder?" he growled, his eyes still closed.
"Waking you up," I lied. Well. I did kind of wake him up I guess.
"Don't touch my hood, Ryder," he grumbled sleepily.
Damn he was sexy when he was tired.
Wait.
What.
What the hell did I just think?
"Um...go to a guest room," I said finally. "I'm going to my room. If you insist on sleeping here tonight, then do it in a room down here." I turned to start walking out of the living room, but his voice caught me and I stopped.
"Goodnight, Ry."
My heart stopped for a moment. I took a shaky breath. "...Goodnight, Corey."
As I laid in my bed, I stared at the ceiling.
What the hell was I doing?