Reaping Me Softly

classmates with all these years? Even through a quirky twist of fate? The answer slipped from his grasp. He let the matter rest only because he found her utterly charming, in an awkward sort of way. She blushed from head to toe every time their hands brushed against each other as they walked.

“What does Darla have to do with anything?” he followed up, selfishly wanting to keep her talking.

She shrugged—a small movement of her delicate shoulders. “You’re always around her.”

“We’re friends. Naturally, we’d be seen together.”

“Don’t you find her beautiful? Everyone in school does.”

“I thought you didn’t know everyone in this school?”

She laughed. It held such clarity—so sweet to the ear that it took his breath away. His legs refused to move. She captured his gaze completely, and he feared even more that he couldn’t help himself. He knew without a doubt that he needed to make her laugh again. He had to hear that sound.

“Is something wrong?” She stopped and faced him. Worry found a home in the lines of her forehead.

He picked his jaw off the floor, swallowed, and said, “Exquisite. Truly.”

Arianne dropped her gaze and held her hands behind her back as if she hid a gift. “I’m not used to being complimented,” she whispered.

Driven by the impulse to make her feel comfortable again, he came to her side and smiled reassuringly. “Why don’t we keep going then?”

“Right.”

They made a left at the end of the hall. Niko mentally slapped himself in a vain attempt to concentrate on the task at hand: escorting her to the nurse for an ice pack. She needed to cool down her acid burn before it decided to swell. But he soon realized the futility of concentrating on other things like putting one foot in front of the other. His stubborn eyes wouldn’t listen to reason, they kept returning to her. Unexpected warmth suffused his chest when she graced him with one of those shy smiles.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you speak funny,” she said.

Niko’s eyebrows came together. “How so?”

She blushed. “You’re so formal.”

“Oh.” A lightness inflated his chest. He felt his cheeks burn. “I guess it’s how I was brought up,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” She waved both her hands at him. “I didn’t mean to make you feel weird..”

“No.” He laughed. “Desmond teases me about it all the time. I can’t seem to break the habit, I guess.”

“No worries.” She smiled. “I like it actually. Sounds different. A good kind of different.”

Niko scratched his still red cheek. He had no idea how to respond to her words. He’d been complimented countless times, but they all sounded hollow to his ears until today. He liked that she liked the way he spoke. Another strange feeling he added to his already growing collection.

“You don’t have to, you know,” she said after a few more steps.

“Pardon?”

She averted her gaze to the deserted, locker-lined hallway. “Walk me to the nurse’s office. It’s not like I’ll faint. I’m not exactly bleeding or anything.”

Another grin played on his lips. Another unsettling activity since it came so naturally in her presence. The air around her seemed lighter, easier to breathe in, taking him to heights no narcotics could achieve. “As your lab partner for the day, I feel it’s my responsibility to make sure you’re taken care of. What would your friend…what’s her name?”

“Tammy,” she provided.

“Yes, Tammy.” He cleared his throat. “What would Tammy think when she returned to find I’d left you in less than perfect condition?”

The pink tint on her cheeks made him want to trace circles on her skin with his thumb.

“Thanks,” she said. “I should’ve been paying attention to what I was doing. chemistry has the tendency to bring out the klutz in me. Normally, I don’t spaz out, but when the experiments begin, I become an accident waiting to happen.” She poked at the redness of her hand and sighed. “Tammy always handled the more dangerous stuff in class. In terms of the experiments, I mean. Mr. Todd never seemed to mind. One time, I almost passed out from inhaling fumes. She made sure I didn’t. And this other time…oh, I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”

“Not at all. Please keep talking. I like listening to your voice.”

“My voice?”

“It’s like a stream through the forest, clear and refreshing to the ears.”

She studied him with those big, sea-blue eyes. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but can I ask you something personal?”

A red alert sounded. His guards went up automatically. On autopilot, he kept his expression neutral when he replied, “You may.”

She played with the hem of her T-shirt. “It’s just,” she began, “you look tired today. Are you feeling okay?”

His heart fled the country. An urgency bordering on panic filled him. What does she know? What could she know? His chest imploded. He decidedly didn’t like the heat that crawled up from his neck to his face. He had to fight to maintain the illusion of breathing normally. He shoved away his paranoid thoughts. Of course she didn’t know anything. How could she?

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. You just look like you haven’t slept, that’s all. I’ve never seen you look this tired before. Not that I look at you all the time. Far from it.” She huffed. “Again with the babbling. Anyway, are you coming down with something?”

The speed in which she spoke had Niko laughing in seconds. His defenses had gone from severe red alert to low green in record time. The nerves and panic vanished like a plane above the Bermuda triangle. He hugged himself and bent over, laugh after laugh queuing to be heard.

“What’s so funny?” Arianne sounded distinctly disgruntled.

Niko straightened and took a deep, calming breath. Someone must have tied balloons to his shoulders. He felt helium light. “You’re concerned about me when you’re the one with acid burn on your hand?”

Her magenta blush made him want to…what? He caught himself. He wanted to do what exactly? He heard the gentleman in him leave the room. A bomb had exploded in his head, and in the rubble laid shattered pieces of his common sense. What was wrong with him?

“Come on—” he motioned for her to follow “—your hand needs that cold compress.”

And I need a cold shower.

At the cafeteria, during lunch, Niko sat with Darla and her underlings. He’d forgotten the reason why he’d chosen her crowd—certainly not for the riveting conversation of who kissed whom the previous weekend or which sequined top they had to purchase. That day, Darla droned on about an upcoming dance, an activity Niko found tedious and inane. He tuned her out when the word “committee” came out of her mouth. He’d found something better to focus on.

Arianne sat at a corner table with a baseball-capped boy. After making sure Mrs. Preston—the school nurse —had applied a cold compress on Arianne’s hand, Niko had decided to return to class to salvage the rest of their experiment. He rationalized his leaving the clinic as having an A average to maintain. Yet every step he took away from her felt like a rubber band being stretched to its limit—him on one end and her at the other.

Her presence reeled him in once he’d noticed her leaving the lunch line. Nothing else could seem more fascinating than watching her skewer a piece of fruit and place it into her mouth. He had to steer the ship of his adolescent thoughts away from the iceberg that could potentially embarrass him in front of so many people. On second thought, I wouldn’t mind slamming into an iceberg right about now.

The boy to Arianne’s left leaned in and spoke. She laughed and nudged him. He laughed with her. Their smiling faces and the loving glow that surrounded them had Niko making a fist.

“Man, what’re you doing?”

Niko tore his gaze away from Arianne to look at the boy who sat next to him. “Pardon?”

Desmond grinned, his white teeth a startling contrast to his cafe mocha complexion. His chocolate eyes sparkled with mischief. “I think you just killed your soda.”

The other boys at the table cackled, watching the girls shriek as they pushed their seats back in an attempt