She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The air is fresh and crisp. It's autumn, finally. She withdraws into the depth of her mind, trying to analyze her thought processes of the past couple of the days, and the consequential decisions she made, which could have potentially been detrimental to her well being. She feels his eyes on her but this doesn't bother her. This withdrawal, which has become an essential part of her life, is something she avoids doing with people around because she has yet to master what she calls the Demian face. But this friend, he's different. She is safe around him. He may not necessarily know that she is thinking, let alone what she is thinking about, but he knows that it's okay to let her be.
When her flight or fight instinct kicked in a couple of days ago, she chose flight as she so often does. It would have been an easy fight if she decided to take that course of action. All she had to do was demand a yes or no answer from him in response to her request for them to "hang out" this weekend. But she didn't want to do that. His noncommittal answer irked her, and she chose flight. She took off to Liege, Belgium yesterday morning with her sweet tooth as an excuse and went to eat some gaufre de Liege.
She returned to him in the early afternoon, and now they are having dinner together. Her flight did not harm their friendship, although he did hint that she should have asked him to join her.
"I like to know things. In advance preferably," she declares, breaking the comfortable silence.
"Me too," he replies, then pauses. "But I don't like sharing."
She doesn't miss a beat. It is exactly what she wanted to hear. "It's fucking annoying," she retorts, putting a bit too much emphasis on the syllable where her upper teeth pushes off her lower lip. She tries not to flinch nor break eye contact with him.
He gazes back into her eyes. It is a look without scorn nor amusement. His blue eyes, which she loves so much, are seeing past her anger that she is putting up as a front. He reaches across the table with his palm up and rests his hand in front on her. She slowly uncrosses her arms and puts her hand in his. He squeezes her hand and holds the grasp, while directing his attention back to the food that he was shoveling into his mouth just a moment ago.
And just like that, all her agitation and doubts from the past few days melt away. She looks at him and feels glad that she decided to come back to him, instead of flying away forever.
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