I glared up at him, or tried to, but he was already walking closer, the grass crunching under his shoes. When he stopped, only a few feet separated us, and his gaze swept over me once, quick, careless, but not really.
It lingered.
My breath caught.
The way his eyes moved from my shoes to the hem of my skirt, up the soft knit of my vest, it wasn’t inappropriate, it was… assessing. Like he was trying to figure out why I looked so different.
And suddenly, I was too aware of everything. The skirt, the thigh-high knee socks, the makeup…
I grabbed the sides of my skirt, twisting the fabric nervously, trying to look anywhere but at him.
He noticed. Of course he did. His voice dropped lower. “You look…”
He stopped himself, jaw flexing as if he were fighting whatever word almost slipped out.
I didn’t need him to finish.
The way his eyes softened said enough.
And it terrified me how much I wanted to hear the rest, anyway.
“Different?” I asked, my voice barely holding steady.
He blinked, as if I’d caught him mid-thought, but he didn’t answer. Just… stared. And that silence, that unreadable Lockhart silence, sent me spiralling.
I started rambling before my brain could stop me.
“I um, I wanted to try a new look today. And this was what I was able to find. I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t know if it was too much or too little, and I wasn’t sure if—”
He was still watching me.
My words tripped over each other, faster, softer. “I just asked because you didn’t finish what you were saying, so I didn’t know if it was a good different or—”
“Good.”
The word cut through my sentence, low and certain.
I froze.
He took a step closer, eyes steady on mine. “It’s a good different.”
The field went quiet around us, with only the wind and the faint echo of the ball being kicked somewhere in the distance. And maybe also the sound of my heart trying to leap out onto him.
My throat went dry.
“Oh,” I whispered, looking down, my fingers brushing the hem of my skirt again, suddenly shy all over.
—
Joshua
She was gorgeous.
Not in the practised, polished way most girls around here were, the ones who spent hours rehearsing perfection until it looked effortless.
No.
Aurora looked real. Yet unreal at the same time.
