“So mysterious.”
“Mina dating a boy from St. Peter’s? I don’t believe it.”
“Ask him his name.”
“We’ve been trying to figure you out,” the blonde says, toying with the bag of candy. “You show up every day at the same time. You never talk to anyone. You just…wait for Mina. Why? She’s not even that pretty.”
Not pretty. This shallow girl with her cheap candy and forgettable existence has the audacity to stand there and say that my Mina isn’t pretty. First of all, Mina is the most beautiful girl in Malus and only gets more lovely to look at with every day that passes. Second of all, as if Mina has nothing to offer beyond her looks. As if this little idiot has any right to judge her or could ever compare.
I glance at the girl, just once, letting her see exactly how little she matters to me. How she could disappear from the face of the earth, and I wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care.
Her smile wavers, the first crack in her confidence.
I go back to watching the gates, scanning every face that emerges. Dark hair, dark hair, blonde, red, dark hair.
“At least tell us your name.” She’s pouting now, trying to be cute. “It’s only fair. I’m Elaine. This is Amber and Trina.”
Dark hair, dark hair, too tall, too short.
“Hello?” Elaine waves a hand in front of my face. “Are you even listening?”
Amber and Trina exchange glances, caught between embarrassment and fascination.
“You’re kind of rude,” Elaine says, but there’s no real heat in it. If anything, she seems more intrigued. “Most guys would kill for three girls to pay attention to them.”
Then most guys can have them. They can have every girl in the world but one.
Elaine opens her mouth to say something else, but I’m already moving, pushing past her without a second glance.
Because there she is, finally, dark hair a shining waterfall over her shoulders, her backpack thumping with each step as she weaves between slower students, her face flushed with exertion.
Mina.
Muffled gray drains out of the world as color and sound flood back in. The green of the trees around her, rustling in the breeze. The blue of the sky over her head. The warm brown of her eyes as she spots me and breaks into a run.
“Cristiano!” She skids to a stop in front of me, breathless and laughing.
“I was about to send a search party,” I say, holding up my wrist to show her the time on my watch.
“I know, I know.” She presses a hand to her chest, catching her breath. “My lab partner wanted to go over our joint assignment.”
She has no idea that the minutes I spent waiting for her were agony. I watched every face in the crowd and felt my heart drop each time it wasn’t her. The girl with the candy said she wasn’t pretty, and I wanted to destroy her for it.
“You should have told them you had somewhere to be. I was worried.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “I can’t control the forces of the universe conspiring to keep me from you.”
She says it like a joke, but she’s described exactly how it feels every day for me. Like the whole universe is keeping us apart. I won’t stop feeling that way until she’s mine.
“Besides, you’re always worried,” she points out.
“Because you’re always late,” I tease, but the tight snarl of dread in my chest hasn’t dissipated yet.
“True,” she agrees cheerfully.
There’s a smudge of ink on her jaw. She must have been chewing on her pen again. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks pink, her lips curved in that playful smile that makes my chest ache.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
