The Promise of Tomorrow - 3

His warm fingers closed around mine, and my smile widened. His skin was slightly calloused, rough, and comforting. His hand was big and manly, and almost swallowed mine up whole. It was clean and lightly tanned, like the rest of him.

"Blaze De Luca," he said, but didn’t offer anything more - not even a smile. My confidence knocked, I drew my hand back and my smile faded away a little.

"So - is it nice around here?" I tried again, my upbeat tone faltering. Blaze looked at me resolutely.

"Yeah - it’s great. Really beautiful, and there’s stuff to do at nights, too." He said, expressionlessly.

"Stuff to do at nights?" I repeated, wondering what on earth he might mean. Was it my imagination, or did a hint of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth?

"I assume there are clubs and things not too far away." He said, and his tone was a bit warmer. This gave me back my confidence, and I leaned back in my chair.

"Assume?"

"I’m not so into the night scene myself. Well, not the sort you’re thinking of." He said, pulling his earphones out and lifting his MP3 to turn it off.

"Really? And what is the sort I’m thinking of?" I asked, wondering just why it was so easy to get along with this stranger, with his dark, brooding good looks and nonexistent smiles.

"Dancing. Loud music. Pop. Hooking up. Drunk teenagers." He sort of grimaced then, and I smiled. That wasn’t the scene I liked either.

"And what is the sort that you’re into?" I asked, interested to see if he did what I spent so many nights doing sometimes.

"Oh - I sort of like astronomy. Stars, you know? You can’t beat them. They’re just beautiful." He said, and now there was a definite shadow of a smile on his lips. It was tiny, but it reformed all his features and made him looked more handsome than ever. I found myself steadying my breath and sprinting to catch up with my racing heart.

"I know. My favourite Shakespeare quote – ‘When he shall die, take him and cut him out into little stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine…"

"…that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun." Blaze finished, looking at me with new found respect in his eyes. I was looking at him the same way.

"Shakespeare?" We both asked incredulously at the same time. I laughed and he smiled at me, then gestured that I go on.

"I mean, I wouldn’t peg you as the sort that reads some of the world best romances. You seem kind of…I don’t know. Unbothered?" I said, and then instantly regretted saying something so prying. I wished I could stuff the words in my mouth and swallow them back down. It seemed too rude, too soon for me to be asking such a personal question. But Blaze, true to my words, looked unbothered.

"Hm. I like all the great works. I like to read. I like my music. I like my art." He said, and I suppressed a beam. He was allowing me to know him. By the look of the evil eyes I was getting from many of the long, blonde, shiny haired girls around the room, it seemed like this was a rarity. He had singled me out.

"Music and reading. Right. But art? You’re an artist?" This was interesting. I’d always liked artists and art, ever since I was little, just because of the raw talent that they contained.

"Well - not a professional one, no. But I try my best. I’m a portrait artist most of the time, but I love landscape, too. The woods behind school are amazing for that."

"Wow. I’d like to explore them." I mused, thinking about my Sir Lancelot. Suddenly, instead of shiny golden hair, blue eyes and a white horse, the man atop of the ebony colored stallion had dark, cropped hair and eyes the color of emeralds in the sun.

I blinked and realized that Blaze was looking at me strangely. He was contemplating something.

Then, so quickly that I wondered if I’d imagined it, he spoke.

"Maybe I could show you sometime. You really shouldn’t be going in there alone," he said, and then plugged one earphone back in and began tinkering with his music player. I stared at him, surprised and confused. He had been so standoffish, and then after one sweet conversation, he was inviting me out? It seemed too perfect to be true.

"I’d like that." I tried to say, but my words were so low that they came out as a mumble. Blaze looked up – right into my eyes. I was immediately taken aback by the beauty of his own large, stunning eyes. They were framed with long, thick lashes.

Suddenly, those eyes were the only thing that held me there in the universe. They kept me locked beneath his hot gaze, melted my insides into fiery honey. I tried to resist, to find some foothold, to summon some strength. But I was teetering on the edge of a steep, bottomless precipice, and the outlook wasn’t too good. He suddenly made me feel as hot as a thousand suns.

"Good," he murmured in response to my response, and that was it. His deep, husky voice trickled into my common sense and clouded it in a haze of unexplainable attraction. I was on the edge of that precipice, and his voice pushed me over. I was falling, falling hard, through the pleasant darkness, with the wind in my hair. I spread my arms like wings, and suddenly, I wasn’t falling anymore, I was flying.

That was the first time I knew it was inevitable that I fall in love with Blaze De Luca.
And that there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

Now, before you think I’m rushing into things or being overly dramatic, there’re a few things to consider. Firstly, I knew that I would fall in love with him, not that I was in love with him straight away, and secondly, that precipice I fell off was the beginning of an unwanted crush.

My description of that moment was intense because the moment was intense itself; it was something I couldn’t express in light heartedness.

It was as if - and this will sound silly and soppy - my soul and destiny, with that one gaze, were entwined with his; that all the delicate threads that kept the balance of my expectations and fate suddenly entangled themselves through his, so that I could see no foreseeable future without him.

I could have been wrong, of course. But I had that gut feeling that I wasn’t, that I was delving deeper into something I wouldn’t be able to extract myself from, and was putting everything connected to me in danger because of it. The sad, unexplainable thing was - I didn’t give a toss about it. The danger, I mean.

If Blaze and I were meant to be, so be it.

I certainly wasn’t complaining.