I Fell in Love with Hope(87)

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You’re cute, and you’re nice,” she said, smiling, reaching for him again. Coeur held her arms, stopping her midway. He swallowed and asked if they could just go back to studying.

Coeur didn’t go to anyone’s house after that. He soon figured that his quiet friendliness signaled one of two things when he was alone with people. They either took it as an invitation to be physical, or they found it off-putting.

So, Coeur lived his life with a motto of ignorance. People called him aloof, in the clouds, half there, but in reality, Coeur was almost always paying attention. What he was ignoring was entirely his own.

He didn’t have chest pains that sometimes got so bad he felt like he was dying. He wasn’t lonely to the point of crying at night. He didn’t look at his ceiling, listening to his music, wondering if he was just an outline, someone who was secretly made of ceramic without a center. A hollow beast with a bleeding heart.

Then, on a day that heart ached more than most, Coeur met his match in a skinny, short boy with a temper from hell and a face fitting of it.

Coeur sat next to him in literature class, got his books, and in return, Neo helped him answer questions.

Neo was a savant of silence. He did it with substance rather than insecurity.

There was something strange and compelling about him, Coeur thought. He was pretty in a nonconventional sense. He had high cheekbones, messy hair, pale skin, a perched nose, hard eyes, and lips Coeur swore had never smiled a day in their life. He was a cute yet elegant album cover in Coeur’s eyes, but his music was something to get used to.

Neo was mean and impatient. A brisk tempo with harsh orchestra strokes.

“Sorry, I’m stupid,” Coeur would say, messing up on a sentence.

And Neo would say, “Could you not apologize every two seconds? It’s annoying.”

On other occasions:

“Neo, am I doing this right?”

“I already said you’re fine, Coeur. Quit asking, would you?”

Neo had a habit of calling Coeur by his full name. Everyone called him C. Even his teachers. But not Neo. Even when he found himself struggling with pronunciation, he said it in full. And especially when he was being mean.

“Coeur.” He flicked his forehead. “Pay attention.”

“Coeur.” He dropped a paperback on his head. “Don’t fall asleep.”

But like all musical pieces, Neo revealed subtly softer pieces of himself, like strings of a piano’s melody.

“Hey.” He poked Coeur’s finger, the one tracing a line on the book’s page. “Don’t get frustrated. We have time. Just try again.”

Then,

“Coeur, wait.” Neo’d pull him back when they were walking out of class and tuck the tag back into his shirt.

Neo was also funny in a way that he wasn’t trying to be funny: a brass instrument with a quiet, but sudden and sharp entrance.

“In the Picture of Dorian Gray, there’s a character named Lord Henry who says that being in love is the privilege of the boring,” Neo said, while he and Coeur sat in detention for talking too much in class.

Neo read. Coeur watched him read. And occasionally, Neo would say something, and Coeur would smile and listen. “He says that people resort to love because they have nothing better to do.”

Coeur looked over his shoulder at their sleeping teacher, then back at Neo’s pouty face flipping through the novel. He propped his chin on his arms with a crooked smile and asked in return, “What if the greatest adventure of my life is being in love?”

“Then you’re boring.”

Coeur laughed. Neo was the smartest person he’d ever met, yet at once, the worst hint taker in the history of hint taking. Not that that bothered Coeur in the slightest.

For the first time in his life, he knew what he liked. He knew what he wanted. He was aware that he was aloof, up in the clouds, half there, and wholly infatuated by his mean, smart classmate.

Love does not require reason. But Neo gave Coeur the simplest one. He looked into Coeur rather than at him. He sought past the surface, trudging into the deep end of the pool.

So one day in detention, when the teacher had once again fallen asleep–

“Neo,” Coeur whispered. “Why do you like me?”

“I don’t like you. You’re annoying.”

“You tolerate me.”

“Marginally.”

“Why do you tolerate me, then?”

Neo looked up from his book. His gaze didn’t flicker or search. Such a question didn’t have an answer sitting in some corner of the classroom. Instead, it lay in Coeur. In that center he was so sure was missing.

“You’re kind,” Neo said. “Not the normal kindness that people throw around. It’s a real type of kindness, the raw, thoughtful kind that comes from the heart.”

A sudden shyness overtook Neo, pink hues marking his cheeks as he met Coeur’s gaze. “You didn’t grab a book for someone because they asked. You grabbed it because you saw they couldn’t reach.” Neo shrugged then, wiping at his face. “Also, you’re only partially annoying, I guess.”

“What part of me is annoying?” C?ur whispered, smiling like an idiot.

“For one, you’re attractive. It draws too much attention.”