For Lea (Axel) Lovers: You are Mine! (Pt 5)

    Isa checked his bag during class. It was Biology, one of your boyfriend’s easiest classes, but you thought that you saw sweat start beading on his forehead. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d left his textbook back at the dorm.

    “You okay?” You whispered over to him, trying to avoid the attention of Professor Ansem as he lectured on.

    “Do I look okay?” He snapped, digging down to the very bottom of his satchel. Prof. Ansem glanced your way, but did not pause his speech. You waited until his attention was off of you before pushing your book to Isa.

    “Here,” you mumbled. “Just take mine for now.” He pulled it out from under your fingers.

    “You take poor care of your books,” he told you. A vein nearly popped right out of your forehead.

    “I know it’s kinda ripped and crappy, ok? But it’s better than nothing.” You had put it lightly; your textbook had only been in your care for a few months, but it was already leathered in duct tape. You didn’t know what happened to it while it was hidden in your backpack, but you were starting to think that it was a monster or something gnawing on all of your stuff. Isa held the poor thing and gave you a low, “Thanks.”

    Class went on longer than usual, as Prof. Ansem had some important matters to discuss with all of his slacker students. When everyone was finally released, you had to fight against sprinting out of the room. Isa kept a cool composure at your side. When you were both free, you reached out for his hand. He accepted it without objection. A smile crept over you.

    “Finally, you’re out.” Lea had been waiting outside of the classroom and gave you and Isa a big grin.

    “What’re you doing here?” Isa asked. He paused your united stride.

    “I got bored. Is that so weird?” Lea pushed himself off of the wall he’d been leaning against.

    “Aren’t you supposed to be serving the library?”

    “Sheesh. I come all this way to see my best friend and all I get greeted with is cold interrogation. Couldn’t I have just come to see my best buddy, old pal?” Lea waved a hand around his face, giving Isa a mocking frown.

    “I’m not buying it.” Isa gave a rare smirk to his best friend; he’d gotten in on the game, too.

    “Well, if you must know, they gave me the day off. After today, I only have two weeks left of this sentence from Hell.”

    “What do you mean?” You asked. Isa gave a small laugh and turned to you.

    “Genius over here thought it’d be funny to decorate the librarian’s office with toilet paper.”

    “He what?” You glanced at Lea. “I thought only children still did that sort of thing.”

    “Evidently, you’re looking at one.” You both shared a laugh at Lea’s expense, and he chuckled with you after a few whines. Looking between him and your boyfriend, you felt oddly comfortable. Isa didn’t seem to suspect anything of your gradual familiarity with his best friend, although you did note that he tended to hold you closer in front of the redhead.

    “So, where are you guys headed?” Lea asked.

    “I have a class now,” Isa stated. “______ had her class cancelled, so she’s going to study, right?” You nodded.

    “I think I’ll go to a quiet study area and get my Biology paper done. Professor Ansem hates me enough, I don’t need to incur his wrath further by turning in a dud assignment.”

    “I’ll walk you there.” Isa squeezed your hand. “What are you doing, Lea?”

    “Who knows? Maybe I’ll just run around making mischief, as usual.” He waved to you both as he walked on. “See ya, kids! Don’t have too much fun!” You stared as he headed into the crowd, giggling at his prideful stride as he passed other students.

    “He’s quite a character, isn’t he?” Isa stated. He was watching him too with a face you’d never seen him make. It was stern, contemplative, yet a bit warm, too. You couldn’t read what it meant.

    “He is.”

    Isa snapped out of it and stared down at you. His eyes softened and he smiled gently.

    “Shall we?” He pulled you towards the study hall. You felt your heart start to burn with joy and the underlying feeling of guilt. It got harder and harder for you to tell him the truth; you didn’t want to lose this smile. It’d already disappeared once...why should it have to happen again?

    Your studies were going poorly again. You were fantasizing about Isa’s smile, so pure and innocent when he let it slip out. It was one of the things that made you first fall in love with him. But! You needed to focus! You hurriedly turned your attention to the laptop on the desk before you. Clenching a fist in front over your keyboard, you made up a new mantra: “I’ll get this done! I’ll beat this paper! I’ll get this done!” You turned up the volume of your power song until you were borderline deaf. Your fingers prepared themselves over the keys, feeling more pumped and alive than ever before!!!

    “So.” The voice made you nearly topple out of your seat. You could hear it clear as day over your headphones. It’s familiar, chesty tone could reach your ears through a stampede of elephants. You gave Lea a glare as he pulled up a chair and sat across from you. He was chewing on something loud and salty. Curses toppled out of your mouth.

    “How did you and Isa even get together?” He resumed, ignoring your panic attack.

    “You scared the hell out of me,” you replied instead.

    “You’re avoiding my question.” He let the last word drag out, just to annoy you.

    “Why do you care?” You tried to go back to your work, but the moment was lost. Distraction was everywhere and all of it was stemming from the redhead before you.

    “Hey, c’mon now. We agreed that we’d try to be friends, right? I’m just trying to get to know you is all.”

    You shut your laptop. “Do we really have to talk about it here?”

    “Don’t like being seen with me?”

    “No. I just….” You could see other students beginning to stare at Lea as his unrestrained munching spread throughout the room. “Think it’d be easier to talk somewhere that we’re allowed to talk.” You were waiting for a teacher to approach you two, but you seemed to be in the clear for a moment.

    “Good point. C’mon. I’ve got somewhere that we can go.” Lea stood, grabbing your wrist and laptop from the desk. You barely had enough time to snatch your backpack before being dragged out of the study hall.

    “This. This is where you wanted us to go.” Your sarcasm weighed heavily in your voice. Lea had led you to the top floor of the library where a door labelled “Roof Access” leaned dubiously to the right. You had never seen this door before, but it was very lazily constructed. Lea didn’t seem to mind, or maybe he just didn’t notice.

    “It’s the most private place I know,” Lea argued. “Only two people in the building have keys to the roof: the librarian and the janitor.” He held up a single silver key, dangling from a small metal loop. “The janitor doesn’t come up here anymore.” He unlocked the door and led you up the final flight of stairs to the outside. The view took your breath away.    

    To one side were the campus grounds, which were beautiful, but the view in the opposite direction was stunning and marvelous. The ocean shimmered rebelliously against the afternoon sunlight. The beach had some people meandering about, but was mostly occupied by dozens of other organisms and splashes of salt water. Above, the sun hummed merrily and spread its gift over your cheeks. You closed your eyes and breathed it in. It’d been a while since you’d really had the chance to enjoy the last rays of beach-style fall. Within the week it’d turn to winter and the lovely weather would be out of your reach for another year.

    “You flush so easily,” Lea said beside you. You opened your eyes and touched your cheeks.

    “I do?”

    “Yeah. You do whether it’s in the sun or when someone embaresses you.” He was trying to joke, but you saw flashes of sincerity in his expression.

    Chain-linked fences lined the edges of the ledge. Lea approached them and slipped his fingers through the holes. He watched the waves drowsily ripple against the horizon and his wasn’t really with you for a moment. You gazed with him for a moment, but eventually your eyes were drawn to the sky. You imagined all of the stars and planets hiding behind the big blue and tested yourself on their probable locations. You didn’t need the evening to tell you if you were correct; you knew each area by heart.

    “You gonna answer my question now?” Lea inquired. His stare fell to you. Your tore your eyes from your interstellar friends.

    “Isa and I?” You recalled. Lea nodded. “We met in our junior year of high school. We shared some classes together, but didn’t really talk until the summer before we became seniors. I was heading home one night from a friend’s and was scared out of my mind. Girls were known to get abducted when they were wandering alone that late. Isa had been waiting for someone outside of the school--which was kinda odd, because it was closed until the fall….

    “Anyway, he caught me walking by myself and offered to escort me home. He didn’t mind leaving his friend behind, so I let him come with me. We got to talking and, after a few weeks, he asked me out. We’ve been dating since.”

    “Ah, I remember that night,” Lea mused, nodding knowingly.

    “What?”

    “I had tried to convince Isa to sneak into the school with me to sit on the roof. We must’ve done it a dozen times before, but he decided not to come this time. I guess it was destiny, eh?”

    “You were the friend he was waiting for??” Isa hadn’t told you that before.

    “Yep! I remember coming back out and realizing that he’d left. We got into a big fight about it afterwards, because I got caught by the night patrol. Isa was supposed to have my back and let me know if the coast was clear, but he said that more important things came up.” He grinned at you. “Guess he had a point, for once.”

    “Honestly, I don’t know how Isa came out as good as he is now.” You shook your head in dismay.

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” He didn’t sound angry; just curious.

    “You sound like you were such a rebel! I don’t know how Isa retained his innocence around you.” A thought popped into your head. “Speaking of which, how did you meet him?”

    “Oh, that’s easy.” Lea straightened up. “We grew up together. We were brought up in the same orphanage for years before we were adopted to different families. We were extremely lucky, though, and lived only a few miles from each other, so nothing really changed.” You’d known that Isa was adopted, and he’d vaguely described Lea’s similar situation to you. Nonetheless, you had no idea how far back this link went between the two. You wonder why Isa hadn’t talked to you about it like this before.

    “Sounds like it was destiny,” you said to Lea. His smirk grew wider.

    “What can I say? Fate doesn’t want he and I to be separated. We’re meant to be best friends forever!” He curled his fist over his chest. You avoided bringing up the fact that you’d both betrayed Isa by spending the night together, though the thought did ring attentively in the air between you.

    A bell rang right behind you, making you jump and nearly trip over your own feet. Lea helped steady you, resting a hand on the lower part of your back. He let out a long laugh.

    “Relax! The bell tower’s up here, remember?” He gestured to the tower that held the Roof Access door, which had a hollow arc that reached far above you. In the middle of it, a brilliant golden bell swayed excitedly and released a loud, musical melody. You checked your phone for the time, realizing that Isa would be out of class and looking for you.

    “We’d better head back,” you told Lea once the heavenly signal subsided. He bobbed his head once.

    “We’ll have to do this again,” he said. You smiled.