1.3 | the art of cupidity ✓ - Chapter 8: Chapter 8

"FUCK YOU," SORA SPITS OUT AS SHE CROSSED HER ARMS OVER HER CHEST AND GLARES AT HER BOYFRIEND—BOYFRIEND!—WHILE TAPPING ONE FOOT. He purposely bought her colored hair shampoo a week before (of course she hadn't noticed) and can now clearly see streaks of dark pink staining the thick strands. And Sora Lee has never dyed her hair before—partly because she's too broke for it, and partly because she's also partial to her all-natural, ink-colored locks.
From the couch in his apartment, Rylin glances up at her and cracks a devilish smirk, looking annoyingly handsome as ever. He visited his local hairdresser yesterday and had come back to pick her up from the diner with a subtle undercut, and Sora had lost the ability to speak during the ride home. When the car stopped, she'd slapped him on the shoulder and complained that he looked too good and would draw too much attention—both male and female. As it was now mid-march and they'd been dating for a little over a month, Sora and Rylin are far from perfect.
One time, he'd forgotten to set an alarm for his nap and she'd had to walk home from the rink at ten o'clock in the afternoon with pepper spray held in one hand. In another instance, he'd watched as she accidentally came to his apartment tipsy as hell even though she'd promised that she wouldn't drink too much without him present. They fight quite a lot—although it's not an unhealthy amount—but make up just as fast. Despite his aggravating habits, Rylin Carter is an extremely attentive boyfriend who wears an arrogant mask in public and only takes it off in the privacy of his own home, preferring to hold her tight in his arms while she talks about her day.
But now, as he tilts his head and surveys her wet hair dripping on the floor and body clad in workout gear (she doesn't actually exercise but instead just likes to lounge around in the flexible material), Rylin's irises flare dangerously. He beckons her over the couch and asks for the hairbrush, and she leans against him as he runs the bristles through her strands, his legs forming a triangle around the lower half of her body.
"I would apologize, but I'd be lying," Rylin says honestly. His voice sounds like hot honey and liquid-smoke espresso, and it slips across her skin until it settles right on top of her heart. "Thought you would look good, and I was right," he whispers seductively, pressing a kiss to her neck before sucking on the skin there. "You're stunning."
Another thing that Sora figured out within the early stages of their relationship was that Rylin Carter loved giving hickies. And even worse: she loved receiving them.
"When is the food coming?" Sora asks breathily, and she can't even maintain the once-forgotten anger in her blood before his mouth maps out his desires on her body.
Rylin bites her shoulder, and she whimpers a bit. He bites it again, and she closes her eyes instantaneously. Fucking sadist, she thinks. My boyfriend is a fucking sadist. "Twenty minutes."
"Okay," Sora sighs, head rolling back. "Okay, we can work with that."
His eyes flash like a lion in front of her, and Rylin hooks their pinkies together. "All I need is five."
"Arrogant asshole."
"Sora." He glares at her, grip tightening.
"Would you prefer kinky bastard instead?"
A gasp escapes his mouth as she runs her fingers up his shirt, and she smiles, pressing her back against him as she climbs into his lap. "Shut up," Rylin murmurs dangerously.
"Make me."
And so he does. Sora's shirt comes off before she knows it, and Rylin's does too, and she appreciates the toned stomach he reveals as she pushes him down into the couch right before he flips them over so that his hair brushes over her forehead instead.
"C'mon, Ice Queen," Rylin teases. "You look so perfect right now spread out on my couch, hmm? Why so quiet?"
Rylin looks up at her from underneath thick lashes, and she nearly passes out from that sight alone. "Safe word?" An open-mouthed kiss is gingerly pressed to her right hip bone, and Sora starts to grow impossibly impatient, throat tight and body needing more, more, more.
A tongue darts out to wet her lips before she responds, saying, "Don't need it."
His thumbs hook into the fabric of her pants, and she maintains eye contact with him the entire time, both of them intense and fired up and quite possibly really goddamn stupid. "You good, baby?"
Sora gasps. "Fuck," she breathes. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."
She repeats his name the entire time, and as they fight for dominance, Sora lets her lips linger a little too long right above his heart, hoping and praying that Rylin doesn't notice.
He does.
The day after, Rylin meets Claire and Adeena. They both approve and treat him out to lunch (she wasn't allowed to come), and when they drop him off at the ice rink to meet Sora, her boyfriend looks unusually dazed and a bit lost in his surroundings.
"What did they do to you?"
Rylin looks at her unsteadily and blows a cool breath out. "I think you're friends with murderers," he states solemnly. "Cold-blooded, terrifying murderers."
She laughs, but her boyfriend doesn't find it amusing. "You're such a brat," she tells him, and he scoffs and turns away.
"I guess I'm not buying you pad thai later, Ice Queen."
At this, Sora panics and grabs his arm to convince him to stay. "Wait," she protests, skates dangling in one hand. "Wait, I didn't mean it."
Her boyfriend pouts, and it looks so out of place that Sora reaches over and flicks his forehead to snap him out of it. "You're always so mean to me."
"Buy me pad thai and I'll be nicer," Sora promises, eyes sharp and lips glossy with strawberry-flavored balm. "Ready to skate?"
And they do. The two of them like to skate for fun occasionally whenever one of them has a particularly bad day, and Sora always treats them to a cup of hot chocolate. Rylin's hands feel absurdly comforting on her waist as he lifts her up, and Sora's favorite part is grinning back down at his face whenever he smoothly sets her back on the ice. They won't work, some people had said. They're both too intense. But maybe that's the exact reason why they fit like a magnet: Sora never has to slow her pace for Rylin to catch up, and her boyfriend doesn't have to keep his facade on when it's just the two of them alone. On Thursdays, it's an at-home movie night (oftentimes, they'll watch Disney movies with cheap, butter-flavored popcorn); On Fridays, it's an outdoors date; and on Tuesdays (fuck Tuesdays), the two of them just like to finish their homework together in silence sitting on the campus lawn, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Rylin is her best friend, and it should scare Sora should she ever lose him, but it doesn't. Not when he looks at her like this, not when he's there whenever she needs him, and—
And not when Sora Lee might (just might) be falling in love.
The busy life of a university student resumes after the weekend finishes, and Sora finds herself spending more time in the library than usual browsing over psychology books and printing her twenty-page outlines. The air outside holds a tint of blueberry sweetness and a salt-dusted ocean breeze, and it's one of her favorite scents as more people on campus prefer walking to quick destinations rather than driving. After exiting an extra-help session with her teacher's assistant who may or may not smoke a joint after each class, Sora sits on the stone steps outside the building and revels in the small moment of alone-time she's been gifted.
I have to visit my parents soon, Sora thinks, and feels guilty when she immediately brushes the idea away. Her mother and father don't have the best relationship between the two and alway fought over money, and Sora's always been too bold and entitled to sit back and watch quietly, so she often clashed over their traditional beliefs. But she's still their daughter and deep inside her mind, Sora knows that they just want what's best for her. She just needs—just needs room to make decisions using her own logic, even if it may be messy and sloppy and flawed. She's not some baby bird anymore where her wings were once too weak to work on their own, but Sora worries that her parents might protest that, too.
Spending time with Rylin keeps her on her toes and completely satisfied, if not desperate for more and longing to see him when they lose contact for a couple of days. It's just how they work: she doesn't feel the need to spend time with him every day, and Rylin isn't one to text her every few hours. At most, they'll go a week without contact, but college stress (and debt) is real, and so Sora always remembers that if everything else falls apart in her life, the relationship won't work out in the end.
She remembers that she's meeting Jonah and Eloise in half an hour, and Sora lets herself close her eyes for ten more minutes until she eventually gets up and heads over to the coffee shop Eloise works at. It's a quiet and cozy corner, and she takes in the leather seats and modern wooden tables with black-accented iron once more as she spots the soccer player in the corner. He waves her over, and Sora smiles as she sees his arm casually around Eloise and laughing at something she's saying, eyes crinkling at the corners.
Distantly, Sora wonders what she looks like when she's with Rylin. Does her boyfriend look at her like that, too?
"Sora," Eloise greets, and being the obnoxiously social person that she is, Sora reaches down and hugs Jonah's girlfriend like she's known her for all her life. When she pulls back, Eloise looks a bit shocked, but Jonah just grins and explains how the skater lacks personal manners.
She can't stop a grin from spreading across her face, because Eloise Park is just so damn cute (even if they're the same age), and she reminds Sora of a young chick that's waddling around nervously. Jonah isn't much help, either, and Sora easily spots the other girl's body relax as her boyfriend taps underneath her chin twice and murmurs something she can't make out from the other side of the table.
"He's a pain, right?" Sora complains with a roll of her eyes, gesturing to Jonah who falls back into his chair and acts like he's wounded. "You can tell me when he gets annoying," she says with a smile. "You're too good for him."
Jonah's mouth drops open. "You little—"
His girlfriend shoves him back down, and Sora hides a sneaky grin. So she does have some fire in her, she thinks. Good. "He's manageable," Eloise laughs, and Jonah looks up at her with soft puppy eyes, and she immediately caves as a hand brushes his hair and pushes the cloth headband out of the way.
"I like you," Eloise muses out, like it's rare for her to do so. Sora gets what she's saying—people piss her off, and eight out of ten are too annoying for her to deal with.
Sora laughs. "You're not too bad either," she admits, and they exchange phone numbers much to the protests of Jonah Kim, who eventually learns his place and sits back down with a muted sigh.
Eloise tells her of how they met (Jonah sat down at her table in the library and offered her Korean food), and it's just so Jonah-like that Sora laughs and teases both of them. If her and Rylin are burning fire, Eloise and Jonah are the easy tides, and the push and pull of them is so irresistible that Sora finds herself half in-love with Eloise when they depart (much to the dismay of Jonah, it seems).
They offer to drive her back to the dorms, but Sora declines and tells them that she honestly prefers to walk and clear her head, which is mostly true. She's afraid that being in the car and looking at them hold hands will make her miss Rylin's pretty little smirk and equally pretty beauty mark, and Sora makes a mental note to call him after dinner after not seeing him for nearly four days.
The Californian atmosphere lingers on territorial chaos, and Los Angeles in no exception: food trucks take up most of the free street space, urban clothing stores open their doors so that a wave of crisp air conditioner smacks Sora in the face every time she walks by, and string lights hang over palm trees delicately, as if bathing the entire strip in a muted, pearl-like glow. Sora purchases two fresh churros for herself (she tries to support local businesses as much as she can) and chews them slowly at the metal bench right outside while forcing herself to smile at the children passing by.
Sora Lee likes to eat just to pass time and to avoid the terrible distraction of schoolwork. If she could, she'd like to say that she'd much rather be a professional restaurant reviewer, but it's a clear shot in the dark. And Rylin makes fun of her every time she brings it up, even though he doesn't really mean it and that afterwards, he tells her that she'll excel in everything she'll accomplish.
When she finishes the sugary snack, she finds herself walking home and thinking of Eloise and Jonah while wishing them nothing but the best.
Does Rylin look at me that way, too?
It's nearly midnight when she forgets that she was supposed to call him, and Sora feels a surge of carefully-wrapped disappointment present itself to her heart. She swears she'll get better at it, but they both seem to lack the constant urge to text or call, and so sometimes she gets a bit down despite the fire singing in her blood.
But on the positive side, Sora managed to finally finish that essay for psych, and now she has all the free time in the world until Monday, where hell week starts all over again—
Her cell phone rings, and for once, Sora's thankful that her roommate can sleep through an entire tsunami and never wake up as she slides her thumb across the green button and accepts his call.
She doesn't say anything at first (just to toy with him), but by now, Rylin Carter is well aware of her games and laughs breathily through the line, successfully making her heart beat out of her chest. "Hi," Rylin murmurs, and Sora sighs as her eyes close. She's not loud or brave right now, and in the solitude of the four walls surrounding her, she shivers as his voice hits home.
Taking a breath, she says, "I—"
But Rylin cuts her off. "I missed you today," he admits. "Fuck, I really missed you today."
Sora sits up straight and stretches her neck, back aching from the ball of stress and deadlines. Rylin doesn't usually say things like these, and when he does, it's either when he's had a bad day or he's intoxicated.
"Are you drunk?" Sora whispers. "Because, you know, if you are, that's really rude of you. You can't just tell me that I can't get tipsy without you there and then go have fun by yourself!"
Her boyfriend scoffs through the phone, and it's times like these where Sora wishes she had an off-switch on her mouth so she doesn't spew all of the shit stirring in her brain. "You're cute right now, baby, but I'm not drunk. Sorry to disappoint."
"I know, I know," Sora mutters, playing with her fingers. "I'm dumb." A pause. "I missed you too."
He laughs. "Sometimes," Rylin admits, "but I'm even dumber for not calling you earlier, so it's fine."
As his midnight voice lulls her to sleep, Sora realizes that even though Rylin may not look at her the way Jonah looks at Eloise, her boyfriend makes up for it in other ways—like right now.
"Goodnight, Ice Queen," Rylin Carter says into the phone at one o'clock in the morning. "Come back to me soon, okay?"
Okay, her heart responds. I'll always come back.