4. First Attempt

Stanley’s peaceful, sleeping face welcomed me to the new morning.  Though I was still a little groggy, his perfect features had a mesmerizing effect on me as my eyes slowly took it all in for my brain to digest.

His golden-brown hair was messy and needed a little trimming.  Although, the way some of the silk-like threads dangled on his forehead had it’s certain charm.  His nose had a high, slender bridge and his lips were thin and inviting.  I should really smack myself for even thinking this, but it wouldn’t make any difference – Stanley Rayver was hot.  He was like a work of art walking around in two feet, perfectly alive and real.  I could imagine about a million girls dying to be where I was. 

So, should I say I’m lucky?

I shook my head and sat up on the bed.  Clearly, anyone could tell that I wasn’t a morning person.  My brain was malfunctioning and I needed a doctor.  A nice blow to send me spiraling back to reality would probably work too.  Anything to help this head of mine realize that I was slowly losing it.

Careful that I don’t wake him, I slid out of the covers and walked towards the bathroom.  I scowled at the reflection that was staring back at me.  I looked even more horrible than I did yesterday.

After washing my face, I walked back into the bedroom and found him sitting on the bed.  I tried my best to hide my fascination when he looked at me.  His green eyes sparkled and his skin seemed almost translucent as the sunlight coming out of the window curtains hit his face.  He looked like an angel compared to me.

“Good morning.”  His voice was like smooth silk.  How could anyone sound so good in the morning?

“M-Morning.”  Mine, on the other hand, sounded like there was something stuck in my throat.  Pathetic.

I walked towards one of the chairs and sat down.  “What do we do now?”  It was out of curiosity that I asked.

“Well…”  He shifted his whole body to face me.  Damn, he looked sexy.  “First, we eat breakfast downstairs and then we continue going south.”

“And where are we going, exactly?”

He stared at me in the eyes and smiled.  There was definitely something going on in his head.

“You’re not even going to tell me that?”

“I don’t think I want to tell you.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

“I deserve to know.”

“No you don’t.”

“This is kidnapping.”

“No it’s not.”

“You have to give me some clue here.”

“I don’t want to.”

Maybe because I’ve had enough sleep that I didn’t feel like ripping his head off.  It actually surprised me that I wasn’t irritated at all.  Instead, my mind was trying to think of a way to get some useful answers out of him.

I sighed when after a minute or so of staring at the floor I came up with no witty idea.  “Fine.”  I raised both my hands in the air and slumped in the chair.  “You know what?  I give up.”

He gave me a scrutinizing look.  “That easy?”  He looked like he was thinking.  A few seconds, he grinned.  “We’re going to our rest house in the southern mountains.”

I wasn’t really expecting him to say anything.  My lack of a good plan actually worked.

“Rest house?”  If anything, the information only made me feel more confused.  Why the heck were we going to their rest house?  What was I supposed to do there?  He’s not planning on anything irrational now, was he?  “Why?”

His grin only widened.  Gah.

“Oh, come on!  Don’t tell me you plan to shut that mouth of yours now?!  It’s a crime to leave someone hanging like this!”

“By crime do you mean that I could go to jail?”  He was teasing.

I rolled my eyes.  I thought I was past getting irritated by him, but obviously, I wasn’t.  “You know what I mean.”  I glared.  “You can’t just answer one of a hundred questions a get away with it.  And messing with someone’s head is a crime too.”

“Stop making up you own list of violations.”  He laughed.  “Now, tell me, how am I messing with your head?”  I could tell that by then that he was practically sitting at the edge of the bed.  What I didn’t get was why he was suddenly curious.

“I’m not telling you.”

“Okay then.”  He was silent for a few seconds.  “Why don’t we have a deal?”

I arched an eyebrow.  It seemed impossible for me to understand how his head works.

“I answer one of your questions and then you answer one of mine.”

What could he possibly want to know about me?  I thought I was supposed to be the one who’s clueless.

“Only if I get to ask the first question.”

He stood up.  “Fair enough.”  I watched him as he crossed the room towards the door in three graceful strides.

As if on cue, my stomach gave a loud rumble, voicing out its complaint.  Shut up you stupid organ! I scolded in thought, crossing my arms over it in embarrassment.  How could I not notice I was hungry?

Stanley laughed heartily.  At least he seemed to be enjoying himself with my humiliation.

I glared.

Slowly, his hysterics became mere snickers.  “First, I think we should we should feed that monster of yours.”  He pointed at my stomach as he tried to control his enjoyment.

He opened the door and stepped out of the room still quivering like an idiot.  I was hungry!  Was it supposed to be that funny?!  It wasn’t like stomachs have built-in silencers with them.

I practically stomped my way out.  I slammed the door behind me before following him to the elevators.

 

Breakfast was extremely quiet, to say the least.  He did agree to let me ask the first question, but he still insisted that I eat first before I bombard him with them.  Seriously, he acted like he was my babysitter or something.  Although, I really couldn’t argue at that point.  I felt so hungry I wasn’t even able to utter one word between spoonfuls of food.  I could only imagine how I looked – like some homeless person who wasn’t able to touch food in a week.  (No offense to the homeless people.)

The weather was still as gloomy as I stared at the blur of trees which was the only thing I could see because of his unbelievably-fast driving.  Like he said, we were still heading south to his family’s rest house.  At the moment, I was slowly formulating my first question.

“I thought you’d be all around me by now.”  He grinned, his eyes still on the road.  “You know, with your questions.”

I sighed.  Honestly, I just didn’t know where to start.

“You have no idea what to ask first.”  How many more of his annoying statements did he actually have?

Actually, the problem was how many more of it I could take.  “Could you please stop it with those statements?!  Sheesh!  It’s creeping me out.”

“You’re going to waste your first question on that?”  Stanley laughed.  “The answer is ‘no’.”

S**t.  Why did I always have to say something before thinking about it?  I thought it was supposed to be the other way around – much like that ‘think before you act’ thing.  Then again, maybe the problem’s with me…

He took my silence as a lack of disapproval.  After all, it wasn’t like he tricked me into wasting my turn.  Or did he?  Ugh.  With him, I couldn’t be too sure of anything.

“My turn.”  His grin widened. 

Again I say – what could he possibly want to know about me?

“Let see now…”  For a second he looked like he was thinking.  “Ah.  I have always wondered.  Why do you hate blue so much?”

Both my eyebrows rose.  “Blue, as in the color blue?”  Seriously?  And he mocked me for asking such a – quote and quote – ‘stupid’ question.

He nodded.

“Well, I just don’t like it.  Do I really need a reason to hate a color?”

He laughed.  “You wasted your turn again, genius.”

S**t again.  Maybe I should consider the possibility that he is tricking me into asking such useless questions.

“Hey, not fair!  I was just answering your question.  That shouldn’t count!”  I felt like a child arguing my right to watch late-night shows on the television.

He laughed again.  Was I really that amusing?  “You could’ve said ‘I don’t need a reason to hate a color’ instead of asking.  It’s not my fault you find it more convenient to ask things instead of stating them.”

“Fine.  Be that way.”  I slumped in defeat.

He remained silent longer than I expected.  I actually thought he wasn’t going to ask me anything anymore – which would mean a dead end for me and my curiosity – and was about to try to demand another question out of him when he suddenly spoke.

“Do you…”  He shook his head.  I could tell that he was hesitating.   “Is there anything bothering you?”

At this point, I got confused.  “Bothering me?”

He glanced at me before answering.  “That’s another question.”

I grumbled and rolled my eyes.  “Just answer it, Rayver.”  There was really no point in trying to keep up with this ‘deal’ slash ‘game’ of his.  As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t really working – I still got no more knowledge than I did before I first opened my big mouth.

He sighed.  “Fine.  I asked if there was anything you wanted to ask me – anything that could be bothering you.”

My brain went on instant overdrive.  Was there really something I wanted to ask him?  Something that bugged me that I really, really, really wanted to know?

It was then that it hit me.

I finally realized that half of the questions I wanted to ask him were only a result of a single worry that had been nagging me since yesterday.  That was why I didn’t know what to ask him first when it had been my turn to voice out my curiosity.

It was neither our destination nor his odd behavior that really bothered me.  No.

It was…

All of a sudden the car jerked violently like it had been hit by a big boulder.  My head spun at the sudden impact of my body with the dashboard.

“Cameron!  Are you okay?!”  I could barely make out the sound of Stanley’s worried voice as he pressed on the accelerator.

“What was that?!” I demanded.  I only saw a blur of the big, animal-like body that had been the source of the impact.  “Did you hit something on the road?”

He shook his head.  I could tell that he was biting his lower lip as he concentrated on the steep and sharp curves.

“Then what was that?!”  I was getting really irritated by the way that he had always refused to give me a straight answer.  “Look.  Whether you accept it or not, I still deserve an explanation – especially the one including the reason why you are now driving over two hundred kilometers per hour.”  I wouldn’t have believed it myself that I was capable of calm if not for that moment.

He turned his attention to me, still perfectly driving through the snake-like, dirt path.  “This isn’t the right time, Cameron.  It’s not safe.  We have to get to our rest house first.”

“Why is it not safe?”

He looked back at the road.

“I’m still playing, Rayver.  Why is it not safe?” I repeated my question, this time stressing it through gritted teeth.

His eyes flashed back to me with pure anger.  They looked like they were literally burning with fury.  “Playing?!”  His jaw clenched.  “Damn it Cameron!  This would be the last place you’d want to play.  I told you, it’s not safe!”

“And I asked why?!”

He turned at a sharp curve, not even stepping on the brakes.  It sent me leaning against the locked door of the passenger seat.  My eyes caught sight of a blurry image of the animal-like thing again.  It might’ve even been two.  I wasn’t sure.

“This isn’t the time for explanations!”  It was the first time I had even seen him so angry.  He looked like he was ready to kill.

My hands were shaking but I wasn’t about to lose another argument with him.

I was about to snap back when the car hit something again, this time with more force.  I bowed my head at the dashboard and clutched at anything I could get my hands on.  The trees’ branches scrapped at the windows as the car swerved to avoid whatever it was that it kept on hitting.

Stanley was swearing amidst the continuous, loud banging that shook his expensive convertible.  Whatever was… attacking us was doing one hell of a good job.  But what thing could possibly keep up with a car running at more than two hundred kilometers per hour?

Some questions are really better left unanswered ‘cause I instantly regretted wondering about something so trivial when a figure of a big, brown bear appeared out of nowhere in front of the car.

I wasn’t really sure if it was a bear that suddenly jumped on top of the hood, crushing it like a bulldozer.  It was at least three times bigger than the average bears sighted at the southern mountains.  Its eyes were bigger than an owl's and they glowed an ominous red.  I could tell by its loud roar and practically glaring eyes that it was angry.  Yes, angry, not hungry.

The scene was pretty much like a nightmare coming to life.

“Cameron!”  Stanley was on top of me before I could even digest what was happening.  I only assumed that the ‘bear’ was about to attack again.

The last thing I heard was the windshield breaking.  At that time, I couldn’t even bring myself to scream.  I could feel Stanley’s arms around me, covering me protectively.

Why?  I really wanted to ask.  But then, my brain shut me down before I could even try.