Spark

5 - DNA

My Tears Ricochet - Taylor Swift

"Do you like the colour blue?" He asked, grinning at me, dimples creating deep slits in his cheeks. He accompanied this question with a raise of the blue palette.

I stared at it. It was a pretty colour and I found my fingers reaching out to touch it. There were so many shades too but I didn't like it as much as I liked the yellow he'd shown me. When he raised it and did that rare toothy smile of his, I was immediately reminded of my SpongeBob analogy of him. It was perfect.

I looked down at the mess beneath us. All the palettes laid down on his front porch, each one clinging to the other. And then I found the yellow, sticking out like it knew I'd been searching for it and I grabbed it. I raised it and smiled and I watched his face assess mine as I smiled. It was one of the few times he'd gotten serious and started eyeing me out of the blue.

His gaze fell to the yellow in my hand and his smile returned-smaller this time, quieter than mine. He grabbed it from me and raised his brow.

"Yellow then?" He asked.

I nodded and he dropped the blue and pushed the rest of the colours away, focusing only on the yellow.

"I like blue," He confessed sheepishly. "What do you think Blue and Yellow make?"

I shrugged.

We got messy making green.

×××

"Just kiss already." Morgan whispers into my ear, catching me off guard as I attempt to pry my eyes away from Miles.

I jolt back in shock, my hand instinctively clinging to my chest as I turn to glare at her. "Can you not do that?"

"Can you and Miles stop being all silly and childish and get together already?"

I glare at her so hard, I put my eyes in danger of bulging out of their sockets. "Can you not put both of our names in the same sentence ever again?"

She makes a face with an irked brow. "Why are you speaking like that?"

Shaking my head, I turn away from her and make my way towards the library to review the new materials gotten in chemistry today.

"You can't walk away." She states, putting my steps to a halt.

Doing a one-eighty, I stare at her and raise a brow. "And why not?"

"We're having a conversation?" She says in what makes it seem like the most obvious thing ever. "I know the whole social interaction thing is new to you but you've been seeing people do it. How are you so shit at it?"

Someone else might find that offensive.

"I know the whole teaching thing is new to you but you're supposed to be really supportive." I bite back with the same tone.

I watch as she gently bites down on her tongue before stretching her lips into a huge smile. "It's going to happen and you know it."

"What's going to happen?" I inquire, full on staring at her once again.

She takes a couple of steps closer and grins even wider than I thought humanly possible while looking so ridiculously pretty, I thought I might trip over my own self. "You'll know when it does," She winks at me. "Conversation over. Now, you can go."

"You're lucky I like you." I playfully call out after her retreating back.

She lets out a howl and turns back to look at me. "You love me."

×××

I scurry into biology ten minutes after the class had started, a bundle of nerves with limbs made of jelly. I hate being late to a class. There's that brief moment when everyone turns their attention to you and I don't like that sort of attention. It makes me squirm and attempt to deliver my lunch in a disgusting fashion.

My lunch timer had not gone off and I'd been so engrossed with the work I was doing that it took me looking up to find the library empty and the librarian sternly glaring at me to scramble out of my seat and messily attempt to catch up.

I let out the most difficult to hear apology before scuttling to my seat.

Ms.Chen mutters about tardy kids before grabbing her safety goggles from her desk. I look around at that moment and notice everyone else is dressed in labcoats with safety goggles on.

I scramble out of my seat, feeling more disorganised and nervous than I'd been when I stumbled in. I'm struggling to shove my hand into the extremely large labcoat that's been left behind when the arm gets lifted for me.

I turn my neck to see Colton smiling down at me, his hand gripping the large lab coat by the folded collar.

I blink for a few seconds, fathoming what's happening when he says, "Any day now."

I let out a quiet "Right" before slipping my arm into the sleeve. Like I expected, it envelops me completely and it looks more like a safety hazard to be walking round the laboratory like this rather than a safety precaution.

I spot Colton letting out a quiet chuckle before I grab the goggles from the rack next to the lab coats.

"Thank you." I tell him, approaching my table once more.

"Do you want to work together?" He asks outright, joining me at my table.

I pause and stare at him. It's terrible that my first conclusion is that he's joking. He certainly must be. Wanting to work with me? Why would he?

I nibble on my bottom lip and look up at him. "I don't even know what we're doing."

"That's fine," He says, stretching to grab the equipments he'd previously grabbed from his desk adjacent to mine. He places them in an orderly fashion on my desk and turns to smile at me once more. "Extracting the DNA from an onion."

"Fun." I mutter under my breath.

"Should be." He says, grabbing a tiny onion and forceps.

×××

I completely forget about how much of a nervous wreck I am the whole time we're doing the experiment. I'd never had to do anything with Colton before so I never had conversations with him. But he's such an easy person to deal with. He knew what he was doing the whole time and when I got confused or stuck, he took the time explaining why and how we're doing that particular thing. I'm not terrible at any of my subjects but the practical aspects are not my best suit.

He almost made me glad I walked into class late.

"Oh shit," He laughs when we're done with the experiment and mid-way through packing up our equipment. "I don't know your name."

Reality. We'd been so engrossed with our experiment together that I'd forgotten we'd never actually introduced ourselves to each other properly.

"Starr." I say sheepishly, avoiding eye contact. I fidget with the arm of the ginormous lab coat instead.

"Star?" He echoes wrongly. It's pleasing to know if someone read out a sentence like 'Starr likes stars,' I'd easily pick out my name from that.

I grin. "It's Starr, with two rs at the end."

"Oh, Starr." He exclaims, realization dawning on him. "That's a cool name. I'm Colton."

Heat creeps up my neck and spreads across my face at his compliment.

I'm still staring down when I notice his outstretched hand. I momentarily look up and see him gazing at me expectantly. He wants to shake hands? Over sharing names?

I hesitantly slip my hand into his and he grips it. Tightly but softly. A blend of the two. In the only right way. A hiccup forces it way out my mouth at that moment and I see him chuckle once more as he releases my hand.

The heat behind my cheeks intensifies.