Read Cristal - Novella for Free Online Page B

greyish brown. It wasn’t the
aesthetics of the interior that made her stomach queasy. It was the
strange feeling of someone or something watching her every time she
was in the building.
    As if sensing her unease, Kerim reached out
and touched her arm. She glared at him and brushed his hand away
from her. You hardly know me Mr. Ilgaz. Don't even pretend you
understand what I'm feeling.
    The elevator finally arrived, creaking and
squeaking as the door opened. She stepped in quickly and pressed
the button. Kerim walked in and stood beside her. His gaze was
unmistakably all on her.  She fidgeted with the strap on her
backpack.
    Don't get distracted. Good-looking guys
think that they can melt a girl's heart just by throwing her a
little attention. You've been burned before.
    Her thoughts brought flashbacks of her final
year at Global Nation University. She had just finished tutoring
Mikael, her infatuation at the time, for their final exam. During
the tutoring session, he surprised her by asking her out for
dinner. Of course when she told Harry about her big date, he had
made a sarcastic remark saying that Mikael was a dumb shmuck only
out for one thing. She remembered telling Harry to butt out of her
love life in not so many words. Harry couldn’t understand her then
and certainly didn’t understand her now. Unfortunately, the date
ended up being a disaster just as Harry had predicted. Mikael did only want one thing.
    After a breathtaking kiss and some fondling
under her shirt, Mikael whispered in her ear, “Hey, could you write
my final term paper after this?”
    And that was the end of her twenty-minute
relationship with hunky Mikael.
    Kerim chuckled quietly to himself, jolting
Cristal back to the present.
    She raised an eyebrow and shot him a
glare.
    “What’s so funny?”
    He looked down at his boots, obviously
struggling to keep from breaking into uncontrollable laughter.
    “Nothing. I was just thinking of a girl I
once knew,” he managed to choke out between laughs.
    The elevator lurched to a stop, the doors
sliding open. Cristal took the opportunity to exit first and keep
her distance from him. Okay so maybe he wasn’t laughing at her. But
it reminded her of how awful she felt when kids taunted and laughed
at her in grade school. Even after all these years, she still felt
awkward and different. No matter how sophisticated she had become,
she knew she was still a geek through and through. She preferred a
good book to a night out clubbing. She liked hacking into secure
networks just for the fun of it. She never understood why girls her
age enjoyed shopping and hanging out at the mall. All these things
meant that she didn't have many girl friends to hang out with. This
was who she was and no amount of de-nerdifying her was going to
change anything.
    Kerim followed Cristal a few steps behind as
they walked down the dark hallway. She could hear his soft chuckles
and the crackle of old incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling,
the only other sound accompanying their footsteps. Even though he
irritated her, she felt a sense of calm knowing he was
there. He felt like someone familiar to her. And it didn’t
hurt to have someone around because this place definitely gave her
the creeps.
    Finally, they reached Gabriel’s apartment
door. She glanced up at Kerim briefly before knocking. He winked
back at her.
    The door squeaked and she turned towards it.
It opened a crack, before swinging wide open. An unshaven Gabriel,
his dreadlocks tied up in a short ponytail, greeted her. He had his
usual goofy grin on his face, but she could see that his dark brown
eyes were reddened, probably from hours spent on the computer.
Dressed in a worn grey bathrobe, T-shirt, and jogging pants, he
looked like he must have been playing another “all-nighter.”
    Cristal opened her mouth to speak at the
exact moment when Kerim, standing behind her, coughed loudly.
Gabriel’s eyes widened, his smile quickly disintegrating into a
grim line.