Aspen Grace had beautiful eyes

Aspen Grace had beautiful eyes; inexplicable and intricate. They were murky brown, like quicksand that could pull you in, churn you up and then spit you out, dirty and robbed. They had those golden specks, the one that you found in your everyday butterscotch ice cream. You would want more and more just to taste those crumbs on your tongue.

Now don’t even ponder about her eyelashes, they were the kind you could fall in love with. As for Aspen Grace, they were her hiding place, whether she was shy or just scared of the ugly truths of the world, she would just hide under those eyelashes and slowly peek around to find Logan so she could fix her eyes there. And goddammit if that didn’t drive him crazy.

It was a lot to take in, her eyes. No, you wouldn’t be able to study that crystal perfection in one look. It took years to note every crook of that masterpiece, but years were what Logan had. More than what he wanted in fact. Falling for his best friend was not a priority on his list, but now she was all his list was made up.

But those eyes? I say they were useless; they couldn’t see the way Logan felt about her, even if it was written on his forehead with a neon felt tip pen.

Quite literally.

“What is that?” Aspen laughed, pointing at his slightly summer tanned forehead.

Logan scrunched his face, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Of course.

“Crap. What does it say?”

The smile on Aspen’s face grew wider, the left side a little more. He knew this smile well, like he knew every other expression she carried: It was the cheeky kind. “If you must know, it reads ‘Aspen heart heart’.”

Oh, fuck you, Alex.

“Does not.” Logan said, shaping his mouth into a little ‘o’, aggressively hoping it would hide the blush that would creep into his face any minute. The shimmering lights in Alex’s backyard weren’t much of a problem. Logan had grown up with those lights after all, since Alex was his best bud ever since… well, forever.

Aspen Grace threw her head back and laughed, snaking an arm around his waist and poking his face from the side. He loved it when she did that, especially since he was taller by about an inch and she would have to tilt her head all the way up to see his face.

“Oh Logan, we need to find you a girl tonight, so Alex would at least leave me out of his pranks.”

At this Logan snorted, his grip tightening about the plastic red cup in his hands. “Yeah, I’m beginning to think he loves you more than I do.”

Logan’s eyes suddenly grew wide, realizing what he had let slip, but later realized how utterly un-necessary that was, considering Aspen didn’t seem to notice at all.

She was, instead, running across the crowd of people the moment she saw Melanie enter the red cup party. Logan tossed his alcohol cup to the nearest bin. He could do without another for tonight.

Author: Aishanee Pattnaik

Aishanee is an alchemical engineer. Read her miscellany of extraordinarily vivid short stories and sketches at her blog, where this story was first published.