9

The six ungodly hours of school flew by after I met Mila.

I used to hate school, I went to extremes to be excluded and after her I couldn't think of anything worse. I thought of it as pure hell, not being able to see the person that was keeping me focused; keeping me sane. Even back then, Mila was my one source of survival.

The entirety of my Sunday consisted of me racking my brains for a date fit for her. I thought about the soppy shit like picnics, the arcade; a spring walk, but they were all predictable. I could not bear to be predictable with Mila.

After a joint and a hardcore munchies session, I somehow decided to open my emails. And bingo. An advertisement for the type of date Mila would never forget.

The hardest part was tracking her down at school and convincing her to still come. Come fifth period, I finally found her lounging on the field with Nadiya. She was never easy to locate, that girl, whenever I wanted her she was always far far away.

"There you are!" I breathed out, wiping the layer of sweat from my forehead. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

Nadiya rolled her eyes and covered her face with her hair from the sun.

"Just making you work for it." Mila sat up and shaded her eyes so that she could see me better. I stepped in the way of its gleam to make it easier for her.

"So, how bout that date, Nikolaev?"

"You really don't give up, do you?" Her chin pointed to the sky, letting the rays reflect off of her now golden-kissed skin.

"Nope."

Mila sighed and stood up. "Okay, go on, gimme a date and time."

"I'll pick you up at seven tonight. What's your address?"

It had to be that night, I couldn't give her any more time to reconsider.

Mila's back straightened. There was no mistaking the body language. She was uncomfortable and, fuck, did I hate it. I wanted my Mila glowing, happy, and the pure bundle of joy she usually was. I wasn't sure back then what it was that worried her, so I just ignorantly ignored it.

"Erm, I won't be home later," she mumbled.

"Right..." I looked at her funny. "Where will you be?"

That's when Nadiya peaked through her crispy bleached hair at Mila scratching the back of her head - begging for an excuse. Looking back, I respect Nadiya a lot more for what she did for Mila - she was a good friend.

"Pick her up at mine." She plonked her head back down with a disgruntled sound, leaving Mila and me to it.

"See you at seven." I left her awkwardly playing with the daisy chain she had fashioned around her wrist.

***

I pulled up outside Nadiya's house at six. Don't laugh at me, I know it's pathetic, but I was so excited.

After I got home from school I spent the next three hours trying to choose an outfit. At first, I put on a suit, then I tried out a pair of joggers, and then I settled for my trusty black skinny jeans. Even though Mila was practically summer moulded in the shape of a person, I know she liked my more monochromatic fashion choices. We were polar opposites on the surface, but underneath we were the same... scarily so.

In the end, I flung on a grey stretched tee and skipped down to the garage to steal my dads' car. I needed to make this girl swoon, so naturally I searched on google for "ways to make a girl obsessed with you". It said that you have to have a car and give them flowers... all that soppy malarkey.

When I arrived at Nadiya's house, I rang the doorbell and Mrs Ostrowoski opened the door with a glowing smile.

"Hiya, sweetheart," she beamed up at me.

"Evening, ma'am," I dropped my head and smirked at my dirty Converses. "I'm here to pick up Mila."

Mrs Ostrowoski tightly wrapped her silk robe around her body, as if it was hiding anything, and called over her shoulder for Mila. "Such a handsome boy," she then muttered under her breath quickly as Mila approached.

Air ceased to exist.

Not that it was anything special.

I didn't need air to survive, I needed to see that girl during every waking second instead. She was my equivalent to oxygen.

"Hey." Mila pressed her freshly balmed lips together and I was thankful, if she left them plump and parted like normal, I would have already pinned her up against the wall. She was divine, exquisite, an absolute goddess.

Was I a fool to believe she was just as excited about this date as I was? It showed in her appearance. Mila was always beautiful, but that day I realised she may have been the most beautiful girl in the world. She was wearing a white dress with the type of neckline that swept across her shoulders loosely, barely hanging on to the smooth skin. Her gold necklaces hung in a layered assortment around her neck, matching her earrings and rings - oh and that hair.

Mila, I loved your hair so much.

Frizzy, but so silky. Her baby hairs stuck up in all sorts of angles and that day it was wilder than ever - it must have been the humidity. I later came to find out that she had showered twice out of nerves, and had sweated through two outfits. Luckily, she packed five.

"Wow," was all I could say.

It made her shy, and oh how I loved being the one to make Mila shy.

"I didn't know the dress code," she whispered, brushing the creases out of her cotton dress.

"Fuck dress codes." It's not like she stuck to them anyway. "I like your..." My eyes landed on her feet and I gulped. "Shoes."

Basically, I looked at her sandals and then completely forgot about them once I saw the small gold ring around her second toe. That shit was so fucking hot, I could barely think about anything else for the entire journey.

"I didn't know you drove..." Mila said after waving goodbye to Nadiya's mum - who incidentally hadn't stopped checking out my ass. "You seem like the grizzly motorbike type." She lived for teasing me.

"It's actually a vital part of this date. Without it, we would be screwed."

Mila slipped into the front seat, her ivory legs tightly squished together even in the grand space of my father's Hyundai. "I'm intrigued." She grinned over at me.

"You're going to love it."

I was so scared that I was setting her standards too high but I now know that anything was enough for Mila. I could have taken her to the woods and made her build a cabin from scratch and she would have been ecstatic.

***

Friday nights at the drive-in were just an excuse for teenagers to run riot, eat a shit ton of unhealthy food, sniff some coke off the dash of their friends' pick-up truck, and have some steamy sex in the back of a car like that one scene in Titanic.

When the weather was nice, the energy there was immaculate.

I took Mila there for one reason, and it surprisingly had nothing to do with wanting to get into her pants. See, I already knew Mila pretty well. I knew she probably had an entire draw full of self-crocheted clothes - a habit she picked up because... well... she's Mila. I knew that out of all music in the world she probably listened to some unknown indie band that still played out of their parent's garage. Oh, and I knew for sure that her favourite movies were those cheesy ones made in the fifties. And It just so happens that Pillow Talk was playing that night.

"A drive-in?" she gasped so sweetly as I parked up. "I've never been to one of these..."

I laughed at how huge and twinkly her eyes had turned. "You've never been to the movies?"

"I've been to the movies, silly, just never a drive-in. I don't have a car."

I turned my body in the seat and just stared at her for a moment. Nervous Mila really gave me a kick.

"Let me guess... You don't own a car because they pollute the environment and stop you from getting your twenty-thousand steps in, which stops you from breathing in the crisp spring air?"

There was that beautiful chuckle again. "Yeah, something like that..."

She was the most mysterious open book. If that's even possible.

We headed for the snack kiosk first and, after a lot of arguing, Mila let me buy her extra large cherry cola and a pack of sour patch kids. Again, I knew her too well. The girl lived and breathed sugar.

I ignored the seven boys on the way back to the car who were clearly enthralled by her, and instead of caving in their faces, I chose to focus on our date. I was capable of extreme violence, believe me. If there was one thing I was absolutely sure of, it was that if someone touched Mila, they would pay.

"What you doing?" I asked her as she went to climb back into the passenger side. She turned around with a confused look but grinned once I opened up the boot. "Wow, you really haven't been to one of these."

My housekeeper helped me make the boot-up. It was filled with the duvets from the spare rooms and a bunch of pillows and blankets to make it extra cosy. As I said, it's not that I was only thinking about sleeping with Mila, but if she suddenly decided she wanted to, I wanted to make it comfortable for her.

I'd grown soft in my old age.

The movie played, it was diabolical, but she seemed to love it which was the main thing. Problem was, I couldn't go five minutes without talking to her.

"So..." I smirked at her lying down next to me. She inevitably sighed as it was the twelfth time I'd interrupted the film. "Your boyfriend mind that I've whisked you away on this crappy date?"

She was confused; I knew she would be. I just used it as an excuse to tease her.

"I don't have a boyfriend. If you're talking about Taehyung he's only taking me to prom, that's it. And this isn't a crappy date. In fact, it's the best date I've been on."

"The only date you've been on..." I corrected.

"Suck a dick, Jeon," she snapped, raising one of her fine brows. "I don't go on dates because I don't trust boys."

"And why is that?"

"Because most of them are absolute nutters that drag me into equipment sheds, follow me around parties, and sleep with the entire student body thinking it's going to woo me."

Her snarky smile made my dick hard.

The car was becoming deathly hot. The type of hot that told me in approximately two minutes we would be cosplaying Jack and Rose in the back of that Renault Coupe de Ville. She was insanely attractive when irritated, and it made me want to push her buttons even more.

"Damn, yeah those kinds of guys are the worst..." I let my smirk fall slack, a trick that worked with every girl except Mila, apparently. "But does it not impress you? A guy doing everything in his power to try and win you over?"

The air shifted and the golden skin around Mila's neck quivered as she gulped.

"Everything?" she questioned. "I think one can do a lot more than everything to impress a girl."

She was indirecting me. I suppose my everything previously consisted of playing with her. I was a fuck-up, but I was working on it.

"Oh yeah?" I rolled closer to her. "What more can a guy do, Nikolaev?"

Our breaths mingled and suddenly all I could think about was leaning forward and kissing her. Not the dirty kind of kissing, the passionate kind, the sweet kind... our kind.

"I don't know..." I thought she'd lose her edge in the close quarters, but Mila wasn't like most girls. "Maybe guys should stop letting cheerleaders grind on their dicks in the middle of libraries. Maybe guys should stop bending the same cheerleaders over the bed at house parties." She could have gone on forever, so I nipped her little speech in the bud.

"Jealous, are we?"

"Yes."

That's when I lost my edge. In fact, I lost my cool too. I was speechless. I was never speechless. It wasn't in my DNA to be speechless. If Mila was jealous, that means she cared about me, and if she cared about me, that means she liked me. And if she liked me, I was about to implode.

"Well, you were about to give that Jimin guy a blowy."

I expected her to scrunch up her nose cutely in embarrassment, but no. She just lifted her chin cockily and smiled.

"Mmm, I did, didn't I..."

Was she fucking reminiscing?

"Yeah, none of that, thank you." I clicked my tongue out of annoyance.

"Jealous?" She grinned.

"Outrageously so."

"Good."

Slowly, I found myself hovering over her body as she stared up at me with those round eyes. Her breathing became unsteady and I knew she was seconds away from giving in.

I could have stayed like that forever.

"You know... I think this is going to be a really good summer, Mila." I lifted her back so it arched against me. "And I think you need to let me kiss you sooner than later so we can both stop this will they won't they crap." I couldn't resist, she was too magnetic. I let my lips touch her neck, only lightly, just so I could feel her rapid little heartbeat hammering away.

Her gasp was like music to my ears.

Eventually, her hand met my chest, as expected, and she lightly pushed. She had a cheeky smile on her face and I couldn't help but sigh.

"I know." My forehead met her collar. "I've gotta prove myself... blah blah blah."

Mila giggled and the sounds vibrated through my body. I melted.

"You don't have to prove yourself." My head shot up, my tongue almost falling out of my mouth like an excited puppy. "I already know you're crackers about me."

My jaw dropped. Mila Mila Mila, you always surprised me.

"Woah, where has this newfound confidence come from today?" I rolled off of her and watched as her round cheeks turned scarlet.

She shrugged and rubbed her bare arm.

"Maybe if you stopped and really spoke to me you would pick up these traits of mine. You would get to know me better..."

"I'm more tuned into you than you think," I blurted out far too quickly to sound even remotely sexy.

Newsflash, I was batshit crazy about her.

"Oh yeah," her brow raised. "What's my favourite colour?"

What's my favourite colour? I remember mimicking her in my head. It was the most stupid, inane, unnecessary question that she could have made me answer. How ridiculous, how annoying, how utterly irrelevant...

"Burnt orange." Okay, so I lied. Everything was relevant with Mila down to that freakin' peppermint lip balm she wore.

I didn't think her eyes could open any wider. "How did you know that?" She sat up on her knees and stared down at me in shock.

Because I knew you better than you knew yourself, baby.

"You should really know that I'm not going to stop, Nikolaev," I said, resting my hands behind my head and starving her of my eye contact. "I'm in this now for the long haul. I want you too bad to ever give up."

She was speechless - I'm guessing - I didn't open my eyes to check, but I bet she was smiling out of pure disbelief. She always loved how cocky I was. And I think that was the moment she caved - that was the moment she realised that I wasn't some high school dickhead with behavioural problems and no ambition.

Boy, did I have ambition. It was newfound, yes, but I did have it. My one passion was her. My dream in life was winning her. My future was her.

"Carry on what you're doing, Jeon," she whispered in what she thought was a pitch too quiet for me to hear.

***

A/N

What do you guys think? Long time no see. I kinda lost my groove with this story because I've left it so long. I will see it till the end though.

I love JK and Mila. Like love love.

This is unedited and a bit disjointed but slay.

He's looking far too grown up recently.