Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mad Eye Touz 
"And three....," Aspen pulled her hand back from his hair and clasped it on top of his, making his hand the meat in an Aspen hand sandwich, "... I missed you."
Really, she had. It was really that simple. It was so basic and true, it didn't occur to Aspen to be embarrassed by it. She'd MISSED him. She'd missed him and thought about him constantly and was forever LOOKING for him. Staying put in one central place and waiting for him to cross her path had made perfect sense and was now paying off.
"There's a fourth reason, too," she added, complete with a SLY grin.
Cornelius hadn't expected the words Aspen told him. In fact, he didn't really know what he had expected. He just knew he didn't expect her to tell him that she'd missed him. And she said it so simply, like that was the most logical thing in the world; to have missed him. It wasn't necessarily a foreign concept to the boy, the phrase had been applied to his life, often with relatives and even once or twice with an old girlfriend, maybe. But he knew that no one had said it with the same weight that Aspen did, said it in the way she did, the way she said things. Like she was telling him something that she didn't just go and tell anyone; like he was the only one being awarded with this information. And she missed him.
Needless to say, a smile grew immediately on Cornelius's expression, watching her with the warmest gaze. And in that moment, he also realized that she had put a word to the feeling he'd been having all week. Again, it wasn't a foreign word to him, but he hadn't ever assigned the phrase to his seemingly constant search for Aspen whenever he entered a class or walked into the Common Room. A glance over his shoulder just to make sure she wasn't reading in the back of the room, or something of the sort, had become second nature to him. Even a trip down to the dungeons, just to make sure she wasn't down there once more. And he hadn't intentionally
not assigned the word to the situation, he just hadn't found it yet. But as Aspen said it, she made it sound so simple, and it instantly sounded right; they'd missed one another.
"I missed you too," Cornelius admitted with a warm smile, spotting that strand of her brown hair falling into her expression. In the next moment, he brought up his hand to place the strand behind her ear gently, happy with the chance to see her full expression again.
But it was then that she mentioned a
fourth reason, and his eyebrows rose playfully once more. Aspen was having quite the time keeping him in the dark.
"And what would that fourth reason be, Aspen Odessa?" Cornelius inquired, tilting his head to the side just slightly.