Zero Hero

"I'm sorry Nica, but you know that I can't return your feelings. You've always been a little sister to me, and I value that a lot, but I can't give you any more than that." Carmine walked up his front steps, flowers retrieved in hand, without effort done to hide them. He was working so hard to be casual with her random presence that he didn't realize, and I had no way to tell him.

"If you just got here then who-." Nica was too surprised to him showing up from any place else rather than his front door, she didn't respond to what would be bad news to her. I could see her move her body from Carmine to where she was facing when her eyes were tightly shut, and it hit me then that this situation was real. Things could only be going down from here - if she saw a face like mine.

I found the strength, mostly out of my own panic to shut the door, and it slammed right back into the doorframe. My knees went weak, and the muscles in my legs became a jelly that couldn't keep me standing. I let my back drag against the closed door from the inside, without much of a choice, sitting down onto the cold floor. I was glad to be concealed, but I had to pray that she didn't see me when I wasn't.

"My mom's here, visiting. She must've opened the door for you." Carmine lied. You'd have to get used to doing that a lot when you have connections with someone like me. I'm starting to learn that and I dislike it big time. I'm not allowed to have fun because this is how it turns out. I'm not allowed to mess around. There's no time for that.

I pressed my ear against the door to get a better understanding of the conversation outside. I was hoping that there was a possibility that Nica bought his story. It wasn't all that believable, but what could he possibly say?

"Your mom would usually at least say hello to me. Who are the flowers for?" Like I expected, his alibi didn't make sense to her, and she wasn't afraid to say so, or to at least get more information out of where Carmine was trying to take it.

"They're for her, Nica." Carmine wasn't one to give up so quickly. He kept up with his story no matter how deep the lie had to get.

"Carmine, I'm not stupid." It felt like my intestines were some kind of rope for someone to hang on when she refuted his claims like they didn't make sense. I bit my lip, holding back tears from falling down my cheeks. My end is near. It has to be. There's no way to get out of this. "You hate purple, and your mom does too. You might not consider me to be someone who knows you very well, but I do know that if you're getting flowers for your mom they're not gonna be that type, whatever that is and I only know that because you were deathly afraid of it when we first met."

Carmine hates purple? He hasn't mentioned that to me before. A color was never that big of a deal to me, and it wouldn't be in general, but he's so symbolic about his colors and what they mean, I found it odd. He must have one heck of a story, like how I had mine about red, but if he would have told me in time before I'm up to my last seconds, I could've changed that for him. Like how he changed red for me.

He didn't have a response. Somehow, I wish I could take note of his face; how anxious he might be getting, trying to defend me or how he's holding himself up just fine, whatever it was, I wanted to know.

Nica was prepared to take over that silence, more than Carmine was able to show. "It's that zero percent-er girl isn't it? I swear I saw her face. The one your mom get fired because of. Arizona Yu, wasn't it? Don't you know how much trouble you can get into for associating with a girl like her? Why would you even risk anything like that? Of all numbers below 100 making it out alive, it's one of her. A zero!"

"How would you know anything about her?" His heart must've split into millions of pieces just as mine did, because he let down his guard out of shock. If he was managing to hold himself up before, he wasn't doing so well now.

I'm a zero percent-er. All I got passed down to me from my parents were the bad traits that didn't make the standards, and besides that, nothing. This is what I've been protected from knowing all this time. This is what Carmine thought I was better off not knowing, and I kinda did like it better when I didn't.

"I'm right. Whatever it is you're doing is about that zero girl." Nica saw right through him, and anyone who could see right through him could see right through me too. I was so near to the top card of the deck, the next one that would be dealt for everyone to see and the one that's be a loss for the player's game.

"No, you're wrong, you don't have any reason to believe a story you're making up yourself." Carmine leaned against the door, I could feel our pressure even out against it on either side. He wasn't going to admit anything quite yet. He was hoping he could make way with his fake story. "I asked you a question, Nica. Why do you know her name? And why do you even care? It's not like it concerns you. It barely concerns me."

"Agh, how naive of you Min-Min. I can answer both of those questions with four words. Do you not remember who I am? Or did I just not tell you?" I could imagine her smirking with that kind of attitude, maybe pinching his cheeks like she likes to do so much, and it's with that, that what I thought was at its worst, grew to an unknown level of bad.

"I'm the president's daughter."

******

"You heard - didn't you?" Carmine stuttered through a phrase when he came back into his door. Thankfully, Nica didn't try shoving her way in, and she evidently took her leave. However, that just had to give him the time to examine my tear-soaked face, and to know facts that I couldn't deny. All I could do was nod at him, reluctantly.

"Look, Arizona. I don't know what she's gonna do, or if she's gonna do anything for that matter, but don't worry. You're safe to ignore her. Maybe we'll get into trouble, but whatever kind it is, we'll experience it together. You're not alone, and you'll be okay." His hand was out to support me to stand, and I took it with a wobbling hand. It's easy to say that, but not easy to prove, and I wanted him to show me exactly how he could. That didn't mean that I'd get that and that made everything harder. The likeliness is low, that I'll make it out of this breathing.

The words were definitely comforting even so, but something about them so badly hurt every inside piece of me, as if each of my organs were turned inside out and I knew exactly why that was. I'm glad he was willing to stick with me through it, but that's also what was so messed up. That he had to drag himself down low for my sake. "You shouldn't of chosen me, Carmine."

His hand gripped mine tighter. It never let go from when he helped me up, and he guided me to take a seat beside him on the couch. "Wouldn't you agree that happiness is a choice?"

"Well, yeah?" The sudden question, instead of an answer out of him as I was expecting, made my own reply come out a question.

"And wouldn't you agree that happiness is deserved? That I deserve happiness?" I nodded at his next question without a doubt, unsure of where he was taking it. He cupped my face in his hands as he stared more intently at the features I had to offer, and what I had nothing more of. His perfect ones were only centimeters from mine, so I took that chance to study his as he did to me. "That's why I chose you, Arizona."

When you're Carmine, it takes six words to flatter me, and that was it. I didn't need expensive gifts or crazy amounts of material things. I just wanted to be worthy in his eyes. The one that taught me to see beauty in things I never knew, when he gave me the chance to see them from his perspective, and the one that tried his very hardest to allow me to see myself in his view too.

"I can so kiss you right now." He said. He couldn't have said it clearer, and it was blurted out so quickly his head couldn't have possibly held it in. It put an automatic blush to my cheeks as if programmed, and I could feel the heat of my blood rushing up to my face. He backed up from being so near to me, seemingly flustered to see me flustered. "I mean, I can if it's okay with you. I would, if you would like it. If you want, then I too, wouldn't mind it."

It's the first smile that lit my face since Nica showed up, but it felt like the first one in years. It's funny how awkward he can be when his feelings are genuine, but how opposite he can be on camera when the script told him so. I found it adorable that his true side, the one that was really him, and not some character for her roles, was one that I got to see. One that I could tease, and one that I can laugh at.

I pulled him back to where he was originally, by the collar off his shirt, staring him down. "I'm your girlfriend, aren't I?" I smirked, and after he got out of his shock, he did too. He bit his lip, that somehow made him so much more sexier, and I had to calm myself down before I added to my speech. "Do you want to kiss me or not? What if you're all talk? I can't be sure if you don't do anything. Prove it, Carmine. Prove it."

"I can prove it." He took the challenge on. The innocent side from before was another person from what he was showing now. Those lips of his didn't slam into mine like the narrators say they do in the movies, but it was gentle, and only gradually began to skim mine, that it made me long for it more. I barely got anything out of him yet, but I was already addicted before it started.

If time stopped when I've won over his aggression, emotion, and feelings, as if I drew it right out of his body, I couldn't quite tell, but I did know that the feeling somewhere in between fluttering and the explosion of fireworks was lodged deeply into the pit of my stomach, and upward, I felt it behind my ears.

My heart was pounding so hard it could break the prison my sternum was becoming for it, but no matter how hard it beat it wasn't my priority to focus on. How soft he was to my lips that were once catching my tears invaded any other sense or ability that I've held my whole life, was what came first, and it would probably come first forever from now on.

I didn't have it in me to dream of a moment as perfect as this, but the way his hands would curl around the perimeters of my face was more than a dream could ever hold. It was too good for me to think about on my own, but at the same time, too good for me to ever let go of it.

Guilty peek after guilty peek, I found that his eyes were shut. I didn't want to leave even to take a breath, but when I weighed the cost I knew that I needed that breath to be able to taste him again and it's in those short seconds that I saw so much love in his closed eyes - so much that he couldn't hold it in. It was crystal clear, the feeling he had for me.

How? How in the world did I get this lucky? How in the world could someone as flawless as him not be only a wish my imagination would hold? How in the world is this real? How in the world could life grant me this sort of gift that felt so perfect in my hands?

I forgot what shyness was as I held him. I forgot what it meant to be hesitant, when it was so deeply rooted in my nature before today. His warmth was weakening, but after so many years of not knowing what it meant to have a home, he was the one thing that was inviting and that held me close, putting a roof up above my head and walls to my sides. I wouldn't want it any other way.

"I meant it when I told you not to worry, okay? Tomorrow, I'm off. I'll help you forget it all. I'll help you remember only what's worthy to remember. Tomorrow is our day." He comforted me as he backed away, and I watched his eyes open back up to plant one last kiss to my forehead. "I love you, beautiful."

Not breaking my gaze with him, and taking his words to heart, I realized that in my entire life, I've never been this happy, and it frightened me. I was scared to the bones because it's in these moments that down is the only direction you can head, and in that process everything you've given your all to is taken right out of your hands.

We're a bomb ticking down. One that I enjoyed every second of while its to last, one that was the most beautiful of any story that could ever exist, but one that would eventually explode.

"I love you too, Carmine." I answered him, and deep down within me, I already made a promise to myself. That tomorrow will have to be a day that nothing could possibly bother us. It had to be perfect, in case I did permanently have to leave this earth, so I could leave with no regrets.

I'm going to need all the help I can get, and Connie's the only person that I have besides him. I'm gonna have to ask her for a favor, to make our day more special than special.

But I couldn't help but be afraid.