"Cora." He called, eyes caressing my face in a way that I so badly wanted for his fingers to instead. "Tell me to stop."
I gulped, the words frozen on the tip of my tongue.
"Cora, tell me now." He repeated, growing more agitated as his gaze moved do...
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"Gabriel you need to hurry up or you'll be late for school!" Mum shouted from the kitchen, partially drowned out by the sound of the pots and pans she was cooking with.
Slinging the straps of my backpack over my shoulders, I bent down to tie the laces of my trainers. I probably shouldn't have silenced my alarm when it went off this morning and gone straight back to sleep.
"You slept in, didn't you?" My dad asked with a knowing smile as he entered the room, the lines in his forehead more prominent because of it.
I shrugged with a smile of my own instead of responding. He knew me well enough to know the answer to that question already.
"I thought we could walk today since the weather's nice." He said, shifting his eyes to the window.
The sky was the kind of pale blue that painted the water everyday in Cornwall but rarely made an appearance here, and there wasn't a single cloud in sight. It was clear why he didn't want to take the car. I didn't either.
"That's cool." I said, pulling the lace tight enough to make a knot and standing back up. I opened my bag again quickly, rifling through it to check that I had everything. I did, so I made my way to the door.
I grimaced when Mum gave Dad a kiss on the cheek and then proceeded to do the same to me, ruffling my hair as if I was still six instead of eleven.
My hands were stuffed into the pockets of my jeans as Dad and I walked side by side, talking about random things like we always did.
It was the best thing about him, how he could take nothing and make it into something.
"Why can't a nose be twelve inches long?" He asked as I sighed. I knew exactly where this was going.
"I don't know." I answered, choosing to humour him.
"Because then it would be a foot." He said, watching as I fought a smile. He had mastered the art of telling Dad jokes so awful they were actually kind of funny.
"Gabe wait, your bag is open." He said, eyes honing in on the zipper that had moved from its original spot.
The sound of a soft thud stole our attention before he could zip it closed, and we turned our heads to look at what had fallen.
My notebook for english class had escaped from the backpack and landed on the road, blissfully unaware of any danger and trapped in its own little bubble of white paperback.
