by A. M. Hudson
“Mm-hm.” I nodded and smiled, concealing my shaky voice with the wordless response.
He stood back up slowly and looked at the two girls from the bathroom—now standing by their locker in the corner, whispering to each other. “Ara?” he said, checking over his shoulder before looking back at me. “Do you mind if I teach those gossip queens a lesson?”
“Why would you want to do that?” I looked at them, staring at me. They’re so completely unaware that I’ve noticed them.
“Just go with it, okay?” David whispered in my ear, so close that his breath tickled my cheek. I giggled a little. The girls noticed that and stared, open-mouthed, while my shameful gaze fell to the floor. I shouldn’t feel this way for David. I have no right—I don’t even know him, and he’s popular and gorgeous—not the kind of guy that girls like me ever get.
David gently wrapped his fingers around my arms and walked me backward until my spine pressed against the cold wall, then, he rested one arm beside my head and stood closer—his hips, his stomach, his chest, barely a centimetre from my tingling hot body. “What are you doing?” I said.
“Giving them something to talk about.” His lips turned up sharply and he tilted his head down beside his arm, stealing my breath with his smile. My mouth watered with the idea of him being so close—of his lips just in front of mine, just a breath away from touching.
I wish he would kiss me. Being this close to him feels so unbelievably phenomenal. But the good feeling slinked away as the two girls walked off in a huff, flipping their hair as they went. I looked up at David and he smiled down at me in a way that made feel as though I belong against him this way. “Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?” He leaned a little closer; I stopped him with a hand to his firm, cool chest.
“You—you stood up for me. You made them think we we’re kissing.”
“Yes.”
“But, don’t you get it? They’ll spread this around to everyone—tell the whole school you were kissing me!” Then they’ll all say David’s got a fetish for ugly girls who wear dresses for easy access. I swallowed the lump in my throat. Oh, God, I’m an infection. Because of me, now David will become the topic of the day.
Against everything inside me, I pressed my hand more firmly to his chest and shoved him away, then rolled out from the wall and flung myself across the corridor.
“What does it matter if they tell everyone?” He turned and faced me.
I turned away and looked into the sunny courtyard below, leaning my elbows over the cold, paint-chipped metal bar. “Well, do you want people thinking you like me?”
“Ara.” He appeared beside me, and as he wrapped his fingers over the railing, our elbows touched. “You’re a very sweet girl. You do not deserve to be the entity of other people’s gossip. I would rather they told the whole school I was kissing you outside the bathroom than to have them talk about you like that.” He pointed to the bathroom.
“You heard that?” Everything suspended in slow motion. “How did you—”
“Bathrooms echo, Ara.” He smirked.
“I can’t believe you heard all of that.” It feels like a hot air balloon was just let off in my face. My lip started to quiver. I bit it tightly. I really didn’t want him to hear that.
David grabbed my wrist and started walking, dragging me along behind him. “Don’t worry about it, Ara. They’re not nice people. I’m just sorry that of all the girls you had to run into in there, it was those two.”
“Well, thank you—” I stopped and pulled my arm out of his grip, “—for standing up for me. No one’s…ever done that before.”
“Really?” He looked amazed, or maybe mortified.
“I never needed it.” I lowered my eyes to my black and white Sketchers. “Back home, I was more than capable of taking care of myself. I went to an all girls’ school. You had to know how to stand up for yourself, but I guess I just lost my nerve.”
“You shouldn’t have to stand up for yourself, Ara. People should mind their tongues.” David softened then and moved closer to me, tipping his head to one side. “And for the record, mon amie, despite what those girls just said—” he smiled, and his sparkling emerald eyes gripped my face, “I think you are very pretty.”
Yep, that did it. Cheeks hot, heart tumbling down the stairwell, lust meter at fifty. How am I ever not going to fall in love with him if he says things like that? “So you—you speak French?”
“Seulement quand je parle avec mon coeur.” David started walking again, but I caught a glimpse of a smile as he turned.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Look it up on Google.”
After a second, I forced myself to run after him—and when I say run, I mean run. He walks with such confidence in his long stride. Every molecule in my body wants to be next to him, but it’s hard to catch him when he gets ahead a few steps.
My thoughts strayed to the last five minutes of my life as I walked beside David, and the humiliation of being unpopular trickled away with each second I studied his face.
Look at him. He’s not just a boy, but kindness embodied in perfection. I don’t deserve his compassion—or his friendship.
He shouldn’t have stood up for me, but I’ll never forget it.
Chapter Three
The bell to resume classes tolled before we even made it to the sunshine. David smiled gently and jerked his head in the other direction. “Come on, your next class is this way.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, running after him.
“I read your lesson plan, remember?”
“Yeah, but, how did you retain all that info. I can’t even remember what classes I actually signed up for.”
David said nothing, just smiled—a kind of secret smile—and walked close to me as we headed back up the stairs, passing a carrot-top girl, who waved at me on her way down to the ground floor.
“That’s Ellie.” David leaned closer. “She was sitting next to Ryan in music class.”
“Oh, okay.” I frowned. I don’t remember her.
Ellie glanced up at David from under her brow, and her soft red hair fell around her blushing cheeks in ringlets. “Girls seem to like you around here,” I said.
“Not really. It’s just the ah…want what you can’t have theory, I guess.” He shrugged once.
“Oh. So, you wouldn’t date any of the girls, here?” I asked, twiddling my fingers.
“It’s not that. I just keep a pretty low profile. I’m not one for dating, as such.” We weaved through the staring students, and David kept his eyes forward as we walked. “Sometimes girls take an interest in me, but they know nothing will ever happen, so they’ve stopped asking. Now they just stare.”
So—no dating. Is he telling me this because he’s noticed how captivated I am by him? I should probably tell him that I don’t really feel that way, that he’s just misreading my signals. But the truth is, if he thinks I like him—he’d be right. Pity he doesn’t date, but at least he let me down gently.
David’s head whipped up and his eyes widened as he came to an abrupt halt. “Um—I, uh—I really didn’t mean it like that. I—” he shook his head, but didn’t finish.
“Didn’t mean what?” I smiled and shrugged, holding both palms out.
“When I said I don’t date, I—” he paused again as the corridors became silent and empty. The voice of the teacher, already addressing the rest of the group, filtered out from my next classroom. I want David to finish what he was saying, but we’re so late.
David, with his brow pulled tight in the centre and his lips slightly twitching, drew my books from the stack under his arm and placed them in my hand. Inconspicuously, I lifted them to my nose. Mmm, they smell like David—a sweet, orangey-chocolate smell.
“Ara, I—”
“It’s okay, David, you don’t owe me an explanation.” I tried to grin. I know it looks fake, I can feel it. “I only just met you, after all. If you don’t date, that’s fine
. I hadn’t placed myself in that category, anyway. Friends?” I shrugged with the phony smile in place and backed into the doorway of my History class.
“Ah,” the teacher said. “Class, we finally have a new student.”
David’s jaw set stiff and he looked down at the ground. After waiting another few seconds for his response, I turned away from him to face the class and smiled for real, feeling more confident seeing a familiar face in the room. “Hi Dad,” I whispered as I stepped up to his desk, making sure no one else would hear, then looked back toward the door. The empty corridor stared back at me.
“Attention please?” Dad called out over the noisy class. They went silent immediately. “Class, this is Ara-Rose. I’m sure some of you have already met her—”
I cringed and cut him off, “Actually, it’s just Ara.”
He looked sideways at me for a second, then smiled. “Okay, this is just Ara.” A low hum of laughter erupted over the entire class.
“Nice to meet you, Just Ara,” someone called from the back of the room.
Great. Now I’ll have a nickname. Humiliation—from my own father.
“Settle down, Maverick,” Dad said sternly. “Um, Emily?” he called to a girl at a desk on the first level of the raised seating.
Without hesitation, the same Emily I met this morning, with her bouncy, blonde ponytail, bounded up to the front of the class. “Yes, Mr. Thompson?” she trilled, cupping her hands together in front of her short white skirt. When she smiled, she batted her eyelashes, tilting her head.
Ew! My mouth fell open. I looked at her, then back at my dad. He’s completely oblivious to her flirting. He shuffled about the papers on his desk, then handed me a worksheet. “Help Just Ara…?” He looked at me.
I nodded. “Ara’s fine.” Hint, hint.
“Help Ara get up to date with our lessons, please?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Thompson.” Emily took my hand and dragged the very reluctant me to sit next to her—right up the front—right where Dad would be able to see my every move.
“So, do you always sit here?” I asked.
“Yup. I can see the teacher better.” She watched Dad walk across the room and push the antique gramophone, that’s normally in our attic, out of the way.
“Why would that be a good thing?”
“Are you kidding me?” She motioned her open palm to my dad. “Look at him.”
Uh-oh. I can see where this is going. “Um, Emily—”
“Isn’t he handsome?” she continued, “Don’t you think he looks just like Harrison Ford.”
I glanced at my dad, and my nose crinkled up as I took notice of his greying, light-brown hair and the creases he gets around his kind eyes when he smiles. I guess he does, sort of. “Emily,” I whispered again.
“Yeah.” She sighed, dreamily gazing up at the teacher.
There’s no easy way around it. I have to tell her before she embarrasses herself further. I just have to accept whatever ramifications come from it. “He’s…my dad.”
She spun around so quickly that I jumped. “You are kidding me,” she squeaked. “Oh, my God, Ara. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m so sorry, I just, I didn’t think it was—”
“We are so having a sleepover at your house.” She practically jumped in her seat. “I’ve had a crush on Mr. Thompson for like—” she flipped her head to one side, “three years.”
My mouth fell wide and my tongue pushed into the side of my cheek. I really did not expect that. I thought she might be a little humiliated at the least, but I guess it’s better this way. “So, three years, huh?”
“Yup. It’s why I take History.”
“That’s…disturbing.”
“Not really.” She shrugged and chewed the tip of her pen. “You could look at it as though your dad is inspiring my education.”
I wonder if he’d feel the same way.
On the board, Dad wrote the words ‘Religious History’, and the whole class groaned. “Oh, come now, it’ll be fun and you know it,” he professed. As soon as he turned to write on the board again, the kid next to us jolted forward in his seat, and a scrunched-up piece of paper bounced off his desk, landing on his schoolbag. Emily and I looked to the back of the room where a group of boys broke into raucous laughter—the same ones that said hello to David this morning. The recipient of the paper cannon showed them his middle finger before looking back at his notepad.
Why didn’t Dad say anything to them? Tell them off or at least glare at them? I wonder if he even noticed.
I can’t believe David’s a part of that group. But then, I don’t really know much about him. He might even be a bully—if his friends are, it wouldn’t surprise me. “So, does my dad know you have a crush on him?” I asked Emily.
“No way.” She leaned back in her chair, mortification alight in her eyes. “I would be so humiliated.”
I scratched my temple and shook my head. That would humiliate you—any less than admitting to his daughter that you have a crush on her father?
“So, how was Library, with David?” she asked, kind of singing David’s name.
What do I tell her—that he led me around all morning, spoke French to me and told me he thinks I’m pretty? Nope. No way. That will only make her judge me, too. “It was okay. He seems nice.” I nodded casually, catching a second of Dad’s lecture about Greek gods as I spoke.
“You like him?” She wore a quizzical expression, but when my cheeks broke into an uncontrollable grin, Emily smiled, too. “I knew it.” She pointed at me. “I knew it.”
I grabbed her finger and pushed it down. “I do not.”
“Oh, I’ve seen that look before. You have Knight Fever.”
“Knight what?”
“It’s what we call it when all the girls swoon over David.”
“I’m not swooning.” I turned my face away. Is it that obvious?
“He’s charming, isn’t he?” She leaned on her hand, her thoughts a million miles away. “It’ll kill you, you know? Knight Fever. Have you heard the I don’t date speech, yet?” She laughed.
I drew a tight breath and bit my lip.
“Oh no. You have,” she said soothingly. “Oh, I thought—” her head moved slowly from side to side. “Well, now I’m sure he’s gay. I mean, I was sure you had to be his type. Us girls have pretty much got it down to a science.”
“Got what down to a science?”
“The girls David Knight will and will not scope.”
“What’s scoping?”
“Perving…you know…checking out.” She shrugged.
Oh. “He scopes?” I didn’t think he was like that—he didn’t seem that way.
“He’s a hot-blooded male, Ara? Of course he does. Just, very subtly,” her tone dropped its certainty. “Like, he never actually looks, but he’s nicer to some than others. So, we’ve grouped together a sort of profiling on him.”
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” I said, turning away.
“It’s not—” she paused when my dad glared at us, “—it’s not like that. It’s just a bit of gossip. We don’t have like, a file on him or anything.”
“So, you thought I was his type?”
“Well, I was sure, but…I guess not.” She shrugged, staring forward.
That’s it? A shrug? That’s all I am? I really like this guy, and I’ve just been dusted off with a shrug. My irritation dissolved momentarily under a rumble in my stomach. I should’ve eaten at recess. I drummed my fingers on the desk, trying really hard to focus on Dad’s lecture about Zeus. “He seemed so genuine,” I turned and whispered to Emily, letting my temper get the better of me. “He walked me to every class. He was so nice, so sweet, and then—” I told her about the bathroom blunder and the theatrical kiss.
Her eyes rounded into her brow. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. So what’s the deal, then?” Frustration thickened my tone.
“He has. Never. Done. That before,” she exclaimed.
“Okay? So why did he give me the speech?”
Her head shook slowly again. “I can not figure that boy out.”
The bell rang before I expected it to. I swallowed the last of my sentence and smiled at Emily. She’s so easy to talk to. At first I thought she was a bit stuck up, but from the way she just talked to me for the last forty minutes, I’m pretty sure it’s just a front.
I jammed my books into my bag and looked up when Emily nudged me with her elbow, nodding over at the door. At the end of my gaze, David came into focus, leaning against the doorframe of the classroom, his hands in his pockets and a very sexy smile across his lips.
“Mm-mm.” Emily shook her head, hugging her books.
“What’s mm-mm?”
“Hm, he likes you, Ara—he’s just trying not to show you.”
“You think?” I looked back at David, now talking to my dad.
“Come on, girl? Even Mr. Thompson noticed the way he was staring at you.”
My hand flew to my forehead to hide the humiliation. “Oh no, it’s the touch-my-daughter-and-you-die speech.” I want to melt—hide under my desk and slink away.
Emily sighed and rolled her head to the side. “They’re both so gorgeous.”
Ew, creepy. Speaking of creepy… “I hope Dad doesn’t give David the creeps. I only just met the poor guy.” And I’ve already scared him off with my ogling eyes and long, slow sighing.
“Nah, he’s just telling him to keep his hands off his daughter. Can you blame him?”
David grinned at me, further proving my suspicions that Dad’s currently humiliating me.
“Okay?” Dad patted David on the shoulder.
David nodded politely. “I had no intentions of that, Mr. Thompson.”
Just hide me now. I really hope I don’t receive the tail end of that lecture. Dad sat back at his desk and I chose the opportune moment, as he reached for something on the floor, to slink quietly past—sinking my neck into my shoulders. Emily shamelessly stopped in front of the desk just to tell Dad how great his lecture was today. Never mind that she wasn’t even listening. I really like Emily.