My Roommate

Chapter 30

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Ashley's POV—

English is one of my favorite subjects, apart from art. It's an easy class to take, if you ask me. All there really is to do is just keep up with all the prompts and essays. Read whatever book you're given to read and keep up with all the comprehension quizzes and tests.

If there's one thing about English that isn't necessarily my favorite, is the group assignments we have to complete from time to time. For instance, having to work with a partner for analysing poems and such.

When it comes to anything dealing with analyses, I'm better off on my own.

But, working on our own wasn't an option this time.

And to make it worse, we were assigned partners.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I were tasked to complete this assignment with someone else—with one of my friends in this class.

But, nope.

I'm stuck with working with Luis.

"Ashley, you sure you don't want to go out with me after school today? It'll be fun, I promise," he suggests as he leans a little bit too close to me for my liking. I can only move my chair over, moving away from him.

Again.

"I told you already, Luis. I'm not interested. Can we please just work on this assignment," I say to him. He just huffs out a laugh and moves himself even closer, draping his arm around my shoulder, too. My skin crawls as he leans closer to my ear.

"Come on, you know you want to," he says, still insistent on getting me to go out with him.

As a reflex to him whispering in my ear, I nudge my elbow into his gut, making him grunt. As he flinches away, I get up and move to the other side of the table, sitting across from him now. He only sighs seeing that I'm even further away from him.

Not far enough, though.

"I'm not interested," I tell him once more as I exchange looks between the poem in front of me and the document pulled up on my laptop with questions to answer. Just wanting to get this assignment done with.

And praying that the time will go by faster so I can get out of this class sooner.

Luis has been trying to get with me for lord knows how long. It's a bit annoying, too. How persistent he can be about it.

At least when I'm not with Evan.

He learned pretty quickly that he'd have to get through Evan first before he could reach me when I was with her. But right now, seeing that Evan and I don't have this class together, there's nothing really stopping him. And even if Evan and I did have this class together, Luis and I are partners for this assignment so there would have been little to nothing she could do about it to begin with.

"Why not," he continues, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. "We'd look good together, you know." he tries telling me.

I only ignore him and look at the poem again, trying to find a shift in the tone.

"Do you have any ideas for question 5?" I ask him instead, trying to go around his statements.

He huffs.

"Yeah, the shift takes place in the third stanza. Right when the speaker starts to whine about everything," he says, finally deciding to work on the assignment with me.

"In the 3rd stanza? I don't see the difference in his tone, though," I tell him as I look over the poem within the 2nd stanza and the 3rd, trying to catch the shift that happens between them.