You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Sixteen

In dealing with girls

Quite intransigent

Don't forget

To save your best

And...

Rob didn't have a rhyme for intransigent. Affront? Recent? Penchant?

But the noise of Christine's footsteps made thinking of her quite unnecessary.

"I thought you got back at six," she said.

"I Ubered," he said, leaning back on the chair. "It wasn't cheap. Then again, Kang told me that this was an emergency. Is that right, Christine?"

She crossed her arms and looked down at him. Like the chair he was sitting on was already hers, and she hadn't just thrown herself on Jen's mercy, begging for a room.

"I never said it was an emergency."

"Right," he said. "So we're just going to ignore the whole luggage thing, and the business with me lending you my phone, and all of that other stuff. That's just circumstantial."

Her brow crinkled, but she didn't say anything. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

"Circumstantial means are..."

"I know what it means!" she burst out. "I can speak English, you know!'

"That's more like it."

She stared at him, genuinely dumbfounded this time. He arched his eyebrow to show the complete seriousness of that last statement.

"Listen," he said, "I'm going to be honest. I don't particularly like you."

"What?"

He didn't feel like he was being unfair. In his mind, he was putting it as plainly as he could.

"But it works the other way too, Christine. I don't mess around with words, I say what I mean. That means there aren't a lot of people who like me, either."

Her face was screwing up in small increments, like she was slowly working through some surreal and very perplexing maths equation on the middle of his nose.

"What I'm saying is that you can tell me how much you hate my guts, and I'll do the same, and then we can have a grand old time avoiding each other, like civilized people. Deal?"

He looked up at her, waiting for the grudging acknowledgment, or even the complete clam-up that she seemed to love. When that didn't come, he prepared for the explosion. Her hands were twisted in her jacket pockets. Her gaze was burning a hole in his shoes. She was going to lose her cool. He was going to take it like a man who had already planned for it.

But she said something else instead.

"I didn't quite catch that," said Rob.

Christine glared at him.

"I said I don't hate you," she repeated, a bit louder.

"I'm flattered," said Rob, despite the fact that he was less flattered than wary. "What brought on the sudden change of heart?"

Christine bit her lip. Strangely, this made her face look slightly less lanky. Like there was something of substance beneath her sour cheeks and crooked teeth.

"There wasn't any change of heart," she said. "I wasn't thinking in the airport. I... look, just because I act like this doesn't mean I hate you."

"Are you sure about that? Because from the way you're looking at me right now..."

"The way I'm what?"