Never I Thought

Chapter 18 - There For You

"You're coming to my game, right?" Kei asked, drawing a star on the edge of my notebook.

I swatted his hand away and grabbed an eraser from my pencil case.

"I don't think-" I started.

"Please, don't make me beg," he tilted his head to the side, "it would be nice to have at least one familiar face in the crowd."

I sighed and nodded, "fine, I'll go."

He grinned widely, "you're amazing."

I bit back a smile and looked back down at my notebook.

It had been a few weeks now. I decided that having Kei's company during my free periods actually wasn't that bad, he knew when to talk and when to focus on his work. With his first game coming up, he had the nervous jitters and couldn't seem to stay still.

So our free periods were mostly talking about his game and training and all the other guys in his team. I had expected him to complain about them. He was a whole lot nicer than I would've been.

When I had asked if Robin and his friends, Brendan or Ben had been giving him a hard time he had smiled and rolled his eyes. "They're just being typical teens, they'll grow out of it one day, you know?" He had said.

"How's tutoring been going? You enjoying it?" Kei now asked.

"I only have a soft spot for Mila and Nikki," I admitted.

The past few weeks, I had been avoiding Robin every chance I got. The sweater he gave me still hung on my chair cause I knew once I got the courage to hand it back I would have to confront his lopsided smile and teases. And I was just a simple girl.

The only time I did see him was at tutoring, where I would pretend he wasn't Robin Kempt but some classmate that had been assigned to our group. We didn't talk about our personal lives and kept it strictly about helping Mila and Nikki.

Lately, they hadn't even been needing our help but they enjoyed the company so chose to stay in tutoring anyway. We still visited a place once a week. From cafes to community areas, we would try to cover all sorts of places but nothing personal like the waterfall. I had to seperate my responsibilities from my personal life.

It had been a little difficult, setting those boundaries but what else was I going to do? Let Robin know everything about me until he would use it against me then pretend that is was a complete accident and act like it was my fault because I shouldn't of told him?

No. No way was I going to let that happen.

I looked down and realised Kei had drawn more stars on the sides of my notebook. 

"Hey! My English teacher has to see this!" I scolded him.

"It needed decoration. It's a cute little star border," he insisted.

"It's hideous."

"What are you on about? You love it."

I pressed my lips together trying to hold back my smile, "no. I don't."

He drew another one, "you know what? I think it needs some colour."

"Don't you dare," I said and grabbed his pencil case.

He tried to snatch it back but I stood up and waved it about.

"Why are you being such a colour police?" He laughed.

"Colour the table for all I care, just not my book."

He put his hands up in surrender and sat back down in his seat. Holding out his hand I placed the pencil case in it but quickly shut my notebook.