Love Hate

Ch. 3

Theo's Point of View

"Today was your last day to work on this in class but you have a week left until it's due. Make sure you don't wait until the last minute to record your videos," Banks said, looking especially as Aaron and me in the back.

I glanced over at him in time to see him roll his eyes.

I knew what Banks meant. He knew we'd put it off to avoid each other but that wouldn't be smart if we wanted a good grade.

"Spend the last few minutes of class planning with your partner when you will record, then you can relax until the bell rings."

The room was filled almost immediately with quiet murmurs of everyone telling their partners their schedules.

Aaron and I didn't even look at each other.

He was probably still angry, meanwhile I was wondering if I could use that as an excuse to get his phone number. Not that it would have done me any good... but it would have been cool to have.

Finally, I opened my mouth to talk but he cut me off, "I don't give a damn about your schedule."

I rolled my eyes, "We have to meet up to record at some point."

"I know but I will punch you if you start listing your tea parties. Just tell me one day you're free."

I took a deep breath, so I didn't slap him.

"Thursday or Friday after school."

He thought for a minute. Whether he was thinking if he had plans or if he could get away with faking plans, I wasn't sure.

"Friday after school."

I just nodded.

I didn't want to say anything just in case I made him mad. He had been in a bad mood every day since we started the project. I didn't need to make him anymore pissed off now that we were going to be alone after school in two days. For all I knew, he was just waiting to get me alone so he could finally beat the shit out of me. I was hoping that wasn't the case.

As I thought about it though I realized we didn't say where we would meet. But I was too nervous to ask. I figured we would work at the library because there was no way in hell we were going to go to either of our houses.

**

As I walked to the library after school that Friday, I was so anxious I was shaking. I had never been alone with him before; I didn't know how it was going to work. Usually, I only fought back because other people were around, and I needed to keep up the act... but if we were alone did I need to?

I was also nervous because we never actually said we would meet there. I would have asked him the next day in class, but we went back to our normal seats, and he still looked pissed off, so I didn't dare go up to him — especially because he was with his friends. I never found him alone either.

I waited for a few minutes; the halls were emptying out quickly. After a bit though he finally appeared.

I almost had the urge to smile but I suppressed it.

He only gave me a glance before he walked into the library and found a table in the back. I followed him, not expecting that different of a reaction.

When we got back there, we opened our computers to look at our scripts.

"What are we going to use to record?" I asked.

He was silent for a minute before he took his phone out. He brought his camera out and put it on the record setting before setting it up leaning on his computer screen.

He adjusted it for a minute to make sure we were both in frame — which surprised me. I was sure he would have just made sure he was in frame and wouldn't care if half of my face was cut off. Maybe he did care about the grade after all.

We hoped the recording would go by fast — maybe in just a few takes... but we weren't that lucky. Or maybe I was.

Our script was so long, and we alternated speaking, so we messed up a lot. After a while we decided to stop starting from the beginning every time we messed up and just restarted our paragraph — he would edit the video later to make it decent. I was surprised he volunteered that, but I figured he thought it was better than having to keep fumbling the script with me for hours.

After I messed up — I accidentally skipping a line — Aaron cursed, "You keep messing up the fucking script."

I sighed, getting frustrated, "Says the one that has the easiest parts."

"I did the rest of the work. Do I have to do the whole thing because you're incompetent?"

I took a deep breath.

I liked him. The arguing was fake on my side. But he really did annoy me sometimes.

"Just stop arguing. For five minutes, okay? I'll stop too."

He rolled his eyes, "Whatever. Fine. Start that part again."

After a couple more tries, we managed to finish the video. Well, we finished the speaking part. He still had to go through and edit it to clean up the parts where we messed up.

I did help edit, mostly because I wouldn't put it past him to only fix his mistakes. But we worked on it for an hour or two in a... surprisingly peaceful silence. When we did speak, for the most part our words weren't laced with our usual hatred. We just made comments on how to improve the video and mostly agreed with each other.

Trust me, there were some moments though.

~~

He scoffed, "Your voice sounds like shit in the last half."

"Cause you made me redo it till my throat was sore, asshole."

~~

"You mispronounced 'incomprehensible,'" I said, more as a comment than an insult.

He didn't catch that though and he came back with sass, "That's cause you misspelled it in the script."

"I thought you wrote the script, genius."

~~