The Art of Beautiful Words

how it began | her

IT WAS BEGINNING to annoy her how much he made her lose focus during class. She thought it was all too unfair how she had to pay closely attention in class just to pass while all he did was browse the notes for a minute and he'd ace the tests.

"Olivia," he hissed her full name now, simultaneously poking her side for the nth time.

With an aggravated sigh, she slightly turned her head to look at him, trying not to get caught by the teacher in front.

"What now, Julian Jeremiah Jackson?" she used his whole name, mocking him in a hushed voice for using her real name.

The pokes ceased as he pushed a paper towards her direction. She glanced at the wrinkled piece of paper, biting back a remark on how he couldn't keep even just a piece of paper remotely tidy. It was labelled 'Beautiful Words' in his loopy, scrawled handwriting.

Against her self-control, she looked at him yet again. An amused smile was playing on her lips and her eyebrows were raised questioningly, her usual reaction with him.

"You write words there, Liv." He said in his usual bored tone when he wasn't busy irritating her.

Rolling her eyes, she responded, "Well I don't want to."

Of course, deep inside, she knew that she would eventually do it. He just had a way of convincing her to do just about anything she wouldn't normally do. It didn't help either that he loved challenging her.

And she never backed down from a challenge, especially his challenges.

This piece of paper was simply another one of his silly little games.

She didn't know what his ultimate purpose was. Maybe he simply wanted to take up their English teacher's suggestion of listing words to apparently 'expand our vocabulary'.

Nevertheless, she scowled at his currently smirking face and carefully wrote a few words, his current expression tattooed on the back of her mind.