Sour Sweet Love

Chapter Two

           IS it possible to dislike a boy you have never second glanced?

Joey, my best friend, didn't agree me when I told her that it was. 

"Absolutely not," she said, rolling her eyes at me for even suggesting the idea.

It was nearly eight o' clock and we were both in my dorm room, anxiously cramming on our last minute homework that consisted of annotating Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. I bit my tongue as I glanced at an advertisement that was plastered on a billboard somewhere in the distance, one that was suggesting physical therapy for accident rehabilitation.

"Seriously?" I asked Joey, pressing my lips together. Given that I had filled her in on everything that had happened yesterday, starting from when I had encountered the two preppy girls outside of campus, to the part when I  had crashed into that stranger in the hallway, her reaction shocked me.

"Of course," she replied. Joey was adamant on finishing her annotations on the Shakespearean play, so she dismissed me with a wave before continuing to scribble with her pencil. "You can't like or dislike someone by just looking at them once. And you were just moody because of those girls, Avery. Don't jump to conclusions, okay?"

"Ever heard of first impressions?" I retorted, looking away from her. 

I stared around my room, my mind in a haze.

Despite the grand size of campus, the dorm rooms were forcefully wedged between two other tightly compact rooms. My dorm, which I shared with one other girl: Molly, was composed of wooden floors and red walls, which were mostly covered with rock posters and graphic vinyl designs. The radiator had been doodled on with dark Sharpie markers, its edges designed with lyrics, lines of poetry, doodles and inspiring quotes.

"But tell me," Joey finally said, the corners of her lips twitching into a smirk. She dropped her pencil on her binder and momentarily began to massage her fingers. "On a scale of one two ten, how hot was he?"

I laughed, muttering a quick "eight" before shooting her an amused glance.

Joey squealed and before I knew it, her eyes were plastered on me, that senile smirk still plastered on her face. "You know that that means, right?" she asked me, raising both of her eyebrows in anticipation.

"Joey."

She nodded. 

"Joey, there are over a thousand kids in this school. No way could that have been him."

News had gone around that there would be a new kid—a boy—arriving in our grade sometime soon. All of the girls had gushed over the possibility of him being a foreign exchange student, despite the teachers having announced that he was moving over from Michigan. 

Joey smiled her contagious smile, passing it down to me. "It's like the movies," she said, grinning. "You bump into a guy. Your eyes meet and instantly, there's that brilliant connection. Then, the two of you fall in love and spend nights dreamily staring—"

I didn't want to dampen the mood, but I hadn't felt an instant connection.

Ignoring Joey's blissful trance, I took out my history textbook and sat on my bed quietly, contemplating whether or not I should head to tutoring. The first class of the day was instructional support—a free period, in other words—and the only way I was ever going to get my homework done was by forcing myself into a classroom.

"You've been reading too many romance novels," I muttered under my breath, sighing as Joey continued to trail off. "You know what, Joey," I finally said, interrupting her. Shoving my textbooks into my backpack, I gave my best friend a look. "I'm going to head to Ms. Watson's room for a little extra help in history."

Joey groaned, finally dropping the subject of my love life, or lack thereof. "History," she mumbled, sighing. "Thanks for the reminder that I'm failing that class."

I dismissed her by shoving my papers on my backpack. "Be sure to lock the door and leave the keys under the mat," I reminded her. Once she provided a swift nod of the head, I walked out of my room and headed towards the history classroom on the other side of campus. 

Once I reached, I found that instead of our regular usual Ms. Watson being behind her desk, a handsome young man, probably in his early twenties, occupied her spot. His figure was tall and built, and enhanced by his navy blue suit and red tie.

I sat down on the chair nearest to whom I believed was our substitute for the day. "Hello, I'm Mr. Anderson," the stranger introduced tersely, as if he had been practicing all morning. "Are you here for tutoring?"

The room was empty, bereft of any presence except mine.

"I'm just here to study," I answered with a subtle smile.

"Let me know if you need any help," he replied, folding his arms across his chest.

I nodded.

Everything else that happened in that history room was completely unanticipated. A strange set of events had unfolded that morning, all of which oddly caught me by surprise. It wasn't that I had fallen madly in love with my new history teacher or anything, nor had I gotten involved in an intimate conversation with him regarding our futures, like they do in romance novels.

Actually, I had been doing the contrary: reluctantly answering questions about the Neolithic Revolution. It was then that the boy that I had crashed into yesterday came marching in. The teacher, Mr. Anderson, greeted him the same way he had greeted me, before flipping to the next page of the novel he was reading, which was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

The brooding boy took the seat next to me, and my breath hitched in my throat.

In the short time that we endured one another, neither of us uttered a single word. He was good at maintaining silence. Yet he preserved unnerving eye contact. I found that he would glance at me when he thought I could not see him, but my vision had no peripheries and his grey eyes were impossible to overlook.

And that was precisely how instructional support had gone by: with Declan Andrews—I assumed this was his name because it was what he had written atop his paper—sitting next to me, and our arms nonchalantly caressing once every blue moon.