The Hopeful, The Hardheaded and the Homework

Chapter Twenty-One: A Relationship By Any Other Name? : Enoch

This chapter was almost entirely inspired by the song ' Demons' by Imagine Dragons. I was actually going to go a whole other direction before I listened to it.

Anyway!

xxxXxxx

"Enoch and I were just going to study-"

"Well not in your bedroom you're not, Olive. I'm sure you can study out here just fine."

Enoch fought very hard not to roll his eyes in front of her father, he'd already let his tongue get away from him and say more than he probably should have. He wasn't very good at first impressions and had never tried to be so asking him to make a good impression on Olive's father when he was everything Olive was not, was a very difficult thing.

As soon as the man had looked at him, Enoch knew he hadn't liked the look of him, and his blunt, curt way of answering and trying to evade questions that really weren't hard to answer, hadn't exactly redeemed him. He probably looked exactly how his attitude was, so was he surprised when her father made it quite clear he wanted them out in an open room? Not at all. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

He did not want to be here and all too eagerly followed Olive into the adjoining dining room towards the dining table which was just out of immediate view of the kitchen doorway.

"Seriously?" He muttered, careful to keep his voice low so he wouldn't be overheard easily. Unfortunately, Olive's father, probably under the impression that they couldn't hear him from there, did not lower his as much as he could have.

"I don't like that boy."

"Theo, you just met him, he's probably nervous."

"Look at him, I don't like that Olive's spending so much time with someone like that."

Enoch did roll his eyes now and Olive, who had just sat down, looked over at him with wide eyes and shot up out of the chair as fast as she'd sat in it.

"We can hear you!"

Everything went silent for moment in the kitchen before the unmistakeable sound of footsteps meant Olive's parents had left.
He watched as she pursed his lips and sat back down before looking at him with wide and apologetic eyes.
"I'm so sorry, Enoch, I didn'-"

Enoch scoffed and leaned his elbow on the table, "Oh c'mon, as if 'e was gonna like me anyway. I don't care." It was completely true. He really didn't care whether Olive's parents liked him or not because most people didn't. He didn't put enough effort in to be likeable with most people. He only cared that she liked him.

"He'll come around, I know it..."

"Olive. Can we not? I seriously don't care."
He rolled his eyes and tried to look more interested in his English work than he really was. Of all things to convince him to come over. Because he might actually get something achieved in the classes he didn't like if he wasn't alone to procrastinate and get frustrated.

But he did get frustrated. He got frustrated easily with essays and analysis. His idea of worthwhile analysis was checking a human beings vital signs and the flow of blood. Not inventing seven different points of view in a damned newspaper article that probably weren't even there to begin with.
But at least he was scraping by, if only barely, maths was much worse. With only two weeks of school left there was no way he could scrape up to a passing grade for the term. So he ignored it, and instead elected to highlight passages and annotate scribbled notes on articles instead.

Olive hadn't been wrong. It was slightly more tolerable in her company, but even then, the words and phrases just swam in front of his eyes until he got annoyed with it and had to distract himself with something else.