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➳CHAPTER ONE
Marie practically had to throw herself into the library one week later. It was her first peer tutor session with Jeff, and to add another layer of awkwardness to the situation - they had never actually spoken before.
As she stumbled in clumsily, engulfed in the vacuum of silence, her vision was instantly magnetised to him, as he sat at a desk in the middle of the room patiently drumming his fingers against the desk, his eyes scanning over a history text book. Her legs were iron as she walked towards him, nerves rippling throughout her body. Any other girl at Liberty would confuse Marie's nerves for simple attraction, yet this was just typical Marie Bell, shy and secretive at first and then uncontrollably loud once getting to know someone. Unfortunately for Jeff, he was about to be that next 'someone'.
"Hi, Jeff right?" Marie placed her hands on the desk opposite him, leaning down slightly so she could whisper. Her words were planned, and before she had actually spoken them, she thought they would cause her to adopt a casual, carefree disguise, but after speaking them she scrunched her eyes up in regret. Of course she knew it was Jeff, everyone knew who Jeff was, after all.
"Yeah, hi, you must be Marie," his voice was soft and friendly, yet dropped to a more serious note when he saw her expression, "you got something in your eye?"
Her eyes immediately shot open, and she shook her head as she sat down, hoping he would forget about it. For a few moments there was just silence, and Marie began to regret giving in to her wicked teachers plea. She decided to busy herself, pulling her backpack off of the floor and retrieving all of her history books and spreading them out along the desk. Jeff smirked slightly, yet it wasn't the cunning and cruel smirk that most of the jocks wore, it was a pleasantly amused smirk.
"You must sure like History, huh?" he commented on her excessive amount of textbooks, "your bag must weigh like a tonne."
"Quite the opposite actually," Marie shrugged, inspecting his reactions as he scanned each of her textbooks, "Mrs Skinner, has worn me out learning it, I feel like I'm a part of the History myself I know so much."
"I'd rather know a lot than non at all," Jeff shook his head throwing a half smile, "especially when I'm being told I can't play baseball otherwise."
The girl raised both her brows, out of shock and pure curiosity as to what was going through the Coach's head when he decided to warn his star player that he may not stay on the team. Surely, he couldn't have been serious, "what, did Coach tell you that?"
"Yeah, but he was trying to act like he wasn't being told to say it by my parents, I think they think that by threatening me with baseball, some kind of miracle will happen," he shook his head, widening his eyes, as though coming to terms with the situation.
Marie felt her phone buzz in her back pocket, and she rolled her eyes discretely, knowing full well who was texting her, and knowing even better that she didn't want to read the message. Hastily, she retrieved her phone from her pocket and slammed it face down on the desk.
