Bitter Sweet Blaire: Teacher/Student Romance

Chapter Two

2.

It was a good thing I was wearing a helmet because I hit the pavement hard.

"Blaire!" Wyatt called. "Are you okay!"

"Yeah, I'm all good," I called back, making a third attempt to get back onto my feet. It was as unsuccessful as the last two.

You had to expect harsh falls when playing road hockey--a game my brothers and sisters and I used to play all the time. Brooms and mops were used instead of hockey sticks, an empty milk carton instead of a puck, roller skates, and of course the uber sexy helmet, shin pads, and elbow pads. Before our family had money to entertain six kids, we had to create our own fun. Seven year old Wyatt had always been too little to join in, but now the two of us had been playing this game religiously for at least a year now.

You also had to expect harsh falls when you were Blaire freaken Carter.

"Sorry, I think that was my fault," somebody else said, laughing. I turned around, trying not to show how shocked I was. Blaire wasn't flustered; she was cool, calm, rendering everybody else speechless.

"Telekenisis?" I shot back. "Do physicists believe in that?"

"No, but if you want to blame physics, it was an apple that took you down." Mr Huntley kicked an apple to the curb. So that was what he'd meant. I looked at his car. He'd been to the grocery store. His apple had rolled into the middle of the road and knocked me onto my ass.

"Damn Newton," I shot back.

Wait a second.

No.

No freaking way.

"Do you live there?" I asked, nudging my head towards the house opposite mine.

"Well I don't make a habit of parking my car up driveways that aren't mine," Huntley shot back. He grabbed onto my forearm like he'd done this morning, pulling me up in one slick manouevre. "You know, we really should stop meeting like this."

"Dinner's up!" my mother called, making both my brother's head and mine shoot up.

"Race you there!" said Wyatt, like always, and he took off. The threat was heavy in the air: whoever got to the dinner table last had to eat the winner's helping of whatever they chose. It was usually beans and he usually won.

"I'm beginning to understand your tone when you asked me if I lived here," Mr Huntley commented, finally realising my house was the one across from him. "And by tone, I meant the sound of undeniable displeasure in your voice."

"How long have you lived here?" I was good at avoiding people I didn't want to talk to (key: camouflage and extreme hybernation), but not having seen Huntley before when he lived right next to me... Even I had underestimated my ability to manage that.

"I moved in here over the summer. Didn't you see the moving trucks?"

I looked down at the ground, realising why I hadn't noticed someone had moved in. "Oh, yeah, I spent most my summer with my headphones stuck to my ears."

"Ah," he responded. "Oblivious to everything around you."

"My mother was worried they were going to graft to my skin actually," I added.

"As long as you took them off to shower, I guess," Mr Huntley pointed out.

I smirked, averting my gaze to the right while I reminisked. "How do you think they broke?" He laughed again, that deep, low chuckle, and I struggled not to laugh as well. It was so easy making conversation with somebody when you could resort to wit, but it was just as easy to forget you didn't like somebody when you were laughing along with them.