he found the colors to paint her where the world had left her grey
"Closing your eyes and letting go won't kill you," he whispered to her, the soft pad of his thumb gently caressing her cheek.
"I'm afraid of it, Harry," she muttered, swallowing the...
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(author's note): hi !! harry is pretty :-)
"Eloise, this simply cannot continue." Ellie had heard these exact words twice in her life. Once, from a boy she thought might just be her forever. Then again, from the professor who clearly thought she was a lost cause. Always her full name.
"What do you mean?" She gave the same response both times. She hoped dearly that the second conversation didn't hurt nearly as much as the first.
"There's no depth to what you turned in at all," Dr. Styles said, his gaze practically cutting through her from across his solid wood desk. She felt her cheeks flush, but not in embarrassment. In anger.
"I worked very hard on that assignment, Dr. Styles," Ellie replied, puffing up her chest so she could stop feeling so small in the space. "I figured you'd want me to be honest rather than make something up."
"Honest?" He raises his eyebrow at her, standing enough to lean his hands against his desk in front of him. "You gave up, Eloise. The only thing honest in your paper is the clear evidence that you don't give a rat's ass about this class."
"Dr. Styles-"
"If you don't care, get out," he said firmly, shaking his head as he stood up straight. "You could so easily just drop the course. There's no point to you being in my course if you're not going to put any effort forth."
"You really don't think I'm trying at all?" Ellie asked, tilting her head slightly. "I did try on that paper, Dr. Styles. You have no idea how long I was sitting there, just trying to understand what you were even asking of me."
"And you never once emailed me for help." His voice was calm now. Did he think this was going to help her? That this confrontation was going to turn her life around and make art easier for her? No revelations happening here.
"It's the first assignment. I've been in school long enough to know if you need help on the first assignment, you might as well kiss your GPA goodbye."
"I want you to start tutoring sessions." He crossed his arms over his chest. Oh, so he means business.
"Start tutoring sessions?" Ellie scoffed, matching his body language. If he was going to put up a fight, so would she. "You want me to go into the tutoring center to have some sophomore tell me what art is?"
"That's exactly what I want," he said seriously. "Clearly you need some extra help. Someone to motivate you enough to actually do your assignments the way I assign them.
"I'm not having some 19-year-old tell me to do my homework," Ellie muttered, picking up her bag and pulling it over her shoulder. "I'll try harder next time. Is that what you want to hear?"
"It's what I want to see, Eloise," he told her. "If it's not evident to me next week that you're putting more effort forth, you have two options. Tutoring with me, since you don't want to be told what to do by someone so young, or I'll drop you from the class. Easy as that."
Ellie took a moment to really take in her environment. He thought he was all high and mighty, telling her what to do and how to work, but wasn't he pretty much still a kid too?
"Easy as that," she muttered, clenching her jaw tightly and turning toward the door.
"Don't think I'm oblivious as to why you're in this class, Eloise. I know you only need it to fill a requirement so you can graduate. But wouldn't you much rather graduate with a new skill rather than the same old same old?"
_____________________________
"He's oblivious and annoying!" Ellie said loudly as she entered her room, tossing her backpack on to her bed and groaning loudly as she too flopped onto it with a thud. She stared up at her ceiling, hoping that maybe she could find an answer to her troubles in the bumps splattered across it.
"Boy troubles?" Bev asked as she walked in from the bathroom, her hair wrapped up in a towel and steam following her.
"Boy troubles would be a thousand times easier," she muttered, thinking back to how upset she'd been the last time she was broken up with. Somehow, it was nowhere near the frustration she was feeling now. "That stupid Styles guy hated my paper and is setting me up for failure."
"That doesn't sound like him at all," Bev laughed and shook her head, sitting down across from Ellie on her own bed. "He's a cool guy, El. He probably really wants you to succeed. Did he yell at you or something?"
"No," Ellie scoffed, rolling her eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that day. "He wasn't yelling at all. It was like he was disappointed in me. But he's never even met me before. How the hell am I supposed to live up to any standards when I don't know what he wants from me?"
"Assignment requirements are on your syllabus, aren't they?" Bev asked, furrowing her eyebrows. "Why didn't you just follow that?"
"I did, logistically," Ellie said, shrugging and turning on her side to look at Bev. "But it doesn't say anywhere on the syllabus that a love for art is required. And I think that's what he's expecting of me."
"So what are your options, then?" Bev asked, grabbing her sketchbook and pencils from the cubby next to her bed. "You can't fail the class, obviously, and you have to learn something in order for Styles not to drop you from the class."
"He said either get a tutor or drop the class," Ellie muttered, looking down at her hands. She'd already chipped away at the nail polish she'd just repainted the night before.
"Like one of those sophomores who did ridiculously well in the class and now thinks they know everything kind of tutor?" Bev scoffed, shaking her head as she leaned back against her stacked pillows. "I think you'd better drop."
"He offered tutoring sessions with him," Ellie grumbled. The mere thought of having to take any more of her already limited free time to spend with that high horsed asshole made her want to puke. How could anyone be so cocky? Surely he doesn't know everything there is to know about art.
"Wait, really?" Bev paused from the scribble she was looking at to glance over at her roommate, her eyes almost bugging out of her head. Ellie nodded slowly, furrowing her eyebrows. "You idiot, take that chance."
"I'm just going to drop it and find something else-"
"No, dumbo," Bev said loudly, throwing a pencil across the room and laughing as it hit Ellie on the forehead. "Do you even know what this could mean? You could be his favorite. You could be the teacher's pet. If he sees you even pretending to put more effort in that way, he'll raise your grade. You have to do this or I'll disown you."
