Bitter Sweet Blaire: Teacher/Student Romance

Chapter Twenty-Nine

29.

It was hard to stay furious with Christian when he looked so wounded. It wasn't just his physical being that had taken a beating now, but his masculinity as well. In the words of Caroline, he looked kissably adorably. With an icepack to their faces, slumped on the couch were he, Ryan and Adrian, who were all recieving a verbal beating from me. Hence the attack on their masculinities. It sucked to be berated by a woman.

"You knew?" I growled for the second time, Christian not even dearing to blink--it was his turn to be yelled at. Currently the recipient of the glares of both Adrian and Ryan, he seemed oblivious, his big, round eyes filled with brown and boy, as they were fixed on me, hanging onto my every word. As though I was somehow superior to him right now.

Hell, I was.

"Yes, but Blaire--"

"You knew that my brother was shacking up with my best friend," I concluded, "but didn't think I'd want to know about something like that?"

He scooted forwards on the couch, dropping the icepack in his pledge to beg for forgiveness. "I tried to, but Ryan wouldn't let me."

My brother scoffed. "At least Caroline's eighteen. At least I'm not married. At least I'm not her teacher! At least she's not your sis--" At this point, I had wheeled my head around to silently berate my brother, and his words had fallen into oblivion. Ryan closed his mouth, defeated, and slumped back against the couch.

"I'm not finished with you," I informed Christian, now moving onto the next, unlucky candidate: Adrian. "You."

"It was the alcohol--"

"Don't give me that shit, Waters!" Christian smiled in satisfaction, too much satisfaction for a man who had neglected to share with his girl an entirely different, yet very significant, piece of intel. Gone was that smile, replaced with eyes that begged for me to continue yelling at somebody else, as soon as I wordlessly remanded him.

I slammed my fist on my palm, making the three of them jump. Miranda and Caroline hid their amusement behind their hands.

"Just because I am unquestionably furious with Christian right now does not mean I condone what you did." Reitterating the fact that I wasn't finished with the man in question, I turned to him, making him quickly straighten up, and said: "There's the second thing you should have told me, Henrik."

For the first time since my reign of terror had commenced, he had the strength to throw me a frustrated glance. Even with my mother's infamous hands-on-hips manouvre, Christian was adamant about making a point. "What were you expecting? Oh, hey Blaire! So, I know you're not talking to me, but I just wanted to let you know your fake boyfriend kicked me in the balls today."

"What's wrong with that?" I knew the answer before I'd finished asking the question. "Male pride?"

"Doesn't exactly paint me as a fearless warrior, does it?" Visualising Christian crouched over himself at the country club, where a drunk Adrian had kneed him in the nards, kind of cheered me up a little bit. Emphasis on little.

"That depends. Did you cry?"

He paused for a second, looking up at me from under his delectably long eyelashes. "My eyes might have watered."

Ryan fist-bumped Adrian. "Nice."

"Okay, half time. I need some peanut butter," I announced, abandoning the three of them as they took a break from the interrogation, laying back against the couch.

On the phone to a disgruntled Derek, Miranda was trying to reason with him. They had a date night planned on the day that today Caroline had designated her 'break up' sleepover party. For years we'd always celebrated breakups, in order to see them as a positive means. Well, their breakups anyway. You sort of needed to have a boyfriend to have a breakup. My friends were nice to include me int heir festivities really.