Promises We Keep

11

KEN POV

It's been a week since the....kiss. I actually didn't even see it coming. That boy never ceases to surprise me. I mean, I realized that my attraction to him was a little bit more than just a curiosity and a project that I can fix. I just never expected for him to feel attraction to me as well. And I definitely was not expecting him to just kiss me. And that kiss was...yeah. It's best that I not even dwell on it. I can't go there with him. Relationships, love, and all those other false emotions are just a load of crap. It's lust.

The fact is that love is not reliable. If you give into it, you risk the chance of becoming dependent or feeling like the world will end if a person leaves or disappears. You'll become like my mother. I will never be like my mother. I will not be the type to stare into space at random times of the day expecting someone to just walk through the door and put me back into motion. I don't want to feel that. As they say, we came into this world alone and I will happily leave it alone.

I thought it would have been awkward though, but Marcus is actually acting as though it has never happened. He has stayed over my house every night this week and we have just hung out. We watched some TV, worked on some chemistry experiments, he taught me some behavioral things to look for when reading people. He has even become like best friends with my mom which is hilarious. They really bonded on Criminal Minds and it's become some sort of weird habit in just the past three days that as soon as we get home from school they have to sit and talk about it for about thirty minutes or watch an episode.

It's Friday now and we are currently in our last period, AP Statistics. The teacher finishes the lecture with about fifteen minutes to spare and instructs us to just talk amongst ourselves until the period is over. I glance over at Marcus who is sitting next to me. I watch him finish up some calculations in his notebook, which is weird since we weren't doing any calculations this lesson.

"What are you doing?"

He holds up a finger. "One moment." He glances at his calculator and writes something down. He then scans over the page and then closes the notebook putting it away in his bag. "Okay, what?"

"What were you doing?"

"The homework for the next two periods of stats."

Um..come again? "Why are you doing it so early? You have like two weeks until the next assignments."

"Yeah, well I like to get the boring subjects out of the way so I don't have to focus on them for a while. Besides, this stuff is pretty easy."

I shake my head. "You're making me look bad psycho boy."

"You're doing pretty good at that all on your own rich boy."

I roll my eyes. "How many classes are you ahead on," I ask fully hoping that this is the only one. He has to be some sort of genius or something. The subjects I am good at are just science and math. The others I definitely need to spend extra time on. English is definitely one of them. All the reading and writing about stuff I don't want to read and write about. What is the actual point? And why is English grammar so nonsensical? Marcus places his finger on his chin as if he's thinking. Do you really need to think that hard about it?

"All of them except my art class. I'm still trying to figure out what to do for my project."

"You're annoying," I deadpan. He just laughs. "When have you even had the time to do any of that? You've been at my house."

"Well, I did some future assignments and readings last week before the party. I figured if I try to teach myself the material it would make it easier when I am in class. Some of it was pretty simple, so it didn't take that long. And I have just been working on the assignments during my classes or I would wake up early and work on them when you were still sleeping."