AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I won’t humor him or answer any of his questions, though.
It’s a good thing he doesn’t know much about Olivia since he only came down to Boston for his college degree. That was after his parents forbade him to attend art school, and it was not the usual case of parents forcing kids to do something they are not passionate about. It was them looking out for their son.
He wanted to be a tortured poet, but his true calling was business and management. He’s way better as my underboss than he would have been playing Shakespeare or whatever. They did him a fucking favor by turning his request down.
But he came here all by himself to attend Harvard and, according to him, to be closer to me because the part of him being my underboss was inevitable.
“I understand you,” he sips again, “Love is a powerful thing,” he spins into garbage talk, “To some…” Oh, my fucking ears.
I zone out.
I do it a lot. It’s one of the few things I have mastered skillfully: being absent even when physically present.
What was it like with Olivia?
My mind strings his question back, and I answer it in my head, where there is no need to lie.
It would be a lie to say that it wasn’t the best period of my life.
I wouldn’t believe in things like love at first sight if it weren’t for her. And yet, it wasn’t exactly about seeing what was in front of me that got me hooked, it was what I saw beyond that.
She was beautiful, and I wondered how she and every other fucking person at school didn’t see that. She was kind and intelligent. She had a smile that could warm my heart and light up my mood in an instant.
Olivia was in a different league, playing a different sport entirely. She was then and still is a ten over ten.
Magic is the closest word to describe what dating her and calling her mine had felt like. No pressure to do anything for her to love me, no pressure to be the perfect son or burden myself to work twice as hard to be perfect when I was with her.
It was just me and the girl who made my head spin.
From the first day I spoke to her…
“Hey,” I snap my fingers in her face. She didn’t have her eyes open to see me twist Henry’s fingers and almost crush his bones. She didn’t have her eyes open to see them skedaddle out of the classroom.
I would go after them, but for now, she is my priority.
She opens her eyes slowly, a pair of onyx pools.
“They left,” I whisk out a smile that I know might look strange on my face, but at least I’m trying to look reassuring. Nothing as comforting, or as cheerful, as hers… I guess more of a smirk than a smile.
“Hi,” she drops her head, letting her eyes fall on her cake. “I made a cake for a talent showcase,” she pouts. “That was stupid of me,” she sniffs. I don’t miss the fact that one side of her face is hot red, which means she was smacked.
I will get them after class.
They know me, and they know what I can do. I will beat the shit out of them. I will make them bleed through their noses.
“I would love to eat it, if you don’t mind,” I shrug. It looks inviting, although I’m not a cake person.
“You would?” Then she picks the cake up off her desk and clutches it to her chest, protecting it from me as if she doesn’t want to share it, “Are you making fun of me, too?”
“I will find you after the show and show you what I can do to a cake,” I lean my butt on her desk, and she chuckles.
“Thank you,” she nods. “I will save you the best part.” Her eyes are on fire as she tries to convince me how true her promise is.
“If it’s any consolation, I made nothing for the talent show,” I shrug, “Nothing, except…”
“You built a game, Ronan; that’s next-level genius, everyone is talking about it,” she is sitting up straighter now, her confidence slipping back in place.
“I built that game a year ago, my sister and I play it at home… Honestly, I just didn’t have the time to think of something new and decided to bring it to the show. My sister will kill me for that, by the way,” I have never spoken this much in my classroom before, but it feels good.
