Offside
“Do you know where the math hall is?”
She stopped in the hall and looked up at me.
“Is there some particular reason you are being nice to me?” she asked.
Damn.
“Straightforward, aren’t you?”
“You were a complete jerk on Friday.”
“You caught me at a bad time,” I replied. It was at least partially true. She narrowed her eyes at me then turned and started walking away. “Hey, Rumple!”
She glared back at me.
“The math hall is this way.” I pointed over my shoulder, the opposite way she was going. She stopped in her tracks and sighed. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
She paused and seemed to consider before she finally started following me.
“This map is useless,” she mumbled as she shoved a paper into her book bag.
I just smiled and led her down the hall.
“So, Rumple,” I said, “why weren’t you here for the first week of school?”
“I just moved here,” she replied. “It was kind of a last minute thing.”
“Why did you come here?”
“My dad lives here,” she said.
“A little more info?” I prodded. I turned the corner and started down the next hallway, watching her the whole time. She gave me another big sigh.
“My mom got a new job as a journalist, and she’s going to have to travel a lot. It just made sense for me to come here. She’s very career-minded.”
“Sounds like a blast.” Sarcasm is a beautiful thing. I brushed my hand against her arm…accidentally, of course.
“I’m very happy for her,” she explained. “It’s exactly what she wanted.”
“Yeah, I can see how thrilled you are,” I noted. Her expression told me I was right.
“It’s only for a year.” She shrugged, and we turned another corner. My arm touched hers again. The first bell rang, and she glanced around as other kids started scrambling into classrooms. “Don’t you have to go to class?”
“I’ve got practice last bell,” I told her.
“Will you be late?”
“Maybe.?
? I smiled and watched her lip disappear behind her teeth again. Damn, that was hot. I started imagining other things I could do with that lip.
“What happened to your eye?” she asked.
I raised my hand up to my forehead and lightly touched the cut above my right eye. It wasn’t a bad one but certainly noticeable.
“Ran into a door,” I said with a half-grin.
“That’s a lame story,” she replied.