ANYTHING BUT ENEMIES

11. morning antics

"He deserves it."

"Mm," she hums noncommitally before letting the door click shut. "Not while there's a possibility the bus will leave without us."

While she's busy taking a world record shower, I gather my own clothes, picking out ones in particular that I think would upset Dane the most.

A black miniskirt and my stompers, navy tank top with a ripped-up, oversized denim jacket. Then I make sure to pick out my most over the top lashes—tarantulas, if you will.

If I have one redeeming quality, it's that I'll never dress to please a man.

Ruby comes out of the bathroom in a haze of steam and I quickly rush inside to take my own record-breaking shower, remembering mid-lather that I never finished my poem from yesterday.

It's always something, isn't it?

***

I ultimately end up finishing my piece on the bus, a blurry scribble of words about being late. To be honest, I don't even know what I've written until I'm sitting at the conference table across from the bane of my existence, having an internal meltdown.

It's only heightened when Frances Delaney whizzes inside, looking perfect as ever. "Good morning, everyone. I hope you all had a nice, peaceful rest."

My eyes find Anaya's from across the table.

"Best I've slept in a while," Nick chimes in, and I can feel the entire room rolling their eyes just at the sound of his voice.

"Good to hear, good to hear." Frances keeps it civil.

"Today we'll be working more on poetry, but first I have a bit of an exercise for you—I want to see how you critique."

"Critique...what?" Marty asks.

"Each other."

"Oh."

Yikes.

"I'll let you guys pick your partners, and we'll see how it turns out, okay? Just judge how you think you should, it doesn't have to be perfect."

Ruby bumps my shoulder. "Partners?"

"Duh." I smile back, feeling a familiar icy breeze cooling the side of my face. My eyes shift slightly over to see Dane staring at me, eyes narrowing slightly when he notices that he's been caught. He doesn't bother to look away.

Freak.

"Just hand your poem over to your partner and I'll give you guys a few minutes to drop a couple insightful comments."

Sheepishly, I dig my scribbles from my pocket, unfolding the paper before coughing as I try to smooth out the creases in front of Ruby. "Enjoy."

She snorts before dropping her own poem in front of me in a similar font. "It's a bit...creative," is the disclaimer I get. I snort back.

Creative is the right word for it—not fully fleshed out, far from its potential, especially seeing as she'd been making her last minute adjustments from right beside me on the bus. Either way, I'd feel bad pointing out anything besides major flaws such as grammar knowing the circumstances.

Using my red pen, I strike out a couple grammatical errors, tracing the ink idly up and down once I'm done to make it look like I'm still busy.

When time is up, Frances sweeps around the room, eyebrows furrowing at what she sees on our pages. "Just as I thought."

When she reaches Dane's group—him and Nick on account of no one else wanting to partner up with them—she lets out a surprised hum before moving on to the next.

After checking all our comments, she returns to the front of the room. "You guys are scared—or most of you are at least."

Silence greets her assessment.

"You're scared of saying something that might hurt someone's feelings, so most of what you've given is surface level. It's impossible to improve if you don't know what you're doing can be improved upon."

"And what if you do hurt someone's feelings?" Reece jokes from low on his seat, chin down, legs stretched out in front of him.

"Tough luck," Frances responds, tiny smile quirking at her lips. "I was an awful writer before I began to practice. And I was even worse when I wasn't getting opinions from different perspectives. No one can tell you how to make your art, but they can point you in a direction you may end up loving.

You know, that's the whole idea of having beta readers, editors, critics. So much goes into the making of a piece that even if you think the outcome seems perfect, you'll never know what it was like before it got fresh eyes on it.

That being said, let's switch partners now and try it again with a bit more aggression."

"Marty, I want you with Nick."

"Hm, Anaya with Roberto."

"Dane with Cleo."

"Eric with—"

"Sorry, who am I with?" the interruption is out of my mouth before I can process it because, of course, I've had to have heard that incorrectly. There's no way I could end up with—

"Dane. I think you two would make a nice pair."

Yep, it's confirmed.

The universe really does hate me.

***

really do vibe w this chapter because this week i've had the most rotten luck ! hopefully it turns around soon tho, but in the meantime, hope you enjoyed reading :) i'm thinkin about starting Emma by Jane Austin today and doing annotations for fun since i have a lil free time—i feel like annotations could be fun even tho i hate doing it for school lmfao

i cant wait to edit this book istg