His Tutor

10: Sleeping Beauty

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's just shocked I have a boy over for the first time."

"I'm the first boy you've had over?"

"Yep."

Ahaan turns away, smiling to himself. Maybe he thinks I'm a loser who never had a guy over.

"I'm relieved," he sighs.

"What?"

"Nothing."

I eye him suspiciously, but Ahaan avoids me by looking at random things on my desk.

"Ishqi, did you eat all of the food?" Dad calls from downstairs.

"Sorry!" Ahaan smiles at the idea of my excessive eating habits.

"Order pizza. Oh, and some breadsticks with wings," Dad shouts before I hear the t.v. click on with the hollers of sports fans and discussions of announcers.

"You can stay for food if you want," I suggest.

"Sure," Ahaan agrees without hesitation. He slips off somewhere as I go to order pizza on my phone. Once I finishing placing it, I go downstairs to see where Ahaan went. I find him on the couch next to Dad, discussing whatever sports game is on. The scene is too bizarre for me to process, so I quickly leave to the kitchen to get some water. Usually, Dad would say hi to Vamika, Olivia, and Esha when they would come over. That would be about it besides asking if we were hungry or if they were going to spend the night. However, he seemed so engaged with Ahaan it weird.

Periodically, I would stick my head out of the kitchen to check up on them, and they would be watching the game while critiquing the play or players. I didn't understand anything since I don't know the lingo, but they seem to be into the same things. Weird.

The door bell rings and I go to check on the door. Now, even Ishita is on the couch with them, talking. Weirder. I pay the delivery guy and juggle two boxes of pizza, three boxes of wings, and a bag of breadsticks. Ahaan gets up to help me and I set it onto the coffee table in front of the couch. Once Dad gets into a game, he's not leaving that couch until it's over.

Since the food is in the living room, I'm forced to hang around unless I want to keep walking back and forth. I sit on the floor and Ahaan changes his seat from before to one that's closer to where I am. Ishita sits in the other sides, leaving my dad in the middle of the couch. They throw a bunch of football terms around and I don't understand anything that's going on.

Quietly, I munch on food while scrolling aimlessly on my phone. I would usually check my texts from my friends, but there any. There hasn't been any. Yet, I can't help but keep refreshing the page in hopes one will soon pop up. Maybe I should send something. What would I send?

Me: Do we have a biology quiz coming up?

I refresh and refresh and refresh. Read. There isn't reply, not from a single one of them. It said Olivia was typing, but nothing was sent. She must've changed her mind.

"Ishqi?"

"Huh?" I jerk my head up to see Ahaan peering over my shoulder.

"You okay? You've been looking at the same screen for fifteen minutes now."

"Oh, yeah. I just spaced out." I quickly close out of it and set my phone onto the table. Grabbing another breadstick, I shove it into my mouth. I look blankly at the screen, trying to cancel out the noise of the t.v. for a ring to come from my phone. The game ends, and nothing.

Surprisingly, Dad invites Ahaan to come again next week to watch the game. I'm even more thrown off when Ahaan actually agrees. Ahaan goes out towards his motorcycle and I follow him out.

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," I say.

"Of course I want to come again. That was fun. My family doesn't do stuff like this."

"They don't?" I asked, shocked about how he could've found watching a game on t.v. while eating pizza exciting. We do this every week. If it wasn't for the fact I eat everything on weekends, we wouldn't have to eat so much delivery and take out.

"My dad is always at work. My mom and sister don't like these kind of things. They're usually off doing their own thing. I'm not interested in getting red nails and a new skirt, so I don't come with them." Ahaan laughs, but his eyes look downcast.

"Well, anyways, thanks for returning my octopus."

"Thanks for the new wallpaper for my phone."

"Wait, what?"

Ahaan pulls out his phone and taps around for a it before putting it back into his pocket. He slips on his helmet, hops onto his motorcycle, and starts the engine. My phone rings and I quickly pull it out. My friends finally texted me.

Nope. Just a text from Ahaan when is he literally two feet away from me.

"What the heck, Ahaan." It's a picture of me sleeping.

And no, I don't have my hairs in perfect waves draped over my pillow. My eyes are not covered by the curtains of my feathering eyelashes. My lips are not fixed into a rosy pout. My cheeks are not pressed gently against my pressed hands. I don't look like the princesses movies make girls to look like in their sleep. My staticky hair is sticking out to make me look like a pine tree. My arms or contorted as they spread across the bed with my neck trying to hold up my dangling head, which is about to fall off my pillow. My eyes are crusty and my mouth is slightly opened with drool seeping out.

Ahaan pulls away laughing as I look at my phone in horror. I start to shriek at him, but he is gone before I can do anything about it.

"Night, Sleeping Beauty. I'll see you tomorrow!" he says, still in hysterical laughs while he drives off.

*****
END OF PART 10

I'm so sorry it's another short chapter. Trust me, the next chapter is going to be much more eventful. Please don't think that this chapter is pointless, because the relationship between Ishqi's dad and ahaan will be important later on. I needed a chapter to develop it, so when it does become important, you guys won't feel like, it came out of no where. Thanks for reading as always 💗

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