Robin des Bois ✓

eight. Rude Boys

“Kind of.” I could tell he was smiling –I could hear it in his voice.

I couldn’t think of an adequate reply so I just clenched my jaw shut, feeling mortified. I’d often felt the urge to disappear –when being as shy as me, that’s not a feeling you can avoid –but I’d never felt this compelled to let the floor beneath my feet swallow me whole and spit me out on another continent, preferably with a different identity.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I whispered finally and took a step to the side, intending to leave. Before I could do so, he stepped into my way and moved a tad closer.

“Fuck. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

“You always sound rude.” The words escaped my mouth before I could think it through and I looked up at him with wide eyes, shocked at my own nerve.

He was grinning –one of his half smiles that made me all kinds of flustered. “Do I? Well, that’s unfortunate.” And then his face sobered up and he looked serious, which kind of scared me.

“I’m sorry about what happened. I just wanted to let you know that that’s not how I usually behave.”

I snorted quietly, my gaze dropping to my feet. “That’s not what everybody’s saying.”

“What everybody’s saying doesn’t matter. What matters is that I don’t usually do what I did that night. I don’t sleep with just anyone.”

My head snapped up. “That came out all wrong,” he backtracked and ran a hand through his hair. It was only then that I noticed that it was covered in scribbles, just like the last time I’d seen him. “What I meant was that I usually make sure that my –uh –partners are in for the same thing I am. It’s a onetime deal, the no strings attached kind, you feel? But I didn’t actually know that that’s what you were expecting from that night.”

I didn’t say anything. My eyebrows pulled together in a frown and I just stared at him, trying to guess where he was going with this.

“And then when I realized that it was your first time… I should’ve stopped. But I didn’t. I don’t want you to think that I didn’t care… I just –I wasn’t thinking straight. I really am sorry.”

And then I got it. “Don’t worry, Alexei. I won’t go around spreading rumors about you.” My voice was hard and for once it didn’t waver –there was no trace of my habitual hesitation. “Your reputation is safe. I won’t undermine your dreams of becoming the future president or whatever.”

This time, when I made a move to sidestep him, he didn’t block my way. Without glancing his way again, I took the stack of books from where he’d left them. I noticed that my hands were shaking only when I reached out to pick them up, but I concentrated to tame the tremors. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing just how much I felt… What exactly? That was the problem. I couldn’t even put in word the complicated melange of emotions that were boiling inside of me.

“Isis, that’s not what I meant.” He grabbed my arm and his touch –even through the sleeve of the pullover I was wearing –made the little hairs on my arms stand up. But for once, I didn’t want to listen to any excuses or pretexts. I didn’t want to let him use what Tina called my “hopeless naiveté” against me. I looked over my shoulder at him, ready to tell him what I thought about all of this, but when I saw the expression he wore, my hostility melted away.

His eyes were pleading with me and all the mischievousness and arrogant entitlement that somehow always stuck to guys like him had vanished entirely, leaving him almost vulnerable. He looked like a little boy and everything inside me softened, as if dictated by some backwards maternal instinct I didn’t even know I possessed.