Thomas Verner was in my apartment. Again. And not only was he in my apartment, he was sitting next to me. Again. This time, his face was mere inches away from mine and neither of us was pulling away.
This was insanity, madness and yet I couldn't help imagining what his lips would feel like on mine.
WHAT.
That snapped me out of whatever daze had snatched my mind.m
I blinked, once, twice just as Thomas' eyes had moved to my lips.
I cleared my throat and turned away.
"We should um..." I trailed off, indicating to the copy of 1984.
"Or we could not?" Thomas said, his voice deeper, deeper than before, if that was humanly impossible.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He looked like he was about to say something, something that had definitely been playing in his mind but he decided on, "I don't really want to study."
I frowned. This was the Thomas I knew. The infuriating Thomas. The Thomas that wasn't staring at my like he was going to do something completely crazy. Like kiss me.
"That's not what you pay me for." I pointed out, a hint of frustration creeping into my tone which he just smiled at.
"True." He pretended to think it over. "But I don't care. I don't want to study."
"No one wants to study." I said, exasperated.
"Also true." He smirked at me increasing annoyance.
"Well, if you don't, you won't get your degree and not that my opinion matters all that much to you, I'll think that you're a failure."
He frowned, as if something I had said offended him. "Your opinion matters to me." He said quietly. "A lot." He added.
"Right." I just rolled my eyes.
I grabbed 1984 and pushed it over to him. He ignored it. "I hear you and Mable are coming to the hockey game in a couple of weeks."
I sighed. We really needed to start doing what he was paying $2000 for. I said just as much but he ignored me, instead saying, "So, are you?"
Another sigh. "Yes, we are. Marcus invited Mable and she said that I have to go too." I paused. "I'm still deciding if I'm actually going to go, though." Thomas frowned. "I don't know the first thing about hockey. My family was always a football family." I shrugged.
Thomas nodded. "My brother played football in high school. He was the quarterback."
"Oh no, soccer. My family's into soccer." I couldn't believe I was talking about football with Thomas right now. I couldn't believe I was talking about my family.
"My sister played soccer." Thomas smiled but it looked strained, like talking about this was a struggle for him.
I picked up on this and decided to send the conversation somewhere else. "Yeah, I don't really like sports." I grimaced.
"I love sports."
"Yeah, I know. I mean, look at you. No one looks like that and doesn't like sports." Then I realised what I just said. Why? God, why?
Thomas raised an eyebrow at my blatant admittance that I thought his body was amazing. Which, to be clear, it absolutely is.
He started laughing and my cheeks pinked and then his eyes were on my cheeks and he was smiling harder now.
"Why don't you like sports, Valerie?" Thomas asked me and I was grateful that he wasn't commenting on what I had just said.
"Other than the fact that every single PE teacher is the devil on Earth and has a personal vendetta against 13 year old girls that prefer books to balls with funny patterns on them? Nothing substantial." This was all true, but the main reason I hated sports had a lot to do with pointe shoes and leotards.
"What about ballet? That's a sport." Thomas said, having somehow remembered this fact about me.
"I don't dance anymore." I said quietly. Thomas nodded, looked like he wanted to say more but decided against it.
"So you liked reading?"
"I mean..." I stared at the many, many piles of books that were practically spilling out of my room. "I have a lot of books." I said dumbly.
"I noticed." He smiled again. It was strange. Whenever I saw Thomas, he was almost never smiling, even around his friends but with me... it was different. He was different. He wasn't the grumpy, big hockey player that everyone either admired or feared. He was the guy that stuck up for me when his cousin knob perved on me. He was the guy that asked questions about me. The guy that managed to convince me, if only for a few seconds, that maybe I wasn't as selfish as my family and in particular, my father, believes.
"Yeah, except at that time, I thought that the height of literary fiction was Divergent." I smiled. Now I was smiling around him. God.
"Insanely popular were we?" He asked smirking.
"Naturally." I teased, smiling harder now. "My heightened taste had all of the boys chasing me."
"I can imagine." Except, Thomas wasn't matching my teasing tone. He sounded completely serious.
"Except, Theo James was always the one for me. I turned the hundreds of boys that were after me away, all for him." I sighed wistfully. It was still true. I was a sucker for Theo James.
"Theo James?" Thomas asked, his tone now serious.
Once I pulled up a picture, Thomas' features softened.
"You get it?" I asked.
He turned his head to the side, an amused expression on his face, looking at me and not the screen, and then let out a chuckle. "I get it."
"What about you? I'm guessing you were 'that guy' in middle and high school." I said in all seriousness because well, it kind of had to be true. He was 'that guy' in college so he must've been in high school.
"Oh yeah." He was nodding his head now. "With my -4.5 prescription and membership at my middle school's Poet's Society, I was that guy."
"No way." I said shocked.
"Yes way." He sighed. "At 13, I was unimaginably dorky and had a strange obsession with poems."
I laughed and then slapped my hands over my mouth. "Sorry." I said in between giggles.
"You can laugh but just know that all the 13 year old girls were after me."
"No doubt." I said, still laughing. Then, something crazy and wild took over me because I decided to say, "I think 13 year old you and 13 year old me would've been friends."
Something brightened in Thomas' eyes. "I agree." He paused. "Except, when you were 13 I was probably just about 15 and by then puberty had hit, I got contacts and my brother had finally convinced me that maybe, just maybe, the Poet's society was slightly less cool than I was convinced it was."
I frowned. "That's... sad. I love poems." Thomas gave me a look, like I was somehow perfect and he was storing this information away. Weird.
"Then you joined hockey?" I surmised.
"I figured that I didn't want to be on the same team as my brother." He grimaced. "So I chose ice hockey instead of football and ended up loving it." He shrugged. "That of course is when no girls paid attention to me." He grinned.
"Obviously." I rolled my eyes in a playful way and Thomas'... twinkled? I didn't know eyes could do that. I also noticed that he had edged his chair closer to mine. Subconscious decision or not? I couldn't decide.
"What about you? What happened after 13 for you?" He asked.
My mood dimmed slightly because my mother died when I was 14. I plastered on a smile. "Divergent was still my favourite book until 15, when we had to read Pride and Prejudice for our GCSEs. I fell in love with that. I stopped ballet at around the same time." I paused to catch my breath. I had never talked about this period of my life with anyone other than Mable.
I looked at Thomas and realised that he had lost a parent too. That maybe he was one of the few people who could understand. "It was also when my mother passed away."
I waited to see his reaction. Waited for the I'm sorry, for the pitying look or for the awkwardness that generally ensued but Thomas just nodded and said, "You didn't deserve that."
I was taken aback. All I've ever been told is how undeniably selfish I am. How horrible and self-centred my personality was.
"Pride and Prejudice, huh?" He asked and I beamed. It didn't go unnoticed that he had steered the conversation in a different direction for my benefit. I suddenly got this strange feeling that I was glad that I had told him about my mother.
"1995 or 2005 version?" He asked. Considering we watched both versions for our shared class, it didn't surprise me that he knew about them.
"I'm more of a 1995 version, myself. Colin Firth will always be my Mr. Darcy."
He considered this before saying, "Shocking, considering 2005 is generally more popular but it makes sense. I'm pretty sure I saw you drooling when he came out of the lake." He was teasing me. And I liked it.
I laughed again. I was pretty sure my stomach was going to start hurting with how much he had made me laugh.
"He actually played Mr. Darcy twice. Once in Pride and Prejudice and again in Bridget Jone's Diary." I stated.
He was smiling softly. "You're such a dork." Except he was saying it like it was endearing and not completely weird.
"Have you seen Bridget Jone's Diary?" I asked, still smiling.
"No, I haven't."
"Oh my God you have to! It's a British classic." All true. It must've been the way he was looking at me or that I had suddenly gotten so comfortable around him because something completely crazy overtook my senses and I blurted, "We should watch it sometime."
Fuck. Fuck Fuck.
I mean, what the actual fuck was I thinking? Why would we do that? I'm his tutor. His classmate. He wouldn't want to watch a movie with me-
"I'd like that." He said, looking like he had just won the lottery. "I'd really like that." And again he was looking at my cheeks that were most definitely red.
"You blush a lot. It's cute." He said as if he didn't know what he was saying. He couldn't have. I convinced myself.
Once I was sure my cheeks had cooled and I had gathered what scraps of my dignity I had left, I said quietly, "We should study now."
Thomas groaned but reluctantly grabbed 1984 and that was that.
As we were going through his complete lack of style in his essays it suddenly occurred to me.
I liked being around Thomas. I liked his company.
I liked him.
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Omg I enjoyed writing this sooo much so I hope you guys like it too!! Sorry for the slower updates I'm currently in Spain with my family hovering over my laptop asking me what I'm writing and I'm not about to tell them that I'm writing a hockey romance lmfaoo
anyways hope you enjoyed xxx
Word count: 1823