- Andrew's Point Of View -
Why the fuck did my alarm ring? I'm not in the mood to go to university today. Every second I see Jessica, I get flashbacks from that party. I'm just pissed she didn't tell me, get it? My feelings for her won't have changed if she'd told me. They haven't changed till now. I'm just confused.
The first hour I've got Mathematics, then English, then, Business Economics. Fuck today. I can't ditch, though, my uncle would kill me. I get up and take a shower.
Here I am, on campus. Man, I won't miss university at all. I've been to university twice, and the second is so much worse than the first. The first was to improve at arts, but business economics isn't my thing. I don't know how I'll work in my family's corporation after this.
And here's Jessica parking her car in the teachers' parking. She's wearing, uh, all black? I get that she wears black often, but full black that's new. Her hair's in a bun, that's new too, I'm so confused. I'm pretty sure Tyler knows what's up. If not Tyler, then it's Peter. I text Tyler, I know he focuses on his classes, so I don't expect a quick reply from him.
"Andrew, how've you been?" Taylor shows up. Oh my god why. "You've been absent for a whole week!"
"Hey Taylor," I fake a smile, "yeah, I had a meeting in New York."
"Seems interesting." She shrugs. "Did you do that huge ass project, Miss Styles asked us to do?"
"We had a project?" My jaw drops, fuck. She nods. I completely forgot, oh my fucking god.
"She said we all have to present today, we have two hours of Business Economics today." Taylor informs me.
I remember, on her first day when she was talking about her grading system.
"Whoever doesn't return their projects on time, are getting Fs. Even if you're absent. I know it's cruel, but later on, when you're working in a firm, they won't put bad grades, they'll just not pay you."
"And did you even try on starting it?" I ask her, taking deep breaths.
"You always do our projects, I never bother." She scoffs.
"I'll go talk to Miss Styles. Excuse me." I run off to the professors' room.
Great, Jessica's not inside. I can't miss out on mathematics for fuck's sake.
"Excuse me, Mister Lockwood, have you seen Miss Styles?" I ask my English teacher.
"She got in, got some papers out of her purse and went out. She didn't even say good morning, which is very unconventional of her." He replies. Fuck. "I can tell her whatever it is that you wanted to."
"No, thank you." I smile at him. "I might skip English today."
"And why so?" He asks, crossing his arms.
"There's an issue going on in the company I have my internship at." I lie. "That's why I need Miss Styles, to get her consultation about that issue."
"Oh. Good luck then." He rolls his eyes. Mr. Lockwood didn't like anything involving maths, that's why he went for English Litterature. "Here she is."
"Thank you." I look at her. I conclude that she's frustrated since she just got out a pack of cigarettes. I don't think I should speak to her now. It's either I do it in two hours or I get an F. I think I'll ditch English and maths, I'll just ask Rebecca to give me copies of her notes.
I'm done on time, I swear if Taylor fucks it up, I'll fuck her up. I got all her lines, I just hope I see her before Jessica asks us to present. And Jess is in class, fuck. She's wearing a black V-neck tank top paired with black jeans. She's wearing short brown boots. Yet, she's not wearing too much makeup and you can see the smoking effect on her lips. Without any words, she hands me her chair and heads to sit in the back.
She always does that when we have presentations, so she can be facing us like one of the crowd.
"Look at that ass." Evan, one of my classmates says, pointing at Jessica.
"You do realize that's our teacher?" I glare at him.
"What do you care?" He scoffs. "She's hot and we all know that."
"That's disrespectful towards her," I state.
"Andrew, let me remind you that we have a bet going on. She might've responded to you the best, just because you're the only one who sits right in front of her." Evan rolls his eyes and goes to sit wherever he usually does. "I promise you, I'll be the one to win."
A few minutes later, Jessica goes to turn off the light and instead turn on the projector. She hasn't spoken yet. A text appears, and it reads:
Dearest students,
Today's is the due date for your presentations. If you didn't do it, kindly get out of the classroom and consider yourself getting a zero. I absolutely do not care what stopped you from doing this project, I've given you a whole entire week to do it in class, it's not like it was to be done in your houses. Whoever wants to pass first passes now and plugs in their USB like it is usually done.
Your teacher,
Miss Styles.
Why on earth isn't she speaking to us? She seems tired, I guess I'll have to talk to her at the end of the period.
We're all done with our projects. Jessica just kept on writing notes the whole hour and didn't speak to any of us, not even to give us her comment about each's presentation. There are five minutes left and everyone's just using their phones, including Jessica.
Everyone gets out, except for me and Jess.
"May I ask why are you wearing black? And why aren't you talking to us?" I question, looking at her straight in the eyes. She doesn't react, she just takes a cigarette out of her purse and lights it. "I'm a human being, I wasn't created to be ignored."
She doesn't answer too, she just heads out. Sighing, I glance at my phone, Tyler's texted me back.
Jessica might be grumpy today, but she's sort of pissed and upset because our grandfather died. Yesterday. Sorry mate, xx.
Oh, my god, that's horrible. I really should talk to her, I'm supposedly visiting her this evening, you know, for my private lessons. I really hope she hasn't harmed herself in any way.
I'm at her apartment's door, let's get ready. I press on the doorbell's button, Peter opens it.
"Mate, I don't think she'd be okay with giving lessons today." He seems pretty upset too.
"I don't give two shits about my lesson, I just want to know what's up with her." I pretend I don't know shit.
"Our grandfather died. Although I didn't ever meet him, I feel horrible for him." He looks at Angelina, who's playing peacefully in the back.
"Jessica hasn't said a word on campus today," I state, sighing.
"She hasn't spoken nor eaten since yesterday when she came back from her AA meeting." He replies.
"She still does those?" I ask and he nods. "Was she that close to your grandfather?"
"Fuck no bro. He hated her so because she was, and I'm quoting from mom, 'a sin'." He makes virtual quotation marks with his finger.
"What the fuck do you mean by a sin?" I narrow my eyes.
"Her mom had her without being married, he was too religious." He shrugs. "Nonetheless, Tyler told me they had the same personality."
"I don't see Jessica being religious." I scoff, even though she has that tattoo. "I really need to talk to her."
"I'll let you in, but if she rages, I'll blame it on you." He laughs, getting the door wider.
I walk in and head to her room. Out of politeness, I knock on the door. No one answers. Let's hope she's not naked and open the door. The room smells so much like smoke, damn. She's sitting on her bed, and there are like five packets of Marlboro cigarettes.
"Just the man I was looking for," Jessica states, laughing. Okay, this is weird.
"Jessica, are you high?" I look at her, confused.
"Nah, it was too hard to get weed." She laughs, she's drunk.
"You do realize you just threw away six months of sobriety out of the window?" I say, disappointed. It's not like I don't drink myself, it's just I don't extremely like drinking, so I don't do it often.
"I don't give two shits." She scoffs, glancing at her phone.
"You think being drunk will change the fact that your grandfather died?" I snap at her.
"Oh well, he died, Kristen died, I will die soon, does that matter?" She rolls her eyes.
"Yes it does. Because you matter to many people, your brother, your daughter, your other brother, your parents, not to forget, me." I tell her, sitting next to her.
"Oh Andy, stop being boring." She puts her hand on my shoulder. "Let's do something fun, like making love."