How to train your rival - Part 2

Within ten minutes Stephen had sent me a message.  What the hell?  You drag me into this mess and then run off?  When are you available to meet and discuss our presentation?

I smiled.  He’s such a brat.  I replied.  I can catch up at 4pm.  Should we meet in one of the study rooms?

His response was instant.  I’ve booked room 3.  See you at 4.

I spent the next couple of hours planning ways to torture him with glee.  This of course in no way prepared me to find him talking to a girl when I arrived.  I was momentarily taken aback.  He didn’t shy away.  He wasn’t blushing.  He was talking confidently.  He even smiled in a charming way.  The whole thing irked me.

I walked up behind him and straight into the conversation, “Stephen! Partner!  I hope you weren’t waiting long” I clapped him on the back and stood next to him facing the girl.  He instantly shied away from me and said, “Candice.  I didn’t see you there.  This is Sam she’s another law major.  She’s gathering up the other law majors at Burgmann for dinner tonight.”  I smiled brightly at Sam who was looking like she’d swallowed a bug and said, “Hey that’s great.  I’m a law major too.  Can I come along?”  She looked at me like a deer caught in headlights and mumbled, “Sure.  We’re meeting at 6pm.”  I sniggered internally and said, “Awesome.”  Turning to Stephen I said, “How long do we have the meeting room for?”  He checked his phone and said, “Another twenty eight minutes.”  I grabbed his arm and said to Sam, “We’d better get going.  See you tonight!”

Stephen let me drag him into the meeting room and then turned and closed the door.  I sat down and got out my notes and notepad to start planning out the assignment.  When I was finished I noticed that he was doing the same.  I decided to wait for him to finish so simply stared.  His serious brown eyes were focusing on the task but some of his hair which was just a little bit too long was getting in his eyes.  I resisted the urge to brush it back.

When he was finished he looked up at me with daggers in his eyes.  “Are you done?”  He asked tersely.  I decided not to rise to the bait and headed straight into the task at hand.  “Out of the questions posed I think number three would be easiest to set up as a situation and argue positively for the law.”  All business he re-read the question again and said, “I agree.  No point in making additional work for ourselves.  This one will probably give us the best marks.”

I smiled to myself and sat in silence for a moment.  He looked up when I didn’t immediately reply and gave me a derisive look, “What are you smiling to yourself about?” he asked.  I leaned forward with a cheeky expression and said, “I was just taken aback for a moment.  I do believe that’s the first time we’ve ever agreed on anything.”  He slammed his pencil down and exclaimed, “Do you have to make a snide mark about everything?”  I leaned back again in my chair and replied, “No I don’t but you’re special.”  He blushed slightly, looked down at his notes and said, “I think if you work on constructing the contractual example I will work on noting down the points of law and getting references.  That’s fine right?  You’re good at that sort of thing.”  I said, “That sounds fine.”   

However when he’d looked back down at his notes again his hair had fallen back in front of his eyes and this time I couldn’t help myself.  I reached over and gently pushed his hair out of his face.  He jerked back violently and looked at me in shock.  He stood up with his head down.

“Hey.” I said, “What’s with that reaction.  One could almost think you like me.”

His head jerked up and the words exploded from his mouth, “Of course I like you.  I’ve liked you for six years.  Ever since I found out you had a boyfriend I’ve tried to suppress it but everything you do just makes it worse!  You’re pretty.  You’re smart.  You’re confident and arrogant.  You’re so cheeky sometimes that it just makes me want to attack you but I’m not that kind of guy!  Just do you part of the assignment and I’ll meet up after I’ve had a chance to cool down.”  He quickly shoved all his gear in his bag and stormed out.

Credit to Umezawa Marina from the manga Kedamonozakari, Koizakari

I sat in shocked silence.  He’s liked me for six years?  I could feel the heat in my cheeks and knew I had turned red as a beetroot.  Thank god he’d gone already but why did he think I had a boyfriend?  How would he even find something like that out?  It’s not like he saw each other with any sort of frequency back home.  I glanced at the clock on the wall.  I had about an hour and a half till I hopefully saw him at dinner.

When it was finally time for dinner I got stuck talking to one of the seniors so arrived about ten minutes late.  Stephen was there and was sitting next to Sam.  The only seat nearby was diagonally across so I grabbed my plate and sat down.  Stephen stubbornly refused to acknowledge my presence even though I knew he’d noticed so I went about introducing myself to the other law grads.  The girl next to me, Clare, was talking about how different uni life was when her phone buzzed.

She checked it quickly and looked dejected so I asked, “Are you ok?  Is something wrong?”  She sighed and explained, “My boyfriend has just started his electrician’s apprenticeship.  We were supposed to meet up after his work today but apparently the site is really remote.”  I leaned over and trying to make her feel better said, “Just because you can’t meet up all the time doesn’t mean he doesn’t want too.  Not that I can talk really.  I have zero experience in the field of love.  I went to high-school in this really cloistered all girls school.”  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Stephen stiffen.  So I continued, “We were so desperate and dateless we used to make up these stories about a fake boyfriend called Mr Imagination.  We’d describe the dates we’d go on.  It was so lame.”

At this point I had Stephens’s full attention and with an outraged and shocked expression he said, “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!”  I laughed, put on my best evil smile and replied, “Well what did they do at the cloistered all boys school you attended?  Fall in love with girls they barely know and then don’t talk or make a single move on them in six years?” His eyes narrowed at my highly accurate shot across the bows.  Then he looked me straight in the eye and put on that smug self satisfied smile that I knew so well.  He leaned forward and said, “What makes you think that if I knew a girl was available I wouldn’t make a move?”

It was the first time he shot back and it floored me.  The blush warmed my cheeks and I was literally frozen in place for a minute.  Internally I was frantically trying to adjust my world view.  He’s not awkward with women at all.  I’ve been playing around all this time on the assumption that I’d finally found his weakness but now the tables have turned.  I felt like prey.

Next to me Clare burst into laughter and said, “You guys are hilarious.  Like an old married couple.  Thanks for cheering me up.”  Stephen smoothly stepped in and said, “Well our rivalry has been long and hard fought.”  In my frozen state I realised that Sam across the table was staring daggers at me.  Oh god.  Not only was I now prey to a genius I was also hated by a fellow undergrad because of it.  My life suddenly and unexpectedly got more complicated than I was prepared for.  

With considerable mental effort I rallied and said, “Hopefully this time with our powers combined we can get a kick ass mark on our contract law assignment.”  Across the table from me the guy sitting next to Stephen groaned.  “Can we make a rule about no shop talk at dinner?” he asked.  I’d completely forgotten his name after being introduced fifteen minutes ago and replied, “Ok.  What would you like to talk about?”  He looked thoughtful and said, “Surely we have more in common than our degree.  What do you guys do for fun?”  Oh that’s right his name was Matt.  

Having moved the conversation along from my now dangerous love life I spent the dinner resolutely trying to avoid Stephens gaze.  Stephen spent the rest of the dinner deliberately trying to bait me.  He slipped concepts from debates in the past into the conversations.  Matt started going on about this new game he’d been playing called “Breath of the Wild” and Stephen commented that his favourite part was finding particularly wild mounts and bringing them to heel.  At that point I looked up from the conversation I was having with Clare in alarm only to have Stephen grin evilly at me.  Determined I dove back into my Bibliophile conversation with Clare and resolutely blocked out every other thing he said.  I refuse to let him lead me round.

By this point I had long finished my dinner and when Clare offered to lend me a book I accepted with relief.  If I went up to her room to get it with her Stephen would have no chance to ambush me.  I put away our trays whilst Clare collected up her stuff.  When I returned to the table Clare was staring at her phone.  When she looked up she said, “I’m so sorry Candice my boyfriend managed to get back early and wants to catch up.  I can’t go with you to get the book.”  I looked around frantically and when I didn’t see Stephen anywhere with relief I said, “It’s alright.  I’ll just get it off you tomorrow.”  I waved to the rest of the table and said, “See you later.  It was great meeting you all.”

I fished out my phone and started checking my messages whilst walking back to my room.  As I walked past the vending machines I heard a very familiar voice behind me.  “You know I have that entire series back in my room if you want to borrow it.”  It was Stephen.  He scared the living daylights out of me and I jumped a practical mile.  I’m afraid I also let out a pathetically girly squeal and dropped my phone.  He knelt down, picked up my phone and handed it back to me chuckling.  “I get why you did that last time now.”  He mused, “It was pretty entertaining.”

He was looking straight at me and I felt a distinct tightening in my chest.  If I’m not careful I’m going to lose this one and Candice Holl does not lose but running away at this point is not an option.  The best defence is an attack so I met his gaze with determination and said, “Sure.  Know that I will take note of all the nude girls you’ve hung on your sheltered choir boy walls as evidence to use on a later date.”  He walked past motioning me forward and replied, “A date?  How bold of you.”

I blushed thankful that he was facing the other way and followed him to the elevators.  After I regained my composure I replied, “You know very well that is not what I meant but if you really wanted a date you could just ask.”  We stepped inside the elevator and in the close confines I became hypersensitive to the fact that he was standing so close.  He stepped even closer and took hold of my hand and said, “Well now that I know you’re single I’d rather just get straight to the point.  Go out with me.”  I paused at the direct attack and stuttered, “But I barely know you.  I mean I’ve known of you for six years but the first words we ever said to each other were a little over a week ago.”  He was so close I started to think he was going to lean down and kiss me.  He lifted his head up and said, “You know going out with someone is a great way to get to know them.”

At that moment the elevator doors slid open.  He took a firm hold of my hand and pulled me out of the elevator through the group waiting to get on.  I thought he’d let go of my hand the moment we were through but he kept holding on as we walked swiftly down the corridor.  I silently allowed myself to get pulled along.  Even though he’d turned everything I knew about him upside down today I did still want to know more.  I’d only responded that way out of surprise.  I needed to turn this around to my advantage.

We reached his room and he let go of my hand to unlock it in silence.  His face was serious and he walked in without looking back at me.  My insides clenched in fear that I may have missed my chance so I stepped through behind him whilst he ruffled through one of the boxes and closed the door.  He came up with the book and walked over holding it out to me.  His head was down and his face was hidden behind his hair again.  He started to say, “You can borrow it for as long as you like.  I don’t really...” As I reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes he stopped and looked at me in surprise.

The best defence is an attack and I knew I was going to lose this battle so I took his face in my hand, stood on my tip toes and kissed him.  I was mildly chuffed that he was indeed shocked for a moment but in the next he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back.  I could almost feel the six years of his longing transmit through that kiss.  It was so powerful that when we came up for air it left me breathless.  

“I’ve decided I want to know more.” I breathed between puffs.  

He smiled down at me smugly and said, “Well I am a fascinating subject.” 

I rolled my eyes smiling and said, “Oh shut up.” Before pulling him back down into a kiss again. 

Credit to burdge at https://burdge.deviantart.com