the hating game ; lrh

eleven

"NO, RORY, YOU SPELL it with an 'a', not an 'e'."

Luke leans across and scribbles out the word on my paper viciously before rewriting it outside the given space and underlining it three times. I know he's only trying to help, but the action ignites even more frustration within me and I pull my paper closer to my body once he moves away, as if protecting it.

"You don't have to be a dick about it," I mumble, frowning as I study the rest of my results.

Luke scoffs from beside me. "That was not me being a dick, and you know it," he tells me. "Besides, you need all the help you can get."

"Hey, I didn't even do that badly!" I exclaim happily, my anger fizzling out and dying as I reach the bottom of the page. I shove the paper in Luke's face and point to the big, fat number at the bottom. "I got a 62!"

Luke simply glares at me. "I told you to get a 70," he deadpans.

"You know I was never gonna get that," I scoff, slapping my paper back down on the bench.

"Someone's especially cheery today," sarcasm drips from Luke's words as he slides the paper back into his folder.

"Yeah, I'm a bloody sunflower," I respond with the same level of sarcasm, causing Luke to chuckle lightly.

"Positive attitude, positive outcome," he muses, his brows furrowed as he flicks through some papers in his folder. I watch him intently as he does so, thinking back to our conversation from a few nights ago.

Since then, Luke had been... different. Not other-worldly, hold onto your hats, epiphany-type different, but certainly different in some way. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. He was somehow being kinder whilst still teasing me in the same way as before. Yet something about it seemed less harsh — maybe it was something in his voice? Was it softer? Or maybe it was simply because I now held some sort of knowledge that Luke didn't want me to hate him, and maybe that meant that he didn't really hate me, after all. Whatever it was, it made him far more tolerable, that was for sure.

"Whatever you say, boss," I finally respond, tearing my eyes from the boy and focusing on my paper. Sixty-four. That is a damn good improvement — hopefully I could now just pull off that score in a real test.

Luke must see me smiling to myself and staring at the paper, because he nudges me lightly in the arm. "You did good," he tells me, and when I look at him he nods to the paper. "Be proud of it."

"I am," I respond with a small grin. "I'm just nervous that I won't be able to get that score in a real test."

"What do you mean?" Luke shuffles closer to me, frowning as if he's the one who's nervous. "That was a real test. It was just like everything Miss Fernandez gives us in class."

"But what if I can't do it?" The question comes out in almost a whimper, and I can't quite believe that I'm allowing myself to be so vulnerable in front of this boy yet again.

"You can," Luke assures me, blue eyes watching me, telling me something that his words don't.

"And if I can't?" I question him again. By now we're close together, closer than we've ever been before, and I can feel our bodies moving towards one another like magnets, unable to pull away.

"You can," Luke repeats the words, but this time they somehow hold more meaning, more comfort. "I know you can."

I part my lips to speak, but no words come out. I push and push for them to come, but it's like I've lost my ability to speak. Instead, I gape at Luke silently for a moment, our bodies moving closer together again, before finally allowing them to fall shut. I lick my lips, just for something to do, and Luke's eyes flick down for a moment — a fleeting but undoubtedly certain moment — to watch the action before returning to my eyes.