Let's Pretend

He has to be kidding me.

I mean, he didn’t say that we’d be working on our project at my place just for shits and giggles. There he is in my kitchen, laughing with my mom over some tea and lady fingers. Seriously, the guy bolts out of class and somehow gets to my house faster than Usain Bolt can sprint fifty meters.

“Why are you here?” I exclaim, throwing my messenger bag to the floor and stomping my foot.

“I told you before I left English. We’re going to work on our sonnet,” he simply replies, chewing with his mouth open full of tea cookies.

I make a face in disgust at the moist food inside his mouth.

“Zoe, it isn’t very polite to demand why a guest is here and then make a face as if you’ve seen something foul,” my mom cuts in, sipping at her tea.

“Thanks for the backup, Ms. Munson,” Eric says, grinning at my mother.

Her face turns a deep scarlet as she waves her hand at him to lightly shush him. A forty-four-year-old is flirting with someone at least twenty-five years her junior… I’m pretty sure there’s a law against this, or maybe taboo.

“Oh, hush, dear boy. How about you call me Lauren?”

“Oh, please, mom,” I scoff, “How ‘bout he not? Mom, just because you’re a single mother, that doesn’t give you the right to flirt with boys—“

“Men,” Eric interrupts me, his smiling as he sees me roll my eyes.

“Boys,” I repeat just to spite him, “my age.”

He snorts and it’s his turn to roll his eyes at me.

“Zoe, don’t be assuming things,” she insists, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room. “Angie would not approve of this hypothetical relationship involving her son.”

I scrunch my nose up in distaste.

“Whatever,” I say, turning my attention to the tea-drinking boy before me. “Should we be heading to my room then?”

—

I let him inside my room and watch as he just plops onto my bed.

How rude.

“You just sounded like Stephanie from Full House.”

I ignore the fact that I just said that aloud.

I stare him down, “Get off my bed. I don’t want Gardener fumes lingering on my bed sheets.”

He obliges and sits at my computer desk, swiveling himself around in my office chair.

“Alright, kid, let’s get started. Connelly assigned us Shakespeare’s Sonnet C-X-L-V…whatever that is.”

“C is a hundred, X is ten, L is fifty, and V is five. Because the X is before the L, that would subtract ten from fifty. Therefore, we have Sonnet one hundred-forty-five,” I automatically explain.

He looks at me curiously, before he slowly says, “…okay then.”

Eric turns his attention to the sheet of paper we got handed in class, his eyes scanning the page from top to bottom a couple of times.

“So, this shouldn’t be so hard,” he says, still keeping an eye on the sheet. “I mean, you have me, after all, so I’m positive we won’t fail. You, however, are a terrible liar; therefore, you are a terrible actress.”

I frown at his judgment. I think I can lie and act just fine. I mean, I may be a little too overdramatic, but that’s what good acting is…right?

“I definitely need to train you,” he states and turns to look at me. “You may not like it, but we’re going to have to spend a little more extra time with each other so that I can get you ready for this role. Your character is the main focus of the sonnet and shows a lot of emotion, so I need to prepare you for what’s coming next. We can start writing the script for it right now, okay?”

I nod my head, taking out my own copy of the poem and giving it a once over.

“Do you mind?” he asks, gesturing to the laptop perched on my computer desk. I shake my head lazily, placing the sheet of paper down next to me on my bed cover. I let myself fall, bouncing as my back makes contact with my mattress.

We continue to work for the next three hours. He finishes the script in just forty minutes, and then decides to give me acting lessons.

“Listen, if you want your audience to believe you, you have to believe in your character. It’s like you’re Hannibal Lecter wearing that police officer’s face. Pretend you’re wearing the face of the female in the sonnet,” he says calmly.

“That…is a disturbing analogy,” I comment, grimacing a bit at the thought.

He ignores me and continues, “Put yourself in the mind of your character. How would your character feel in the situation when her leading man reacts in that way? How would she feel if she saw her leading man look like a kicked puppy? Let that feeling take over your facial expressions. Don’t overdo it; I know you always do…just try not to.”

I’m growing tired of his voice, and it doesn’t help the situation that there’s a gnawing pain in my lower abdomen. I press my hands against the place below my bellybutton to relieve the pressure building up there, and I wince in pain. Of all times to feel a wave of PMS symptoms, this has to be one of the worst.

He’s still talking, though it’s just a mumble in the back of my head. I get up off of my bed, ignoring the way the blood rushes to my head, leaving a pounding headache.

“I’ll be back,” I mumble, shuffling out of the room.

After swallowing an extended relief Midol pill and drinking a full glass of water, I head back upstairs. I drag my feet across the carpet, my arms hanging limply by my sides.

I stand silently in the doorway, eyeing him suspiciously as he’s peeking at just about anything out on display in my room. I roll my eyes. Typical.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I question suddenly, smirking as he jumps.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough. Now, don’t avoid the question. What’re you trying to find? What’s so interesting about my room that you feel the need to snoop around?”

He splutters, “Pft, snooping? I’m not snooping, kid. I’m just trying to get to know my buddy better, alright? You know how that saying goes: ‘You can tell a lot about a person by their personal items.’ And as your buddy, I feel like I have a right to know who you are…? I feel like you never tell me anything.”

“Bullshit,” I reply indifferently. “Now let’s get back to work.”

He presses his lips into a thin line and nods, grateful that I let him off the hook. As he makes his way back to my computer table, I throw myself onto my bed, rolling myself onto my back. I instantly regret the action, as the throbbing in my head becomes more pronounced. I groan in discomfort, heaving a dead weight arm across my eyes.

“Are you…you know, okay?” he asks awkwardly. I’m a bit surprised at his concern. It’s not like us to ask about the wellbeing of the other.

I have to lift my arm off of my face to see his expression. My lips quirk up in amusement as I see the way he looks uncomfortable and unsure about what to do. It’s kind of funny, so I decide to be honest and see what happens.

“I’m getting my period, so I’m experiencing some major PMS.”

He squirms in his seat, and I have to giggle quietly at his awkwardness. Oh jeez, this is too good.

“Which reminds me… I have to go get some more tampons,” I say, trying to sound as absent-minded as I can. I look at him from the corner of my eye and have to hold in a laugh as I see him scrunching his face up uneasily.

“Okay, why are you telling me this?” he demands, breaking down.

At this I can’t hold in my laughter. I let myself snicker at his distress until my stomach hurt. “Because, buddy, you said I don’t tell you anything. I thought now would be a better time than anything to give you what you wanted.”

He looks at me with what I think is annoyance, his gray eyes dark. I close my eyes and let out a satisfied sigh, releasing the rest of my giggles into a single breath.

Suddenly, I feel a weight on either side of my body. I furrow my eyebrows in confusion, and just as I open my eyes to see what was going on, all I can see is Eric’s face closing in on mine. Before I’m given a chance to react, he pushes his mouth against mine. A strange, yet pleasant, tingling sensation spreads from above the painful ache in my uterus, all the way down south to the place between my legs. It startles me, as I remember who’s kissing me.

My instant reaction to the sensation is to push him off, and that’s what I do. I push him away from me, backing myself up to the foot of my bed. As much as I’d like to be further away from him, my bed is only a queen, which leaves a foot-and-a-half of space between us. I can already feel the flush spreading from my neck to my cheeks. He just looks bewildered, but pleased.

“You just mouth-raped me!” I gasp as my eyebrows shoot up to my hairline. I’m certain shock, disbelief, and confusion was painted violently across my face.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like it.”

With a determined glare, I curl my right hand into a fist and take a swing at his left jaw. He grabs it before it can make contact with his face, cradling my hand gently. My heart beats wildly with alarm, so I snatch my hand away before he can do anything else.

“Holy shit! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hiss, panicking at the situation at hand. “Why are you doing this? Is this some kind of payback for bringing up my feminine issues? This isn’t funny in the slightest. You’re seriously scaring the fuck out of me.”

My eyes dart anywhere from his face to his mouth to his hands to my hands to the door to anything. I’m frantic and have no idea what shit he’s pulling this time. I can still feel the impression of his lips on mine, and have to rub my hand across several times to make it go away.

“I-I,” he stutters, making my head snap to him. He finally looks embarrassed, “I honestly have no idea. I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry!”

He genuinely looks apologetic, his dark eyebrows furrowing nervously above his timid eyes. He can’t look at me and he’s wringing his wrists in his hands worriedly.

I sigh, “Alright… let’s pretend this never happened then. It seems like we both need to forget about it. We’ll forget about it if we pretend it never took place. We were working on our project, I went downstairs, I came back upstairs, and we continued to work on our project. Okay?”

It takes him a while to respond, but he finally agrees, “Sounds good. And now I’m going to go home, because it’s almost eight and my mom will start to worry. Thank your mom for the tea, and I will be on my way.”

He leaves my room without another word.

I’m still in shock of what happened, and unknowingly allow it to consume my thoughts. The rest of the day passes by rather quickly. The tasks I needed to get done are acted out robotically. Homework, dinner, brushing my teeth… As I lay my head back down onto my pillow, I realize something.

His smell is lingering on my sheets.