Bad Luck Hannah

Josh POV

"Come on, Kylie, be a bro! You're the only person I can go to for this, and you're the best girlfriend Devins ever had --- okay, so maybe you're his only girlfriend, but that's not the point. Help me out on this one," I beseeched her, prepared to crawl across the table on my knees if I had too and embarrass all of us.
Her and Devin were both glaring at me.
I sighed.
It was lunch, we were all here except for Ricky and Jessica, both of them deciding his dick was more important then an education I guess. Ryan sat across from me, enjoying watching me beg the wicked witch of the east for help. Chris sat beside me, Kylie and Devin across from him, the extra stool vacant on his other side.
"Why would I want to help a shithead like you," she scoffed, peeling her orange with her freshly manicured nails. "Make a nice girl like Hannah miserable?"
"I'm not making her miserable," I rolled my eyes. "We're just getting to know each other."
"So you're making her miserable."
I glared at her.
"Look, Josh," Devin sighed, shaking his head at me, always on the side of his woman. "I know you guys made that bet, but you're taking this way more seriously then I think you should. Pick a different girl or something, okay?"
His voice was soft, trying to be persuading.
He didn't understand.
I didn't want a different girl, I wanted Hannah.
I frowned at him, irritated.
"You're not helping."
None of them were fucking helping.
"You can't be helped," Kylie informed me snidely, biting into a slice of orange, the juice dripping off her fingers like the blood of her previous boyfriends. "You're a lost cause."
"And you're a sarcastic twat, but I don't tell you that all the time," I huffed, leaning back on the stool and earning a glower from Devin. Chris actually choked on the soda he was drinking, and I was pretty sure it came out his nose.
I patted him on the back with a sigh.
At least he'd thought I was funny.
Ryan was grinning.
He was enjoying this too much.
"Josh, just let it go, man," Chris rasped, eyes watering as he tried not to cough his lungs out. "Hannah's a sweet girl, and you're to pushy with her."
"I am NOT pushy!"
Why the fuck did everyone keep telling me that?
I just wanted to find as way to make my progress with her go a little faster.
And it wasn't like she would let me get her naked so I could be more discreet with the marks I left on her.
So I had to figure something else out.
I propped my chin on my hand as I brooded.
Was that the right use of the word? I wouldn't admit it, but coming to this school full of geniuses and being around Hannah with her own extensive vocabulary (when she chose to speak) made me feel kind of... stupid. So I'd been doing a little studying on the side, trying to broaden my, my... Terminology.
There.
I could use big fucking words too and halfway know what they meant.
not that knowing a lot of words was gonna charm Hannah out of her skinny jeans, though.
God, had Mom been this difficult when Dad was trying to hook up with her? If I'd been closer to him I might have asked him how he, um, worked her over?
Okay, being smart was getting difficult.
I scowled.
I had to find a way to make this go smoother.
"Look, Josh, I'm serious. Ryan, you too." Ryan and I looked at Chris where he stared the two of us down, and it kind of felt like he was berating us. "You guys need to just leave Hannah alone, okay? Choose a different girl, someone easier. She doesn't deserve this."
I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously.
"Chris, do you like her or something?" I asked, twisting around until I could stare slightly up at him as he had the waist the length of a giraffe's neck. "Because you're very fucking protective of her."
He rolled his eyes at me.
"No, I don't like her like that, Josh. But what's she's going through... she doesn't need you guys making it worse until she feels so bad about herself ---."
"She's never even going to know about the bet," Ryan scoffed, snagging a piece of orange off Kylie's tray, earning a glare from her. "So all of you stop bitching. He'll sleep with her, give it a little while, and then decide to see other people. Easy peasy lemony squeezy."
It wasn't going to be that simple.
Even I knew that.
Hannah wouldn't simply... well, then again, she probably would just let me go. It wasn't in her nature to hold onto someone, anyone for that matter, and that was what was making this so much harder. She didn't let people in because she was afraid they would hurt her, and despite the fact I was trying to use a jackhammer to break down her walls, I felt like I was using a spoon to tunnel my way through.
I rubbed my jaw, feeling guilty now.
It really wasn't going to end well, and I was going to come out of this looking like a complete jackass.
Which I suppose I was for agreeing to it in the first damned place, huh?
Still, though... I wanted to sleep with her, just because I knew I could if I kept trying. I'd gotten this far, hadn't I? I'd kissed her and she hadn't punched me, I'd even gotten so far as giving her a hickey and she'd only mumbled me into Dante's Inferno.
So...
Fuck, I knew I could sleep with her, get her to like me as much as I did her, and ---.
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I did not just think that.
Holy fucking shit I did not just think that.
Shit shit shit.
I didnt like anyone, not enough for them to be around permanently, and I wasn't about to let myself get so attached to her that I actually started liking her to a point I wanted her to be my real girlfriend.
Real girlfriend as in the guys all knew about it, they all accepted the fact we were together and were casual about it. The bullshit I was pulling now was just to make it easier around her brother and anyone not in our group.
Did she even want to be my girlfriend, anyway? Me saying it before had literally made her look so pale she'd rivaled Devin.
What if she didn't want to be my girlfriend?
What the hell was I thinking? Of course she wanted to be my girlfriend. She just didnt know it yet, we hadn't gotten to that level in our relationship for that to really start up.
I was still working on it.
And now I was making myself incredibly nervous about tonight. My stomach felt like I was going to hurl all the three bites I'd taken of the school lunch, and now I couldnt sit still.
What if I blew it again? What if I ended up making a fool out of myself but this time she wouldn't give me a second chance to start over? The last time I'd just gotten lucky, right place at the right time, that was all that had been.
Now I was extremely nervous.
"Dude, the lunch didnt poison you did it? Josh?"
I looked up, realizing Ryan was staring at me, the piece of pizza halfway to his mouth.
"What?"
"You dont look so good," Devin spoke, my eyes roving to him, seeing his concerned, motherly face. "Like, are you okay? You look like you're going to ---."
"Hurl." Ryan finished for him, leaning away from me into Kylie, who sent him a nasty look before he finally forced her out of her seat and into Devins lap. "Like if you're gonna be sick, take it somewhere that isn't the lunchroom."
"I'm not gonna be sick," I muttered, shoving my tray away from me anyway. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine," Chris sighed, propping his chin on his hand as he looked down at me. "Are you nervous or something?"
"And what would I be nervous about?" I asked, feeling annoyed at all of them for being dickheads. Why wouldn't they just help me out and give me some pointers? Devin must be dong something right to have Kylie, right? So what had he done that had made him so likable she wanted to be with him and take away his virginity? He'd been the last one out of our group not to sleep with anyone, so he'd been more then willing to share all the details with us when it finally happened.
Way too many details.
I ran a hand down my face.
I didn't want to get all cheesy, like bringing flowers or chocolates or any of that bullshit for Hannah. I wanted to do something that would actually mean something to her, touch a cord somewhere that would make her like me so much she would overcome her shyness and literally fling her clothing at me the next time she saw me.
Okay, so maybe I was watching too much TV on that one.
I pursed my lips as I thought about it.
I literally had no fucking idea.
I heard the sharpness of the bell suddenly ring, making me jump.
Shit, lunch was over!?
I glanced up anxiously at the time, seeing I only had two classes left before I grabbed Hannah, and my last one was in the library anyway.
How was I gonna make this work?
Why was I so nervous about this?
I wanted today to go so well I was going to fuck it up, I just knew it.
Oh holy shit what was I gonna do?
I could cancel, right? Just tell her I got a stomach virus and bail out like a pussy.
But I didn't want to look like a pathetic loser, either.
Dammit, why the fuck did I even care?
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
I stood up when I saw all the guys were leaving me, and I hastily dumped my tray in the trash before grabbing my bag off the floor and huffing after Devin; we both had history next and I always copied off his shit, so I wanted to get a seat near him.
We hastily settled down in our history class, finding our seats by the large windows that basically took up the entire wall of the classroom, random assignments with high grades taped against the glass.
Stupid fucking geniuses.
Disgruntled, I propped my chin in my hand, watching as the history teacher moved across the board, telling us to turn to a certain page and begin reading the chapter and filling in some pointless worksheets that wasn't going to help me remember shit.
Which was probably why I was about to fail this class.
I sighed, leaning back in the uncomfortable chair, staring down at the books on my desk.
Why did I have a sophomore book again?
This wasn't my history book.
Uh oh.
Did Hannah have my book and I have one of hers?
I glanced up at the teacher, then over at Devin, seeing him penciling in answers without even looking at the open textbook on his desk.
Well, I was fucked right now.
I hesitated, then glanced under my desk, seeing there was conveniently a history book in the basket beneath where someone had forgotten theirs.
I hastily slipped it out, stuffing Hannahs' book into my bag jerkily, irritated. We were really going to have to work on our book shuffling before one of us had a disaster because of it.
I hastily flicked to the page I needed, cringing when I realized how loud the pages shuffling were.
What were we even studying?
The History of Divide and Conquer.
Huh.
The idea of divide and conquer is to recursively break down a problem into two or more sub-problems of the same (or related) type, until these become simple enough to be solved directly. The solutions to the sub-problems are then combined to give a solution to the original problem.
Huh.......
This might actually be worth learning.
As long as I could figure out what some of these words meant.
Like what did recursively mean?
Jesus, was I fucked on this too?
Disgruntled, I just started scribbling the answers down on the worksheet, my eyes skimming the passages, and idea forming in the back of my mind.
Would that work?
I wasn't even sure. I mean...
Well....
What would it hurt if it failed?
Just make me look stupid, which wasn't hard to do anyway, right?
Hmm....
Divide and conquer....
I could do that.
I could actually fucking do that.