Page 55 of False Assumptions

Not that he’d phrase it that way. He wasn’t a complete moron.

But when he came to class on Tuesday, he found her sitting in the back corner, the desks around her already taken. Dammit. He stood there, long seconds ticking past, waiting for her to look up and acknowledge him.

She didn’t.

Her head was down, her hair forming a barrier, blocking his view of her face. She had a book open on the desk in front of her.

The other students around her looked up at him standing there. Like a moron. But she didn’t. She had to know he was there, but she pretended he didn’t exist.

Fucking perfect.

Turning around, he found another seat a few rows over. He couldn’t even watch her, because she was in the very back, and all the other back seats had been taken. Dr. Rankin wouldn’t tolerate him turning around to look at her, and he didn’t need to embarrass himself any more than he already had. So he resigned himself to cornering her after class.

But she escaped while he was still packing up his things, and by the time he made it into the hallway, she’d disappeared.

“Fucking fuck!”

Two girls looked at him, their eyes wide with surprise at his outburst. He gave them a tight smile and turned away, his fist clenching at his side. He wanted to punch a hole in the wall, but since it was cinderblock, that would only break his hand and not leave a dent in the fucking wall.

He didn’t have any better luck on Thursday. Or the following Tuesday.

Clearly talking to her before or after class wasn’t going to work. He needed to come up with a new plan. Some way that she’d have to listen to what he had to say and wouldn’t be able to ignore him.

But what?

He glanced around the empty hallway as though it held the answer to his questions. His eyes landed on a neon green flyer tacked to a bulletin board a few feet away. A plan started forming. That just might work.

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