WIP Wednesday - Dearly Beloved chapter 4
“He is proud of you,” Barbara said quietly, as if she had read his mind.
Jason snorted. “Some way of showing it.”
“I’m proud of you,” she tried instead.
“Yeah, well.” Jason fiddled with the back of his earring. “Where do you think I learned it from?”
“Please,” Barbara said through a laugh. “I had nothing to do with it considering you never paid attention.”
“They told us uniforms eliminated distractions…” Jason glanced over at her, setting his crooked smile firmly in place. “Guess they do have the opposite effect.”
“I never wore it to tutoring.”
Jason thought about those five months they spent in school together, how he’d always go out of his way to pass her in the hallway and Barbara would turn away from whatever she was doing just in time to smile at him over the shoulder of her blazer. He thought about the first few weeks, when he hid in the library during lunch to avoid sitting alone, and how Barbara somehow found him anyway, pulling up a chair without him asking, legs crossed in that plaid skirt and knee highs. Jason cracked bad jokes and she laughed louder than she should’ve considering, earning them a scorching glare from the librarian that made the whole thing feel sacrilege. But he’d sin again every time just to hear that sound escape her lips.
“What can I say, Barbie? You made a lasting impression.”
Because I didn’t do the thing I said I’d do and finish this before November, here’s the part I’m least likely to severely edit to make up for it and the literal months of nothing. Hope you like dinners where the meal is tension and self-deprecation with a side of oh fuck feelings.
Gonna try to do this regularly to maybe help me clear through the backlog of stuff I have but we’ll see how long I actually keep it up.
I will never stop obsessing over how good this fiction is
