Harrison:If you don't answer, I'll come over again and tell your Momma that you're being mean to me ;)
Oh, that was rich.
Grace:.
Harrison:Oh, funny :P I mean, if you don't say a full sentence to me, I'm comin over
Grace:Take a running leap off Clifford Point.
Harrison:Ouch. That's harsh.
"I'll show you harsh," I muttered, burying my nose in my book again.
Harrison:So, same time tomorrow?
Grace:If you insist. Going to sleep now, g'night
Harrison:But it's only 7:30
Grace:That's when nerds go to sleep. Night, night.
I went back to my book, switching my phone to silent.
The next day, Harrison met me at the library, thankfully, right on time. The sooner we could get this done, the sooner I could go back to ignoring him.
Unfortunately, Harrison had other ideas. From the moment he sat down, he suddenly morphed into this charming and funny character—who turned out to be a damned good partner.
We decided to split our project up, and each worked on a different section while checking in sporadically. It wasn't how I usually worked when I was forced to team up on a project; I was too much of a type A personality to let go of creative control completely. My standards were too high. But I figured the less I dealt with him, the better.
I thought he'd be deadweight. He hadn't given me any reason to believe he was anything but lazy, entitled, and indifferent when it came to schoolwork.
But, to my shock, he managed to keep up with me. I mean, as much as he could—I was a straight-A student, after all.
But I appreciated that Harrison wasn't ashamed to ask for help or my opinion if he was stuck on something.
When I groaned loudly and read out a paragraph to him that I was worried sounded too long-winded, he gave me some really helpful advice. With some tweaking, it came out a lot less clunky and flowed better with the rest of the conclusion.
We bent our heads together and read through our project, correcting sections that didn't work before we had a completed essay in our hands that I was pretty fucking happy with. It may not be an important assignment, even not that interesting, but for reasons that I did not wish to explore, it had been the most fun.
Harrison held his hand up for a high five, which I grinned and enthusiastically returned.
"Well done, partner."
"Not so bad yourself."
"You wanna get tacos?"
And just like that, my mood dropped, and I was firmly brought back down to earth. Just because Harrison managed to work with me for a grand total of three hours without being vicious didn't mean that I would suddenly become all buddy-buddy with him.
Obviously, Harrison, away from his friends, was a different kettle of fish. If they were here with him, I had no doubt he would throw rolled-up pieces of spit-up paper at me.
My eyes shifted from his as I fiddled with the strap of my bag. "Ahh, I gotta get home."
"C'mon, my treat."
I gave him a small smile. "No, thanks."
"What, you used my brains and now suddenly you're too good for me?" he joked.
