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There’s two things Eden Bingham has learnt in the last couple of months. Number one: Jason Carver doesn’t seem to like her much. Number two: she unfortunately really likes Jason Carver.
Both of which are less than ideal for their current situation, which is tutoring. Jason is staring at the notes in front of him with furrowed brows, seemingly trying to make sense of them so he can explain them to her. They’re in an empty classroom—one she found during her freshman year here at Moondew, and has since used to hide out, because being alone in masses of people is just kind of pathetic, isn’t it?
Silently, she thinks about how her past self would probably hate her for making a guy like Jason Carver aware of this abandoned classroom. Of her place. Her current self is perfectly happy with it, however, because like this she can sit across from him and stare as he’s reading. As those stupidly pretty blue eyes flit over the pages, as blond eyebrows knit together.
Okay, yeah, maybe Eden has got it a little bad. So what? It’s not like he has to know about that. Not like she’s ever planning on telling him. She’d rather die, she thinks.
In front of her, Jason hums in apparent irritation. He’s always like this, which brings her back to her first point: he doesn’t really like her. Oops.
It’s not like she doesn’t get it. She’s rough around the edges and awkward in a way that gets misinterpreted as mean, not to mention that she’s actually, literally mean frequently. So, yeah, she does get it.
It still makes her press her lips to a thin line.
(She never really knows what to say, so she opts to just say nothing.)
“I still don’t understand why you asked me,” Jason says, finally. He’s still looking at the page in front of him, which honestly is kind of relieving. Eden doesn’t know what she’d do if he was looking at her. Probably squirm in her seat and accidentally glare at him or something. “I’m really not an expert in plant magic. And if that’s what you’re specializing in—” she hums, because it is, “—then I’d think you should be better at it than I am.”
She frowns. He’s right, of course—but the truth is, she doesn’t actually need a lot of help. Studying with someone else always makes it easier for her, so it’s not like it does nothing, but she probably is better at plant magic than he is.
Jason’s blue eyes flick up to her, and she almost jolts a little in her seat. Swallows. Fiddles with her fingers before looking at her own notebook.
“But you’re Jason Carver,” she mutters. “You know everything.”
It’s a little sarcastic. Her crush—if it can be called that—doesn’t keep her from seeing how arrogant the guy is. That he thinks he’s hot shit, and okay, maybe he’s not too far off because he’s pretty and hot and in line to be King Witch and also has a pretty, hot girlfriend. Has she mentioned he’s the school’s star athlete and one of their headboys yet? Asshole.
(Honestly, Eden has no idea how he even manages his day-to-day life without going insane. She’s almost going insane because of school, but she’s got weed, so she’ll be fine.)
Jason shrugs, which despite everything makes a jolt of annoyance rush through her. Of something hot, and then she’s distracted by the way he brushes his hand over the paper in front of him, how he’s spreading his fingers out.
“That’s true,” he says, and she frowns at him from underneath her lashes.
Not looking at her again. Disinterested. And he’s a dick, and he doesn’t seem to like her, and he’s always so forced polite when interacting with other people, and all of it pisses her off.
Let me see who you really are, Jason Carver.
Maybe she’s always been a dreamer, just like her mother used to tell her.
“What’s your specialty?” she asks, quickly, before she has the chance to lose that spark in her chest again. It’s hard to talk to people she barely knows, alright? Especially if it’s a guy like this. A guy she’s—
Jason hums again, and Eden swallows.
“Biology.”
Huh. That’s… not what she expected, but to be fair, Eden has no idea what she did expect. Then again, now that she thinks about it, biology based magic makes sense, she guesses. Certainly helps with sport if you know the right enhancements—maybe that’s why his arms are so thick. His uniform jacket is put over the back of his chair, his button up rolled up to his elbows, and his biceps are fighting the white fabric whenever he’s moving his arms.
God in heaven. May the creator have mercy on her, et cetera, et cetera.
(It’s probably hopelessly pathetic that she feels compelled to pray. Especially for a guy like this.
And at first—at first, alright, it had just been a visual thing. He’s pretty, and he looks like the romantic lead of the novel she’s loved since she was a child, it’s been easy to crush on him from afar, mindlessly projecting her romantic fantasies on the guy. Had taken her breath at first glance, but it’s not like it was anything serious. No, it was like an eye-candy situation, at first.
But he’s kind of annoying. Stuck up, arrogant, stick up his ass. And still—and still, she’s still right here, in this hole.)
“Shouldn’t this mean plant magic is close to your field?” she replies, smoothing out her own notebook as she watches Jason scribble something down. She tries to read it—but his hand covers half of it, and his handwriting isn’t bad, but it also isn’t super legible. Not to mention that it’s also upside down.
And sure, that depends on his field, biology is a broad thing, but still. It should mean he at least has more of an understanding of it than regular witches do. It should mean that he should be able to help her—if she was really this clueless. Which she is not. Eden doesn’t like being clueless.
He hums again. Brushes a hand through his hair, and as much as his irritation bothers her, it has one good thing about it: his meticulously combed hair gets messed up. She likes it best like this. Thinks about running her hand through it when she’s alone.
God, she needs to get a grip.
“Not really,” he replies. “I’m more focused on breathing things.”
Eden moves to balance her pencil on her upper lip. He’s busy right now—still reading her notes and dismissively answering her questions, and that’s kind of perfect, because it’ll probably take a while until he catches up to the fact that she’s asking him questions. That he doesn’t like her, and as such doesn’t want to answer them.
But for now, Jason Carver belongs to her.
“Yeah?” she breathes out. Squirms in her seat even when he’s not looking at her at all—though his gaze flicks to her from time to time. “Like what? Tigers?”
It’s a dumb joke, but Jason snorts anyway. It rushes through her hotly, and once again, Eden tells herself to get a grip. The pencil clatters to the table and she yelps a little as she catches it. Jason snorts again.
Then again, are stupid delusional moments like these not why she asked him to tutor her in the first place? She’s not stupid — she knows she’ll never have him. So this much… well, this much is nice, isn’t it?
“No,” he says, and now, he’s looking at her, leaning his face into his hand. “No, I like sea animals.”
An image flashes in front of Eden’s eyes. “Ah,” she says, nodding to the window that faces the cliff side of the school, down to where the ocean is located right next to them. “‘S that why you’re always on that boat? With your club or whatever?”
Jason clicks his tongue. Scribbles something down while still looking at her. “Not a club,” he says, then. “It’s just me. My hollowball boys help me, though. We’ve been trying to locate a shark. Any, really.”
“A shark?” she asks, wrapping her arms around herself. “Are you stupid?”
She thinks his jaw ticks. Thinks there’s another flash of annoyance rushing over his face, but this one looks different. This one is—
“Bingham—”
“Eden,” she interrupts, without thinking about it. Only when he lifts his brows, his eyes wide in a look of surprise for a moment, does she catch herself. She thinks her face might be bright red.
(Why’s he so surprised anyway? Looking at her with wide eyes in a way that looks almost innocent, like he didn’t see this coming at all.
Like he didn’t see what coming?)
“Eden,” he continues, slowly, and the heat has been taken out of his voice completely. Jason clears his throat and leans back in his chair, scratching at the back of his head with a huff. “Sharks aren’t dangerous if you know how to handle them. Which I do. They’re not aggressive.”
Eden hums. Part of her wants to ask—not because she’s particularly interested in sharks, but because it seems like he is. And yeah, okay, that’s probably a little pathetic once again, but she doesn’t get to it anyway because he taps his pen against her notes.
“Whatever. You, uh, twisted the words here, I think that’s why your spell didn’t work. You have to be clearer.”
His hand pushes the notes back over to her, and she leans over the table to look at them. Watching as he turns them around so she can read—omething about that jolts in her chest—squinting her eyes to read his handwriting.
Huh. He’s right. She didn’t even make that mistake on purpose, but to be fair, she wasn’t really paying too much attention in class. She’d actually secretly been working on her book.
Thank you, she wants to say, but it gets stuck in her throat. Somehow, showing Jason gratitude would feel like losing—at some silly, stupid game he isn’t even aware they’re playing. It’s always like this. She likes him a lot, and she dislikes him a lot, too, so she’s just always dancing around trying not to insult him too badly. Trying to stop glaring at him or maybe glare at him again. Trying to bite back that he looks pretty when he’s reading, with his blond lashes from up close.
He kicks at Eden’s shoe from underneath the table, and she furrows her brows, glares at him. Not that it seems to do much—Jason’s face is flat, unimpressed.
“Hey,” he says, “do you dislike me?”
It makes her blink. The way he just… asks that, out of the blue, with a flat expression. Just clear and honest, and it’s—
(She wanted to know him. Maybe she’s getting that now, slowly but surely. Maybe she won’t even regret it too much.)
“What?”
Jason rolls his eyes, and she grabs the edge of the table, tightens her grip. It settles in her head, and she doesn’t know if she’s blushing, doesn’t know if he can even see it with the way her hair is falling into her face. Do you dislike me? Do you dislike me? Do you dislike me?
“You’re weird,” he says, knocking against the table with his knuckles before leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Always glaring at me, but then you ask me to tutor you. Like do you hate me or not?”
Oh wow.
(Somewhere at the back of Eden’s head does she wonder if he’s been thinking about this for a while. If he’s been wondering about her—wondering about the meaning of her words, of her glares, of her frowns. Not that it matters, not that it would mean anything, but —)
She’s just a tiny bit offended that he called her weird.
“I’m not weird,” she mutters. “And I don’t hate you.”
Jason hums. Nods. For just a moment, she wonders if she can return the question. Ask him why he dislikes her so much—if she’s just too gloomy and boring or what’s wrong with her. Ask him if he dislikes her at all, because if he’s worrying (is he? Is he worrying?) that she might hate him, then he probably doesn’t dislike her, right?
But that’s that, apparently, because he twirls his pen in the air until it disappears—show-off—before asking, “Do you know Eddie Munson?”
Man, he’s really pulling out the big guns today, huh? What the hell is going on with him? He’s never talked to her this much. Is this another thing he’s been sitting on for a while?
She does know Eddie Munson, however. Thinks it’d be hard not to, to be honest, with the guy’s reputation—but she’s also talked to him a couple of times. To buy weed, and one time to hang out while they were smoking.
“Yeah,” she replies. “Why?”
At this, Jason leans closer, which makes her swallow. Looks at her with a conspiratorial look, and—
“Is it true that he grows weed in the gardens?”
Eden snorts out a surprised laugh.
Oh, God, this is so lame. This is so lame, but he’s the headboy of discipline, what was she expecting? Not to mention he’s on Munson’s ass a lot for some reason. But this is—
“No,” she lies, “no, it’s not true.”
And she likes Jason Carver—too much, probably, maybe, perhaps, definitely—but she likes weed even more. She’s not giving that up just because the headboy has a weird-ass hateboner for Eddie Munson, and also all things fun.
Maybe you should get high once in a while, would get the stick out of your ass and perhaps even take you down a peg, she thinks almost bitterly. Well, not that she’d know if he ever has been high before—he could get absolutely blazed every single weekend and she’d have no idea.
She doubts it, though.
Jason hums again, this time annoyed again. What a guy.
(When they say goodbye, she stops halfway and turns around, watching blond hair and a dark uniform jacket he put back on until both disappear. There’s a tight feeling in her chest that she hates.
Well. At least it gives her inspiration for her writing, so you know, it’s whatever.)