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She’s a fucking menace.
Her purple hat is a fucking menace.
And for some reason, she’s the only one who’s ever held my attention like this.
Fucking fuck.
Look away from her.
Let her go.
I’m the worst guardian in motherfucking history.
Because I’m not going to.
Not because I’m angry or hellbent on some twisted revenge.
But because for some reason, I can’t.
I can’t let her go.
Not yet.
He made me tea.
Chamomile.
Like he told me he would.
He boiled the water for me in his tea kettle — he has a tea kettle; it’s steel with a black handle — before pouring it into a white ceramic mug and plunking a couple of teabags in it.
He not only plunked them and left it at that, no.
With his big, busted fingers, he clutched the delicate bags and dipped them in and out as well. Until the water turned a thick brown, only a few shades lighter than his chocolate chip eyes, and the air around us turned aromatic.
And then I drank it. Again, like he told me I would.
And it was the best chamomile tea I’d ever tasted. Somehow even better than Mo’s.
Then I went back to the dorms and went to sleep.
I’m really not sure how I managed to do that after what had transpired between us last night.
The very extraordinary turn of events.
His extraordinary concern.
What was that?
But you know what, I’ve decided that I can’t dwell on it.
I have other things to dwell on.
Things like my plan. My blackmail scheme.
My freedom.
Whatever it was, let’s call it an anomaly and move on.
Cynthia, who also happened to be my mother’s rival, was a bust apparently. So I need to find something else. Some other piece of damning evidence that I can use against him.
With that determination, I go in for my second day of detention.
I arrive at five o’clock sharp, and this time when he opens the door, he doesn’t make me wait outside. He simply steps aside to let me in. I barely throw him a glance as I enter, keeping my mind focused on the task. Maybe I could…
“You sleep okay last night?”
I jump at his voice coming from behind me and whirl around.
Like yesterday, he’s standing by the door, his large frame filling the doorway both length- and breadth-wise.
But unlike yesterday, he’s all settled over there.
As in, completely turned toward me and leaning against it. Even his arms are folded across his chest, his biceps looking like small hills under his dark gray tweed jacket.
He looks the very picture of relaxation and patience.
As if he has nowhere else to be right now except where he is, propped against the door and watching me.
As strange as that development is, I’m not even thinking about it right now though.
Because there’s something else here that requires my attention.
The fact that he’s not wearing a tie.
Instead, the top two buttons of his gray dress shirt are open and they are two too many because I can see everything. As in, I can see the triangle at the base of his throat. I can see a little bit of his chest as well. Like, very very little of his chest. Maybe even less than an inch, but still.
Because the thing is that I’ve never seen it.
I’ve never ever seen that dusky patch of skin on his throat or that micro-inch of his chest.
And that’s because I’ve never ever seen him without a tie.
Ever.
In all the four years that I’ve known him — granted that he was away for three of them, but still — he’s never not worn a tie in front of me.
And I realize that this is even worse than that forearm thing from last week. That display messed up my breathing.
This one stops my breathing altogether.
And makes my belly drop.
Staring at the triangle of his throat, I blurt out, “Where’s your tie?”
“What?”
I swear I can see his chest vibrate with his clipped word, or maybe I’m just losing my mind. “Why don’t you have your tie on?”
There’s a moment of silence then.
Which makes me jerk my eyes up to his face. To his confused face actually.
A small frown between his brows. His eyes slightly narrowed as he watches me.
I admit that I might have sounded a bit abrupt, but I want him to put a tie on. I need him to.
I can’t afford any distractions from my grand scheme of blackmail, and so I say, clenching one fist and clutching the strap of my backpack with the other, “You’re violating the dress code.”
“The dress code,” he says finally.
“Yes.” I nod. “You’re the principal, aren’t you?”
“Last I checked.”
“And you wear tweed jackets with elbow patches.”
“I’m aware.”
“Well, are you also aware that tweed jackets went out of fashion back in the fifties?”
Not true.
They’re still very much in fashion.
As in, they’re usually featured in most fall collections. Wherein sometimes they catch fire and then you have everyone from LA to London to Paris wearing them. In fact it happened just last year.
