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𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒆: 𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒓
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» a few weeks later.

𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓, 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 had gotten back to a somewhat normal state. While Grace tried her best to not look at Mr. Barnes directly, she still noticed some stolen glances in her direction. Her heart ached at the thought of further avoiding him. Linh had cut it off with that young woman they'd talked about before, and Mai was getting quite far with writing her thesis paper.

It wasn't until the first week of October that Grace decided to start tutoring. Anything that kept her mind off of the Professor was a welcome distraction, and when a young student, Peter, approached her, needing help in his second-semester business class, Grace had gratefully accepted.

Peter was a very polite young man with short, light brown hair and some of the softest hazel eyes Grace had ever seen. Quickly, they'd found out about some of their shared interests, such as reading contemporary novels and watching the same kinds of movies, which made the tutoring lessons a bit more fun for both of them. They usually found a space on campus to sit and go through Peter's material for one and a half hours, twice a week.

Sometimes, Linh would accompany them, getting them coffee and frappucinos, and mainly distracting everyone involved. Like now, where they had chosen a table in the entry hall of the main building. Outside, the rain was once again pouring down on the city.

"I remember that text. 'twas pure torture to go through that shit, I'm telling 'ya!"

"Linh, shut it," Grace chuckled, pretending to hit her best friend's shoulder repeatedly. Peter was trying to go through a text he was supposed to summarize as homework, his bright yellow highlighter hovering over the printed-out pages.

"Shit, sorry, don't hit me, okay," Linh laughed, her mouth wide agape as she threw her head back. A warning glance from her best friend forced her to try and stop laughing for some time.

"You're impossible, Linh," the blonde sighed, not able to get rid of that amused smile of hers. "How do you ever get anything done?"

"It's a mystery to both of us, Gracie," she countered wickedly, a smug grin on her beautiful face.

"Now shh, he's trying to concentrate," Grace hissed, pointing at the young man next to her, who arched a brow upon hearing her words. He glanced up at the two friends with an amused grin. Grace couldn't help but notice how his glance halted a tad longer on her best friend, who again didn't seem to notice.

"The emphasis is really on trying," he joked before going back to reading. Grace rolled her eyes and turned back to Linh.

"Didn't you want to get us food or something?"

The Viet held up her hands in surrender, holding back another laugh.

"I'm going, I'm going, jeez," she chuckled as she got up, putting on her raincoat. She turned to the brunet, a smirk on her lips. Did she think Grace wouldn't notice her flushed cheeks? "The usual, Pete?"

He nodded briefly with a grateful smile, his gaze lingering on her for longer than necessary, which made Grace smirk to herself knowingly.

"Cool. Be right back, bitches," Linh quickly said before grabbing her backpack and rushing out to the rainy campus, where the nearby pizzeria was selling one of the best pizzas they'd ever tried. Grace just chuckled and got out her phone. It was early afternoon by now, and the sun would be beginning to set in about an hour. As of then, the sky was already tinted in a light orange that shimmered through the rain clouds.

"You know what?" Peter asked after some time, glaring up at his tutor. Grace hummed, looking at him expectantly.

"Linh was right. This text is torture," he sighed as he closed his highlighter pen and slammed it on the table in desperate surrender.

"Well—" she laughed, shrugging. She was more than grateful to have found someone she actually liked to be around to tutor. Though he was younger than her, she felt like they could be friends just fine. Which wasn't a thought she had about a lot of people, given the fact that she struggled with social anxiety. It had taken her all of the possible courage to even send out the ad for her tutoring offer via e-mail.

"And you knew. Ugh, Grace, you like to see me suffer, don't you?"

While he pretended to be offended, holding back a laugh, Grace rolled her eyes playfully. This kind of humor was something she had to get accustomed to when she had first met Linh, and now Peter was sitting there, doing the exact same thing.

"I think it's the fact that I know all of this already, and you don't," she assumed, giggling. Her student arched a brow and glared at her appallingly, that smirk still faintly on his face.

"Know-it-all," he muttered before demonstratively turning back to his paper, his gaze fixated on the words again.

Grace couldn't help but laugh loudly about this conversation, her hand pressing flat onto the tabletop for support. These light conversations were one of the reasons she liked to tutor that guy. It made explaining stuff and being around him much easier, despite him not even being old enough to buy alcohol yet. Peter chuckled as well, starting to highlight passages of text again, and Grace let her gaze drift across the large room, the smile still glued to her face.

Then, her breath stopped automatically, her smile faded abruptly when she saw a familiar face at the other end of the room with a furrowed brow, hand clenched around the handle of his briefcase so tightly the knuckles must've turned white. Her expression slipped as her moss eyes directly pierced into those baby blues for a few moments before she looked away, searching for Linh and the pizza outside the large windows. Her lips were still pressed into a thin, white line, and she forced herself to inhale slowly, making her pounding heart calm down and her skin stop to burn underneath his gaze.

Since that incident in his office, they'd barely spoken to one another. Only a few briefly exchanged words after class when she'd lost her scarf and he'd picked it up and brought it to her. Not more. Everything else was just lingering glances at one another when the other didn't look, and Grace began to realize how her intense feelings ever so slowly had begun to fade — until the moment she felt his possessive stare on her.

All she'd wanted was to get him out of her head. Lose those stupid hopes that had taken over her usually rationally thinking brain as there were no hopes left in her that he'd ever give in, say the words he'd said to her drunkenly while he was sober... But seeing him every week, sporting those attractive button-ups with the sleeves rolled up over the elbows, made this task rather difficult. And the current situation of him practically devouring her with his eyes only from across the room didn't make it particularly better.

She sometimes caught herself wondering if he still smelled like that intoxicating mix of his cologne and cigarettes, but forced herself to stop continuously thinking about him. His words had been clear as day. He regretted everything and wasn't planning on letting something similar happen again. Which let her heart ache every time she thought about it. It made her doubt herself, though he'd even said it hadn't been on her. But his rejecting words had been engraved in her memory, tearing her heart apart every time she recalled it. Why was something so wrong so much more tempting?

"Did someone order pizza?" Linh cheered as she entered the hall, approaching Grace and Peter with quick, happy steps, two pizza boxes stacked in her hands. Grace, after quickly getting back to reality, trying not to check for the Professor's presence again, laughed at the awkward walk of her best friend while Peter, who'd just finished reading, closed up his highlighter pen again and set it down.

"Great. I'm starving!"

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♡𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒆♡