Just Knowing You

Chapter 40: Genevieve

"Hey, Genevieve!"

I whirl my head in surprise at the loud voice as I continue walking down the hallway, away from the choir room, turning to find Jessie striding over to me.

"Hey, Jessie," I mutter fiddling with the wired spiral of my 5 subject notebook.

"Do you by chance have the sheet music from yesterday? I lost mine..." she asks hesitantly and I nod trying maneuver my stuff to hold while I grab the paper from my folder.

"Yeah... one sec..." as I pull out the papers and hand it to her she smiles and thanks me.

"Where are you headed?"

"I have math with Mr. Ashe..." I respond with a small smile.

"Oh, cool. I love Mr. Ashe, he's like the best math teacher I've ever had, and it's hard to get me to like math teachers because I suck at math."

I laugh at her rambling before she continues talking, "isn't Otis Grey in that class?"

That makes my step stutter slightly, "um... yeah, he is." I answer tightly.

"Are you like, good friends with him? Like how comfortable would you be with... I dunno, like mentioning my name a couple times? Be my wing girl?" She says this like it's so casual, like we're best friends instead of just acquaintances.

"... well... I'm actually his girlfriend..." I say semi-embarrassed for no reason other than the fact that having to tell some girl that she's going after a taken man is awkward.

"Oh... I didn't know... huh."

Huh?

"Yeah, we just started dating kinda recently..."

"That's weird, because... well, you know," she makes eye contact with me and I study her slightly smug face with confusion written all over mine.

What...

"No, I don't know..." I say in a small, pathetic voice that I wanted to make strong and expectant but unfortunately came out just the opposite.

"It's just..." she hesitates, losing the confidence and smugness she had earlier. "Well, you've never had a boyfriend, and don't... really have experience in this stuff; and Otis is... well—Otis." She says like whatever she's talking about makes total sense and she's not totally ripping my heart out.

"Oh..."

"It's not like... I'm... I'm not trying to diss you—or anything, but like..."

"No, yeah, it's a weird pairing I guess..." I force my voice to be light and humorous but I can barely keep my mind straight as we round the corner and she bids me a goodbye with a thank you for the sheet music from earlier.

Wow.

Is that what people think?

It's fine... it's whatever, it's not like I'm affected, or our relationship is affected just because of what these people think about me or us.

Does everyone think I'm a prude?

Why can't I just... be...

"Hey, Speedy!" I turn when I near the door to my math class, seeing Otis jogging up to me, bumping into a couple people as he passes them so he can walk with me.

"Hi!" I squeak out glancing at him briefly before looking at my hands holding my stuff, trying to busy myself by studying the metal rings I'm currently wearing on my fingers.

"How's the day been?" He asks bumping his elbow into me lightly and I look up, plastering a grin on my face before answering.

"It's been okay," he might see right through me, but it doesn't hurt to try to hide what I'm thinking.