Charming by Haig Moses (1st Draft)

Chapter Twenty-Five

CONFIDANTE

"Look who decides to finally show up for something," I huff as the seemingly exhausted guy sits down in front of me. "You know, it was very considerate of you to tell our professor that you wouldn't be showing up and not your partner."

"I was just—"

"It was also so considerate of you to tell your entire fraternity that I slept with you," I hissed. "But I guess that's just all apart of your charm, Charming."

Alexander groaned. "I was trying to protect you Harriet."

"By humiliating me!" I whisper yelled. "It's one thing to be seen with you already, but now I'm no better than every other idiot who thought you were worth their time and believed the little lies you told them to get them into bed."

"Christian Berkshire got word that we hung out," Alexander said and was quickly shushed by a nearby student. Glaring at them snootily, he turned back to me. "When I got back he was talking about how he was going to... I'll spare you the details, but the point is he was going to do some sketchy things to you and so I told him we slept together. Alpha Phi has this Code of Honor thing which says a guy can sleep with anyone another member has slept with for at least a year."

By the time he's finished talking my face is etched into a permanent scowl and I can't tell whether or not I want to rip my ears out, or bash my head against the table until I am blissfully embraced by short term memory loss. "There's not a sentence that you just spoke that didn't have a derogatory, or misogynistic remark in it."

"Look I'm sorry I'll go back and tell them it's not true."

"Oh like they're going to believe the boring truth after you just fed them a juicy lie," I huffed. "Beside half the school already knows. Three guys welcomed me into the library with high fives and smirks."

Alexander grins, "At least you know I made you out to be good in bed."

His smile instantly faded when he saw I too wasn't laughing. "Next time, just like them say whatever please. It's not the first time someone's tried to get me to sleep with them and trust me it won't be the last time I give them a hasty decline."

Taking out his computer, book and notebook, Alexander sighed. "Christian just rubs me the wrong way you know."

"Yeah, that's called 'my daddy works for the school so I can do whatever I want'," I mocked earning an unwanted chuckled from my English partner. My eyes squinted in his direction and my lips thinned slightly. "What are you laughing at? You have the same large ego going on for yourself as well."

His mouth popped open. "I do not."

"Oh so the whole, 'Do you fancy a quick shag?' is just the British equivalent of hello." I poked doing my best to butcher his accent as much as possible.

Alexander's mouth narrowed. "I apologized for that," he pointed which I returned with a lazy shrug. "Besides most girls would take that as a compliment."

"There's that ego I was talking about."

At his own insistence, Alexander changed the conversation back to our project and we started working on the presentation portion. We were going to be graded on three components: The content of our essay, how well we presented it to the class, and how well we defended our argument to our classmates who were being required by Professor Lorde to ask at least one question per presentation.

I had completed the essay weeks ago and had been spending the past couple of days revising and editing portions of it as we developed our project. And despite what I had thought at first, Alexander was more help than I had given him credit for. As I organized the presentation, which was beginning to look longer than expected, he read through my essay making corrections a few quotes that I had misinterpreted while reading the play and thought would strengthen our argument of feminism. "But that's not what he's saying here. Ophelia isn't angry over Hamlet and his betrayal. She saddened by the death of her father and practically goes on lamenting about it for—if we're being honest—too long," he said scratching the block quote out in red ink. "This quote would work better."