House of Hearts

Chapter 6

Flashback ~ 1 Year Ago (long chapter yayy)

Peter POV 

We're only halfway through the summer and I hate Beatrice.

She wasn't just exasperatingly attractive but she was also smart. Smarter than most people her age, it's like when she was talking about the failure of public policy, economic schemes, socio-cultural tension, gun control, security, her voice changed. 

She knew anything about everything and when she didn't know something, it would take a night for her to become an expert on it. 

She could have just been a boring hot girl. I could deal with that. But no, the world was apparently against me. 

My dad was a difficult person to impress, but somehow she managed it. He probably liked her more than me. Every night when we all sat down for dinner it was always, 'Beatrice this' and 'Beatrice that' and 'oh look Peter got up before noon today'. Then they would all laugh but me. Even her.

My dad and Austin seemed to be doing just fine without much involvement from me, so I was mostly stuck with the other interns in the campaign office, doing as much as I could. Not that I minded of course since Beatrice was there. 

To keep the interns on their toes, every so often we would have debates about controversial areas in public policy. We designed a whole bracket system so that one intern could be crowned best debater. These were all pretty competitive high school kids, but they didn't have the cool tone you needed to destroy your opponent without batting an eyelash. They would start getting flustered or angry the moment things didn't go their way. 

No one could debate better than me, that was a fact.

They would let their feelings get in the way. Your feelings should never get in the way. 

A good politician, as my dad said, always kept their cool. 

I never had a problem with that, mostly because my feelings never got out of hand. I was never impulsive, always in control. I couldn't remember ever doing anything without thinking it through. 

Just as I had thought through this whole thing with Beatrice when she arrived. She was three years younger than me, she clearly didn't like me, we would always be at different stages in our lives, and I really didn't need to get attached at this point in mine. 

There, a perfectly logical and coherent thought-process, revealing my decision to stay away from her and bury any and all traces of whatever I was feeling. 

Then why the hell wasn't it working?

I couldn't help but flirt when she was around because I was hyper-aware of her presence. All my attempts ended in her laughing them off. Either she was oblivious or she didn't care.

"Alright!" I heard one of the high school boys say.

"Today is the grand finale, the final round to determine who is the crowned king or queen of debate" he said banging his palms on the table as the rest of the interns followed suit.

"On this side, we have Miles Bremmer from Redhill Prep Academy!" he said as he stretched his words out to build anticipation. This kid should really be a game show host. 

"On the other side, we have Beatrice Stenson from Connery High!" he continued. I was not surprised, Beatrice had been killing it with debate. She looked completely in control as she adjusted her black-rimmed glasses. I noticed she always wore glasses on debate days, it made her look scarier. I'm not sure she even needed them.