Foreign | H.S.

Chapter 2

I look up to find the owner of the voice who is a guy with a rather wet shirt. He smiles and takes a seat next to me

"Hi?"

"Coconut, right?"

"No, Manika" He glances up from the two cups that he settled in front of us.

"I meant the dog" He enunciates looking at me with wary eyes, pointing at my phone screen and I realise what a fool I made of myself.

"Oh yes, Coconut"

"I'm still sorry for earlier. Anyways, I'm Harry!" He exclaims pushing his hand towards me and I shake it, "I thought you'd still like a drink" He passes me the blue cup.

"I don't drink" I say, locking my phone.

"It's warm water"

"Oh," I express taking the cup "Thank you,"

"So do I get to know why are you drinking hot water at a party, Manika right?" He questions taking a sip from his own sip.

"Yup, as I said, I don't drink and warm water is good for your throat, nothing special"

"Huh," He says turning towards me, "I thought you wanted to burn an ex or something"

"Wait, you got burned? It was lukewarm only, are you seriously okay?" I ask, concerned.

"No, no" He chuckles, "I'm alright, that was just a theory" He beams.

Suddenly, awkward air envelops our surroundings.

"I-"

"You-"

We start at the same time and immediately halt ourselves realising the situation. Two small smiles are exchanged and both of us offer the next one to speak.

"You can go ahead... " I insist. "I'm not good at this anyway" His head tilts a tiny bit in slight confusion. "I mean, like talking" Why do I have to be so awkward, god.

"Really? You sound fluent in English" Harry said with light shock.

"No, I meant - socialising. I'm actually really good at English even though it's my second language" Okay, loser - who asked you to elucidate so much. Shut up already.

To my surprise, a hearty chuckle echoes. "Alright - I believe it. Don't need to brag smarty pants" Harry smiles.

"You've barely known me for 10 minutes, how could you even assume I'm a smarty-pants?" I quiz in slight offense. I am smart, no lie in that but still. I'd suggest to not make assumptions.

"I can prove you it" Harry replies confidently. "Make a random guess, how deep is this pool?" He points towards the waters with his cup.

"I don't know, 5 feet at the shallow end?" I snicker lightly answering his random question.

"Do you want me to find out?" He quirks an eyebrow at me and damn, how can people do that.

"Woah, no no no" I say stabling him as  he tries to move forward towards the pool, "It's chilly tonight, I don't think you'd like to get wetter than you already are, no wait- that sounded wrong" I murmur the last part. Harry snickers. "That's why people shouldn't drink" I claim planting him back a bit away from the pool. "It's the alcohol making you so impulsive probably"

"Lighten up, Monica" Before I could interject anything, he continued, "Every alcohol virgin says that, have a sip and you'd change your mind, wait your name isn't Monica, is it?" He quizzes after a beat.

"Nope" I smile. "Close but, yeah, no"

"Manika, sorry again, do you wanna try it? You look like an adult, I'm sure your body will be able to hold one sip" He suggests, picking up his red cup. I, again for some unknown reason, take the cup smelling it first. I've tasted different wines a couple times while being in training but it's pretty obvious that such parties won't have classified wines used in professional cooking.