From Me to Us

Chapter Eighteen

OLIVIA

It's four-seventeen, Saturday evening when I'm walking up the football house driveway. Wearing one of my favourite yellow sundresses and holding a stack of papers in my hands, a bad slung over my shoulder.

I'm a little late but it won't kill him so I really couldn't give it a shit about it. He can deal. I had some trouble with my philosophy paper that I started this morning and it took me four hours just to get one-fourth of the way through it. It was killing me and made me lose track of time and so, I had to hurry over here as fast as I could.

I knock on the door and it swings open a minute later.

A guy I've never seen before, wearing swimming trunks and is bare chested greets me at the door.

"Hello, little one. Haven't seen you around before." He smirks.

"I've been here a time or two, actually. Maybe you just haven't been very focused on your surroundings." I smile and he snorts. Opening the door more for me.

"Daniel was right about you. He's through that archway, in the kitchen." He gives me a smiles and leaves.

What did Daniel say? Oh, never mind. I don't even want to know.

I walk further into the house and into the kitchen. The dining table is empty so I set my stuff down on it but there's no Daniel.

The glass sliding door in the kitchen looks out onto the backyard and I see a bunch of people by the pool, swimming and hanging around. I sight, wishing I could go for a swim.

It's extremely hot today. In the high eighties. And I'm sweating like a pig.

As I contemplate going to search for Daniel, he walks into the kitchen with his own stack of papers. "Oh, finally you're here," he mutters.

"Yeah sorry I got held up. My Philosophy paper was killing me."

"Phil100?"

"Yep. I have no idea what's happening in that class." I laugh a little and get my pens out of my handbag.

"Took that class my first semester too." He takes a seat across from me on the dining table and sorts through the papers in front of him. "Okay, I've already had a look through these papers before. It's not too hard. Just an ethics class. Shouldn't be too hard to grade their papers." When he finishes sorting through his own, he grabs mine and does the same. Setting them into coordinated piles that I have on idea what for.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm just glancing through to see the quality of the students work. Easier if we get them done in grade specific piles rather than have no structure." He mumbles.

He's like... Organised. A good student dare I say? How can he see the quality of the paper from a glance? He must be pretty smart.

Sure enough when he's finished, he lets me check the piles and yes, they look pretty good. The students that look like they will be given an A's, B's, C's and so on are in their own piles. He did that so fast. I'm astounded. But of course, I don't let him see it. I keep my face neutral.

"Of course, that's just a guesstimate. Just so we can mark them by order. If you think they deserve a different grade then by all means, change it." he shrugs.

"Okay."

"Also, I got a marking rubric and an already marked paper off Morrell for you as reference. Considering you're only a freshman, you haven't yet had the chance to take an ethics class. So, it'll be easier for you to mark with." That was... kind of him.