Page 19 of Ruining His Smirk

“I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

“Yeah, you made that obvious on the helipad.”

I let out a sigh. “And somehow my body has decided none of that matters.”

I couldn’t look at him as I finally admitted it. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“That bad?”

I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. A heavy arm came to rest on my shoulder. He wasn’t a touchy-feely guy, so clearly I was making a spectacle of myself, but I couldn’t deny it felt good. I missed my mum’s hugs. We remained like that, with him half-hugging me and my face hidden behind my gloves.

After a long moment, he said, “You never really told me exactly what happened.”

“I have,” I mumbled.

“You’ve told me the ending,” he reminded me. “Not the beginning. I know you two met during those continent-wide festivities last year.” He squeezed my shoulders one last time before withdrawing his arm. “How did you end up fencing each other?”

I rested my forearms on the cold railing, matching him, while trying to decide where to begin.

“There were hundreds of people there… practically the whole continent had descended on that one station for a week. Yet he caught my eye almost immediately.”

“Yeah. So you noticed.”

“I noticed. And kept noticing. But we never actually spoke.”

“You just… looked?”

I nodded.

“Meals. Lectures. Evening events.” I shrugged. “Every single time I looked at him, I found him looking back at me.”

Keith whistled. “That must have pinged your gaydar.”

“Oh brother, it pinged many things.”

Keith snorted.

“But we were never in the same groups.” I smiled ruefully.

“So you admired him from afar.”

“Yeah.”

“So what changed?”

“On the last day, the organizers had this special event. The intent was to break us out of our familiar groups and force us all to intermingle. So they had everyone fill out an icebreaker bingo sheet.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It had three or four squares and you listed your hobbies or interests. Afterwards, they went through all the sheets and grouped together people who’d written the same things.”

Keith nodded. “That’s not a bad way to get people talking.”

“Exactly. I think five people had listed chess…so they organized a mini chess tournament.”

Keith smiled. “Let me think. You wrote…The Three Musketeers.”

I nodded.