Page 85 of The Fallacy of True Love
What exactly do we mean by nice?
Cam
so u 2 r a we now?
* * *
“Is it true that you didn’t finish college?”
I turned to the guy sitting next to me, and my eyelids almost cramped with the effort it took not to glare at him. This was proof that I deserved my shake with extra buko strips and an unlimited supply of any food I wanted.
“Yes,” I answered tightly.
He gawked at me like he didn’t expect me to own up to it. “How did you end up here?”
“Same as you,” I said as I went back to typing. “I met the requirements and passed the interviews.”
“Oh. I guess that’s why they have this boot camp.”
To weed out the ones who aren’t good enough, his tone insinuated.
“Yep. You never know how good someone really is until she kicks your ass in person.” We’ll see who’s good enough. I’d glanced at his screen earlier and found him struggling with a code segment. One I’d nailed an hour ago.
He sputtered. “She?”
I smiled at him and took pleasure in how his derision morphed into shock as his eyes darted to my screen. His head swiveled to face his own laptop, and I nearly laughed as he angled it away from me.
Look at that. I’d managed to shut him up without resorting to violence. Yay me.
Caloy, the only teammate whose name I’d taken note of, spoke up from my left. “You enjoyed that.”
I shrugged and continued working.
“I’m betting on you, by the way.”
“Good.”
He chuckled. “Confident. I like that.”
There were three scenarios I could foresee involving the guy on the right. Either only one of us got through, neither of us made the cut, or we both did. Two of those meant I’d never see him again, and the third would show him I had just as much right to be here as he did. That would teach him not to judge.
Look who’s talking.
My fingers paused on the keys. Shit. My conscience was right.
My brain switched back to Alonzo, which was highly inconvenient given I was here to get a job, not get stuck on a guy. And yet I couldn’t deny that I’d been rehashing the events from last night and wondering what might have happened if he had gotten in bed with me. Something told me we would have had far less sleep. Worse, he would have sunk deeper beneath my skin, which he already had to a terrifying degree.
I couldn’t believe I’d told him about my parents. Only a handful of people knew, and I’d promised myself not to tell anyone I didn’t trust implicitly, much less an almost-hookup.
Then again, that label no longer fit Alonzo. He wasn’t a stranger or an acquaintance anymore, yet the label friend didn’t match up either.
The puzzle hovered in the background of my mind as I went through the rest of the training sessions, giving me zero capacity to care about the mutterings and side-eyes going on around me.
Good—I was one day closer to my prize. Just three more days of this and I could go back home, hopefully with the promise of a job and financial stability.
I made a quick call to Inang to check if everything was okay. After she assured me she was taking her medicines, I told her to take care and headed for my new rental. Fingers crossed it would be better than the previous one.
This was more like it.
