Her Teacher's Temptation by Alexandra Vos

he looks?”
     
    I almost
snorted. Yes, Ollie was nice, but I doubted they'd expect a lot of the things I
seemed to know about him. “He's pretty nice,” I assured them, my eyes flicking
to his bored expression for a second. “And he's a good teacher too. He
graduated from Oxford.” I wasn't sure why I felt the need to big him up in
front of these people, but whether it was for my benefit or Ollie's, it still
made me pretty smug when they were impressed.
     
    “So unfair,”
Rebecca whined. “What's your piece about?” She inquired as everyone broke into
their own conversations with the people next to them.
     
    “Tripping on
acid.” May as well be blunt about it. I wasn't really bothered whether she
judged me or not, I still thought it was a pretty clever interpretation of the
prompt, like Ollie had said, and I'd done it more for my own benefit than
thinking I'd get anywhere in the competition.
     
    The girl raised
a surprised eyebrow. I'd already gathered from her accent that she was Scottish
and it was kind of hard to tell whether she had a posh or common Scottish
accent. “Did you do loads of research, or did you like, actually do it?” She
inquired, glancing away to stare intensely at her glass of water.
     
    “I did it
before the competition came up. Then when I saw the prompt the idea just came
to me.” Her eyes widened at that. “What's yours about?”
     
    “Someone coming
back from war,” she explained, causing me to hold back a smile. It really was
just that I'd picked an idea for the prompt that wasn't completely generic as
to why they'd put me through to the final.
     
    Thankfully the
meals came fairly quickly, which meant I was given an excuse to not make uncomfortable
conversation. Unless I was drunk or high, I found it really hard to make conversation
with people who I didn't know; especially people in groups. I didn't really
have anything interesting to say most of the time, at least, not things I
didn't think people were going to judge me for.
     
    I'd always
hated the sound of people eating and now was no exception. It just had to be
that Rebecca was one of those people that ate with their mouth open. I had to
really bite the inside of my cheek to prevent me snapping at her to have some
basic manners.
     
    Luckily we were
given the option of whether we wanted dessert or not and I'd already decided
that I was leaving this table as soon as I could when Ollie appeared behind me.
"You don't want dessert, right?" He checked.
     
    I shook my
head. "Absolutely not," I assured him, not really caring whether the
people at my table took that as an offence or not.
     
    "Thank
God, because if I have to hear another word about Downton Abbey I think I'll
scream." Ollie had been the only male on a table of middle-aged women.
     
    "Not your
thing?" I teased as I stood up from my chair. "I imagine Jemma being
really into it." Just from the way she acted and from what I'd seen of
her, I couldn't pretend to actually know anything about her.
     
    "Don't
even joke about it." He grimaced as I said goodbye to the other
contestants, who were gawking slightly at our interaction. I wasn't sure
whether to be smug or worried that I was so casual around him. "She tries
every week to put it on. That's when I do my marking."
     
    I chuckled and
followed him out of the restaurant. We were the only ones who hadn't stayed,
but I didn't think it really mattered. It may not have been entirely polite,
but we weren't ever going to see them again.
     
    "You're
doing work now?" He inquired. "I hope you're going to work on the
essay I set." He hinted with a small smile.
     
    "Actually,
I've already finished it," I replied smugly. When it came to writing
essays, I either finished them almost instantly, or left them until the
absolute last minute, depending on what the topic was.
     
    He raised an
eyebrow. "Really?" He checked. "What did you think? It wasn't
too easy, was it?"
     
    It was almost
cute how he wanted to be really good