I feel like everyone is tired of this story lmao and I blame myself cause I always took so long to update but I've been writing in advance so the rest of the story shouldn't take as long to update, promise!

Not only for the fact that it was a Friday, but the fact that I was headed to a party tonight (not to drink, just to stop stressing and have a little fun), I wanted so badly for the day to go by faster than normal speed. And surprisingly, all day had went by pretty fast but we all have that one class that just makes the day go normally again, which ends up feeling like forever in comparison. That class for me was obviously English.

Especially since today we were getting our reviewed essays back. All week, I had sat at my desk, going over Eli's paper, trying not to be too harsh (not that there was reason to, he had a way with words) but trying not to make it seem like his essay was perfect. The whole time I kept imagining if we were still together that we would be reviewing them together and giving each other hell but laughing about it. It was one of the most difficult papers that I ever had to review. It was like when your teachers paired you up themselves and you had a problem with only one out of the twenty that were in there but you find yourself paired with them. Actually, that's exactly what it was. Eventually, I was able to try to push him out of my head and just try to review his paper without my own personal objections against him.

It seemed as though Eli didn't have the same mindset.

When I went into class, we were already paired with our partners. Eli sat with a paper on his desk that was filled with red ink. I thought that maybe it was a paper he had doodled over in red pen or something but when he saw me, he grabbed it and put it in my direction. I had to stare at it for a while but not too long that I would be near him long enough for it to be awkward. I handed him his and took mine and walked back to my seat.

As I read through the constant mistakes that didn't even seem like mistakes to me that Eli heavily crossed out and marked as almost unforgivable mistakes, I felt a shadow of a figure hovering above me. I looked up, hoping not to see Eli but not being too happy with who was there either. Ms. Dawes was there, staring down at me.

"I can tell that there's something going on between you and your English partner," she said, pointing at Eli who surprisingly had a smirk on his face. I had to take a double take to make sure it wasn't just my imagination this time.

The last thing I wanted at that moment was a pep talk from a teacher, especially Ms. Dawes, "There's nothing-"

"I may have glasses but I'm not blind with them on," she said, tapping the rims, "All I'm saying is that regardless of if there is something going on or not going on, don't let it affect your work. You two as partners have given me some of the strongest work I've ever been pleased to read and I'd hate for that and your grades to go down the drain because of an argument or whatever happened, or didn't happen."

In my head, as I stared down at my paper, I wanted to say 'Sorry, but you should probably put that idea of getting strong work from us behind you now. We'll probably never be able to make good partner work again. We can barely talk to each other and you expect us to be able to work together for projects?' but instead I just smiled politely and said "Thanks." Because I was thankful that she did pay enough attention to us to worry about us and care about us.

Once the bell rang, I walked out looking down at my marked paper, trying to make sense of all of the wrong mistakes I made. At first I was angry at Eli for pointing out these excessive mistakes but, against my free will, Ms. Dawes came into my head telling me to just look at the mistakes I made and that fixing them could make my paper better and stronger. I walked down the hallway apologizing to people for accidently stepping on their foot or almost knocking into them until I actually slammed into someone.

"Sorry," I said, looking up and not being surprised to see Drew standing there.

He was smiling widely, "I'd be scared if we didn't bump into each like this at least once a day."

"Yeah," I replied, with what could have looked like a fake smile but wasn't really. It was more of a distracted smile, my mind was still on trying to fix this paper, surprisingly.

"So, you're still headed to my party tonight?" Drew asked.

"Uh," I looked up from the paper again to look at him but my mind just went right back to the paper as well as my eyes, "I don't think I'm going to make it, I have to redo this paper and well, you have parties every other weekend I'll just make it to the next one."

"But you said-" Drew's voice was cut off by my own.

"I know but I didn't know that my paper was this bad. Eli proofread it and I got it back and now I have to work hard to make it good."

"You'll have time to redo it." He protested.

"And you'll have another party. It's really not gonna make a difference if I'm there or not, you're the host you'll be paying attention to the party, you won't even notice if I'm there or not."

"Yes," Drew said, getting as close to me as he possibly could. He knew how to make my attention be focused fully on him and in that moment, I hated him for it, "I would notice if you weren't there."

"I can't-" My protest was cut off, as Drew snatched the paper from my hand, almost giving me a paper cut in the process.

"You can get it back at my party! See you tonight!" Drew yelled, clearly laughing and enjoying himself for the torture he would now cause me.

I wanted to be mad and I wanted to hate him but I couldn't lie that in the back of my mind, I was glad that he took it and that I would just have to go to this party to get it.

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