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**Part 23**
I don’t know what was wrong with me.
The moment Annabelle shifted forward, I found myself leaning in and closing my eyes. My lips slightly parted for a kiss that never came. This time, I didn’t get so much as a teasing brush, and I reluctantly opened my eyes again to discover the red haired girl with that same knowing smirk on her face.
“So you *do* want to kiss me,” she said. There was a confidence to her tone, with not so subtle subtext of ‘I told you so’ underneath. But it also wasn’t cocky or arrogant. It’s yet another reason why the girl was so difficult to deal with; she pivoted between emotions so effortlessly, and I could never quite get a read on her.
“Umm . . .” I must have been blushing furiously. Caught in the act with no good excuse for what I just did out of reflex and perhaps a bit of confusing desire, I pulled away and averted my gaze. There was gonna be no graceful way to answer her question, so I tried to deflect. “What’s your fun idea?”
“Oh, right!” Annabelle exclaimed. A flicker of energy, as if she was remembering something exciting even though it had only been seconds since she brought it up. Somewhere, the mature Meredith within me was suspicious of how well versed this girl must be in social manipulation. Years of growing up wealthy and learning how to act around equally well off peers could do that to a person. Even if that were the case, it was working on me anyway. I could barely keep up, especially now that a bit of physicality was blurring things. “Okay, remind me. You’re a brave girl, yes?”
The same little phrase from a few minutes ago. Speaking of manipulation . . . It was such a verbal trap, but what else could I say? Not wanting to deflect twice in a row, I just nodded. “Yes. Of course I am.”
“Of course you are, Mere,” she smiled. Speaking a little more softly this time, Annabelle took a moment to brush her hair back. The motion immediately drew my attention back to her face, as well as her unfairly pretty locks. “Now, do you still just want to be my tutor? Nothing more?”
That *is* what I wanted. Boundaries. Nodding again, I found a bit more of my voice. “Yes,” I said. She was giving me a chance to speak my mind, and even showing that she listened earlier before jumping into the conversation about kissing. “We should keep this professional.” I couldn’t help but mentally linger on the word ‘should.’ Part of me was still curious, despite yet another ‘out’ Annabelle was giving me.
Rather than answering right away, she just gazed at me for a few seconds. “Okay,” she finally said, right when I was starting to internally squirm from the lingering silence, “But it’s pretty obvious that you like me. So we need to make sure you can handle a temptation or two. Otherwise, how do I know you don’t want something more?”
Wait, what? *She* was the one who kissed *me*. And now she’s claiming that I was the issue? Granted, my recent actions probably spoke louder than my intentions, but still. Annabelle started this! Narrowing my eyes, I finally saw a glimpse of her real age. Teenage girls were notorious for twisting the facts to their benefit. Turning a half-hearted agreement into a ‘promise,’ or saying that a confusing kiss meant a lot more than it actually did. Adults were perfectly capable of doing the same, of course, but this was more of the teenage variety–doing it right in front of my face, when we both knew how things actually happened. Maybe that’s why Annabelle was so confusing; eighteen years old put her right on that line between ‘teenager’ and ‘adult,’ and her proper upbringing added to the juxtaposition of immature/mature.
Lost for words, something that was becoming more and more of a habit for me at the Alodia house, I started with, “Annabelle-”
“Mere.” Cutting me off not only with her voice, but also with a finger suddenly pressed to my lips, Annabelle looked deep into my eyes with her piercing emeralds. “Are you a brave girl? Nod for me.”
Fuck. If she had pulled something like that on the day we met, I probably would have slapped her hand away and jumped off the sofa. Instead, all I could do was meekly nod my head. I *was* brave. And yet, she kept asking whether or not it was true.
“Good girl,” she smiled. Tapping my lips twice with her index finger, Annabelle took her hand away as easily as it had arrived, “Now, here’s my fun idea. You seem so stressed out, and I want to thank you for the free tutoring. So, turn around; I’m going to give you a massage. How does that sound?”
“A- a massage?” I asked. That was the opposite of appropriate, at least in terms of the personal space I was trying to lecture about earlier. As expected, her definition of ‘fun’ didn’t exactly line up with mine.
“Mm hmm. Here’s the deal, Mere. If you can sit still and behave the whole time, then I’ll know that we can go back to just being student and tutor. But if your little crush is going to make something as simple as a massage be a problem, then maybe this isn’t the right fit. The good news is, we always have Bridget if-”
“NO.” The loud word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Annabelle looked a little taken aback by the abrupt shift in volume; I honestly surprised myself a bit with the piercing objection, too, and I scrambled to course-correct. “No,” I echoed, lowering my voice to a more ordinary level, “Look, you really don’t want Bridget as a tutor. She’s good at this stuff on her own, but she doesn’t know how to explain it to others.” Not a total lie, but it was more that Bridget was full of herself back when we knew each other and would never even *try* to teach things to others. Mostly it just felt better to say than ‘I don’t want her scoring a high paying job and rubbing it in my face.’
“Hmm, good to know,” Annabelle mused, “But if you can’t be professional, Mere . . .”
“I can be professional! I mean, I *am* professional.”
“Then show me. Turn around and prove that you won’t freak out when your girl crush touches you.”
For a second, I froze. I so desperately wanted to snap that I wasn’t crushing on Annabelle, or that I wasn’t the type of girl to freak out. Now that Bridget was on my mind, however, I felt a lot more compelled to do whatever it took to stay in Annabelle’s good graces. Besides, she was right. Objectively, there wasn’t a reason that receiving a massage should be an problem, but it wasn’t as simple as she made it out to be. Now that we had kissed on two separate occasions, wouldn’t something like this be low key more intimate than if it was with someone else? Except now that Annabelle had turned this around on me, that was sort of the point. I had to prove that it *wasn’t*. That it didn’t mean anything.
Resisting the urge to take a breath of courage like I’d normally do before something daunting, I just muttered, “Okay.” Before I could overthink it and/or talk myself out of the agreement, I turned myself away from the young redhead as best as I was able while still sitting up.
Of course, she had something to say about that. “Why don’t you sit cross-legged, Mere?” she suggested, “Put your feet up and get comfortable. This is supposed to be relaxing, isn’t it?”
Not seeing the merit in protesting over that, apart from the fact that it felt a little weird as a guest to be making myself at home in such a way, I did as I was told. Settling my legs in the new position, I faced fully away from Annabelle and braced myself for her hands. I don’t know why I was so nervous. It’s not like it was my first massage; then again, it was different when it was a good friend vs. a girl I barely knew.
Rather than landing on my shoulders like I expected, however, I felt her hands softly grip my midriff.
Twitching ever so slightly before realizing she wasn’t tickling me like what immature peers used to do in that spot, I glanced over my shoulder to the best of my ability. “Umm, what are you doing?”
“Hush, Mere,” she said, “And hold still. We need to take off your shirt first, okay?”
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