We’re not really allowed to consort with our employers.
And even though the Waynes are not our employers, they’re still our employers’ friends.
They’re our employers’ best friends, aren’t they?
Which brings me to the most important reason to say no to Lucas: him.
The guy who hates me.
And there’s no doubt now that he hates me, right?
Not after a year.
Not after a year of him looking at me like I’m the lowest of low.
A bug beneath his black boots. That he wants to crush and wreck and ruin and destroy.
His servant girl.
All because my parents work for his parents.
Because I’m poor and he’s rich.
Because I’m the wrong crowd.
I still remember what he said about me that night, on my thirteenth birthday. I still remember how he looked at me, or rather how he didn’t look at me, because he didn’t think I was even worthy of that little courtesy.
Oh, and let’s not forget how in the beginning I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to actually be nice to him, tried to befriend him, and how he rejected — no, crushed — all my attempts, making me feel like an idiot for even entertaining the thought that a rich boy like him would ever consort with a servant girl like me. I thought he deserved my kindness because rumors can be false and exaggerated but he proved me wrong. He taught me that every rumor about him is true.
And ever since I started tutoring his best friend, his hatred for me has only grown.
Now, I can feel his eyes on me. His reddish-brown eyes boring into me, making my skin prickle every time we pass each other by in the school hallways. Or every time I go to the soccer games. Because like Lucas, he’s a soccer player too.
A rockstar soccer player.
Who, like Lucas, doesn’t have any shortage of interested girls either.
In fact, I saw them ogling him this afternoon. While he was running laps around the soccer field.
Shirtless.
Please, what a show-off.
And he is a show-off.
While Lucas is more level-headed and methodical — hence the captain, I suppose — he’s more reckless. He’s more spontaneous. He likes to play around on the field, do backflips or jumps and cartwheels during the game, just so girls will scream his name.
Freaking jerk.
Freaking Bandit.
And the Daredevil. That’s what they call him, his soccer nickname.
Which is appropriate.
Because he is the devil.
So I don’t even want to think about how he’d react, what he’d do, if he found out that Lucas has asked me out. That I’d be going out on a date with his best friend.