Romance? Be Shakespeare, not James Joyce (Marcus)

[Marnie Sullivan]

If there was any upside at all to being restricted to campus, it was that Marnie now had more time to read. Books from the library she'd been meaning to try, books from her own stash of cheesy romance paperbacks, and certainly books assigned for class. A handful of her classmates had been complaining about how much their English teacher had been giving them lately ("It's the last semester, can't she ease up a little?") but Marnie didn't bother. The more she could focus on fictional problems rather than her own, the better.

Which meant that when they were instructed to scoot their desks into pairs, Marnie was ready, albeit not terribly enthusiastic.

"Okay, everyone, you have twenty minutes!" their teacher called over the din of metal legs scraping across tile. Marnie twisted her desk around in a one-eighty to face the blond behind her. They hadn't been paired yet this semester, but their teacher liked to change it up.

"Sooo, chapter seven," Marnie began, once they were settled. One hand was balled into a fist upon which her chin rested; the other was tapping her pencil against her copy of the reading. "Thoughts?" A question so open-ended it was nearly useless, but then, she wasn't in much of a mood.

[Deleted]

Marcus may have been a little distracted during the lesson. So little that he may not have heard what the assignment was in the first place. So when he was forced from his reverie, Marcus found himself sitting up straight and tall and confused, watching as the short girl in front of him started to turn her seat towards him.

"Uhh...chapter 7? Yeah..." he tried to pretend he knew what she was talking about. "It sure was...a good read...and stuff." Marcus obviously hadn't read it. He didn't even have a basic idea of what the subject matter was. He didn't even know the title of chapter 7 simply past chapter 7. Why? Because he didn't read it last night like they were supposed to. He was too busy working on a drawing of only the most beautiful girl in the world. Or at least at Hammel. In his mind, definitely.

"........what was it about again?" he asked nervously. Marcus smiled and fidgeted with his pencil.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Well, this was just terrific, Marnie groused internally. How was she supposed to discuss the reading with a partner who hadn't even done it? Unless he wasn't lying, but at that moment she didn't much feel like giving anybody the benefit of the doubt. But neither did she feel like arguing. Might as well play along, they only had like nineteen and a half minutes left.

"There wasn't much," Marnie told him with a shrug. "I mean, there was all this meaningful introspection and stuff that we'll probably have a quiz on, but by the end of it all Hammond actually did was write a bunch of letters and throw most of them away."

That made it sound more boring than it actually had been, she had to admit. Marnie had almost enjoyed reading about the book's male lead agonize over how to confess his love to the female. Not because it was especially romantic, because it wasn't; most of his drafts had been duds because, in Marnie's opinion, the chapter's main takeaway was that he didn't understand the object of his affections at all.

Then again, it was only chapter seven. Hammond still had plenty of pages left to get it right.

"I dunno, I don't think it was a bad idea for him to write Maria a letter," she went on, leaning back in her seat, "I just don't think there needed to be a whole chapter about it."