Chapter 12: Spearcrest Knight: Part 1 – Chapter 12

attention on making coffee: pulling out the filter, scooping in the grounds, evening them out—exactly how Dad taught me. Winding Sophie up is intoxicating, but I’m starting to realise the danger of it.

Flirting with girls is fun. It’s light-hearted and playful, like playing a game you can’t lose.

But what I’m doing with Sophie is different. It could never be just flirting, because handling Sophie will never be like handling just any girl. Sophie is something else, and so flirting has to be something else, too.

So this isn’t flirting. Whatever this is, it’s reckless, heavy and intense. Not like playing a game, but like sparring. It’s dangerous and wild, and it makes my blood run hot in the same way rugby used to. It makes my skin hot and my cock hard.

Sophie might think I’m stupid, but I know what I’m doing. Flirting with girls is one thing: I never have to worry about the consequences of that. But flirting with Sophie is like playing with fire, except she’s not the one who would end up in flames.

Because nothing ever gets to Sophie.

I should know. I’ve done plenty over the years to test her armour. I’ve never seen so much as a crack or a chip. Her armour is made of the most impenetrable ice. Sophie could walk through an inferno and it would never melt.

When the coffee is ready, I pour two cups and return to the kitchen island. She’s sitting with her chin in her hand, absent-mindedly doodling on a pale yellow sticky note. I slide one of the cups of coffee over to her and she gives me a wary look.

“It’s just coffee,” I say. “I know you need it.”

“Because you’re such hard work?” she asks with a pointed look.

I shake my head. “No. Because you look fucking exhausted all the time.”

She looks at me, blinking slowly. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but she reaches for the cup and curls her fingers against the grey ceramic.

“Thanks,” she says eventually.

I nod and without ceremony, she resumes talking me through the key themes of Hamlet. Even though Shakespeare bores me to tears, there’s something mesmerising about listening to her talk about it.

Part of it is Sophie’s voice.

She has this very dry, kind of deep voice, like she has a sore throat all the time. It scratches against me as if there’s an itch so deep inside me I don’t even notice until her voice reaches it.

And another part of it is the way Sophie speaks about this shit. Normally, Sophie is curt and non-committal when she speaks, as if she wants to contribute to conversations as little as possible. But when she’s talking about stuff like the morality of revenge, the deaths of women and metafiction, she speaks long and eloquently.

She’s so interested in what she’s saying I can’t help but be interested too. When she reads aloud chunks of monologues like they are as beautiful as music to her, I want to hear what she’s hearing, feel what she’s feeling.

Shakespeare’s words, in her mouth, take on a whole new meaning. They sound heavy with implications, hot with desire, full of hidden emotions.

“

” she reads, her long eyelashes fanning on her cheeks as she looks down at her book, “

—”

A sudden rush of blood straight to my cock startles me. This isn’t the first time her voice has made me hard—but it’s the first time Shakespeare’s words have. I sit up, the trance of her words now broken.

“Wait, what?” I interrupt, leaning forward. “That sounds dirty.”

She stops and raises a stony look to my face. “It’s not dirty. She’s saying that she’s miserable for having listened to all his sweet words and promises. She’s literally calling herself a sucker for falling for his bullshit.”

“Bit harsh,” I say. “Maybe it wasn’t bullshit. Maybe he meant what he said at the time.”

“How could he?” Sophie says. “You can’t take something back if you truly mean it.”

I tilt my head and watch her closely. She doesn’t give anything away, just watches me back with the same mild irritation as always. But this is interesting insight into the way Sophie thinks, the way she feels.

“You can say or feel something true, and then it being true,” I try to explain. “Doesn’t make it a lie, because it was true at the time.”

She scoffs. “Things are either true, or they’re not. If something was true and stops being true, then it’s no longer true.”

“I’m starting to understand why you have so few friends.”

For once, I don’t speak out of the urge to hurt or irritate her. It’s a genuine observation, a sudden realisation. If she’s offended by it, she doesn’t show it.

“Nothing wrong with putting value in sincerity,” she says icily.

“No, but the bar you set for sincerity sounds like it’s pretty damn high.”

“It didn’t use to be so high,” she says, “but all sorts of shit managed to get through.”

She’s smiling, something she rarely does, but this isn’t a true smile. It’s a curling at the corner of her lips that makes her look both sad and cruel all at once.

She’s talking about me.

This is interesting. I thought she had all but forgotten our fleeting friendship in Year 9, that she had left it in the past with her spotty cheeks and awkward feet. But it seems like that’s not quite the case.

I see this for what it is: the little loose thread I’ve been looking for.

Something I can pull on to make the tight knot that is Sophie come undone. Sophie is the kind of knot you couldn’t even cut through with the knife, she is wound that tightly, completely closed in on herself. But this is something to hold on to, something to pull on.

Except that today is not the day, now is not the time. This is something I’m going to have to approach carefully, tactically. Now there is a new battlefield on which to meet Sophie, I’m not going to show up unprepared.

“Looks like you’ve learned from your mistakes, then,” I say lightly, watching her. “Unlike our poor boy Hamlet.”

“You can’t learn from your mistakes when there are no consequences for them,” she retorts.

This time, the insult is even more thinly veiled. But right now I feel no anger, no resentment. I kind of enjoy this sudden act of aggression. From Sophie, it’s almost intimate. Like she’s stabbing me but has to be in my arms to do it.

“Let me make sure I write that down,” I say sweetly. “It would make a killer line for an essay. Mr Houghton would be very impressed.”

“He’d probably be even more impressed if you wrote down something he actually taught you instead.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.” I finish writing my note and look back up at her. “I’d much rather listen to you go on about Shakespeare.”

“Yes, because I’m much better than an Oxford-educated, professionally-trained teacher.”

I give her a slow smile. “Mr Houghton’s boring. You make Hamlet sexy.”

Her cheeks go slightly pink, but she still speaks in her cool, dry tone. “What could you possibly find sexy about madness and suicide?”

“I dunno, Sutton. Listening to you talking about sucking honey definitely made me a bit hard.”

Finally, the facade cracks.

Her mouth falls open. A dark, uneven flush spreads across her cheeks.

“And on that note,” she says, standing up and grabbing her coat off the stool next to hers. “Your two hours are up and I’m off.”

“So soon, Sutton?” I watch her with amusement as she wraps her scarf around her throat and buttons her coat all the way up. I glance at her clothes, letting myself imagine idly pulling them off her. “Aren’t you going to take the taxi back to school with me?”

“I’d rather walk,” she says, shouldering her backpack. “I need the fresh air.”

“So do I!” I exclaim, springing to my feet. I’m not lying, though I need fresh air for probably very different reasons to her. But now she’s going, I can’t bring myself to let her go—I want . “I’ll walk with you.”

“I don’t think so.” She grabs the thickest booklet off the kitchen island and throws it over to me. “You need to finish working through this before you forget all the stuff I told you today. Don’t waste my time.”

“Fuck!” I glare at the booklet. “Can’t I do it later?”

“You know you won’t. Do it, or I won’t show up next week.”

I sigh and slump back down onto my stool. “For fuck’s sake, fine! You’re worse than Mr Houghton.”

“By all means, go back to him. I won’t stop you.” She gives me a brief wave. “Don’t bother standing, I’ll see myself out.”

She strides out of the kitchen and I shout after her, “Is it my punishment for saying you made me hard?”

The only reply I get is the sound of the front door slamming shut.

I’m still horny after she’s left and have no choice but to stroke myself to the mental image of Sophie sucking honey off my cock.