Not Exactly A Foe
Автор
Meria Deveraux
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Meera thrives on competition, quick comebacks, and winning every rivalry that comes her way. College life feels perfectly predictable—until one impulsive late-night kiss with her longtime rival flips everything upside down. Suddenly, the boy she loves to argue with doesn’t feel like the enemy anymore. Old pranks turn into charged glances, and every teasing moment carries a new spark she can’t ignore. As memories shift and feelings grow louder, Meera starts to wonder if love can bloom from years of playful chaos. But tangled history, stubborn pride, and curious parents make every step forward deliciously complicated.
Chapter 1: Sooooo Much Better
MEERA
Loud music, people basically sticking to you, this was definitely not my idea of a Friday night.
“Come on, loosen up!” my friend Maggie orders. I mean, it’s easy for her. She’s tall, beautiful, with beautiful brown hair, brown eyes, and the prettiest brown skin I have ever seen. Plus, she’s confident—this is her element, not mine.
I shrug at her order. “You know this is not my element, plus your dress…” I look down at the dress Maggie is lending me for the evening. It’s the definition of risqué. It’s short, sleeveless, it leaves little to the imagination.
She sighs and looks at me. “You sweet, beautiful soul.” I hate when she does that to me.
Maggie extends her arms and takes me in her embrace. Maggie has the tendency to hug people, especially if it is their first time doing something. She hugged me at orientation, she hugged me at my first college football game, four years later, she is still hugging me when I’m facing a new situation.
She lets go of me and looks at me. “How about you sit there?” She points to a chair in the corner. “I can dance, and if in an hour you’re still not enjoying yourself, we can leave.”
I sigh. This is reasonable, except I cannot sit down in this dress. “Fair, you can go dance, and I’ll stand in the corner.”
Maggie smiles. She gives me a quick peck on my forehead before she heads to the middle of the dance floor, where all eyes will be on her, as usual.
I really wish I could be like her, have her confidence, her smile, just be myself without having to worry too much. Dress the way I want and be fun and spontaneous, but it’s just not…what my future is looking to be.
I head to my solitary corner, ready to start my role as the mysterious silent observer. Except tonight I’m an uncomfortable, silent observer who can’t exactly be mysterious in this dress.
I wish I grabbed a sweater before I left, but Maggie reassured me that I wouldn’t need one, but now I actually do. I cross my arms across my body, trying to hide the little that I could.
“If it isn’t Meera herself,” I hear a voice say. I turn and it is who I think it is. Eli Colby, very popular on campus, crazy rich, and dates like crazy.
He was dating a girl today and would be with a new one by Friday. We live in the same dorm building but with different stories. Though we grew up together since we were like five, we don’t exactly like each other or get along.
“Eli…what are you doing here?” I say as I cross my arms tighter around me, hoping he doesn’t notice this dress. It would be hard not to with this color, even in the darkness and flashing lights of this place.
He leans against the wall, casually, and he takes a sip of his drink. “So…my birthday party.”
He throws the most outrageous parties ever. They are ragers that always end up on the news because something idiotic always happens. We did our best to distance ourselves in college and we don’t usually talk, and he hasn’t invited me to one of his parties since we started college.
I hadn’t heard or thought about him until last week, when I received the invitation to his twenty-first birthday party.
I shrug. “I thought it was a fluke or something, plus I wasn’t twenty-one yet.”
He scoffs before he takes a sip of whatever’s in that red cup. “Why would it be a fluke?”
“I mean, when’s the last time you invited me to a party…years ago.”
He rolls his eyes at me, something he has never done before. He has given me every possible reaction, except for rolling his eyes at me. First time for everything, I guess.
“You just didn’t want to see me…”
Wait a minute…why is he even reacting like this? I missed many of his parties over the years, why is he mad now?
“You don’t want to see me, like at all…” I stop looking at him and look back to Maggie on the dance floor.
There is a silent pause between us. For a few tense seconds, there is nothing but the booming music and the strobe lights.
Then I feel his eyes roam down my body, it’s slow and torturous, at least for me.
“Why are you wearing that anyway?” he asks, his voice filled with contempt.
I sigh. He saw the monster that I couldn’t hide under the dim light, and he can’t be serious right now. His words have me scoffing and rolling my eyes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were my father.”
I can hear him scoff. “I’m actually too young to be your father, I’d actually be a boyfriend, but you wouldn’t know because you never had one of those.”
I close my eyes as I am millimeters away from jumping this man and choking all the air out of his stupid lungs. I open my eyes and look at him again.
“And you wouldn’t know what commitment is if it bit you right in your ass.”
“You wouldn’t know what fun is if it was standing right in front of you. It can’t bite you in your ass because of the many sticks you have up there.”
“Bite. Me!” I huff and focus my gaze back on Maggie, who is having a better time than I am right now.
Again, a tense silence between us.
“So…is that your girlfriend?” he asks.
My eyes travel back to him, and my ears can’t believe the sudden jump in topic. “You have got to be kidding me!” I voice angrily over the loud music.
He shrugs. “What? I’m just curious. I saw you two kiss when you first arrived.”
“It was a friendly kiss, a kiss shared between friends, you jackass.”
“Way to escalate…”
“Do. Not. Piss. Me. Off.”
He stays silent and he looks at me. “Sounds like you’re already pissed off,” he says. He offers me his solo red cup. “Do you want a drink? It might help you relax.”
I let out a soft sigh and smile. I look at the cup now pointing toward me, then back at his smug face. Then my eyes focus back on the cup.
“You’re right!” I grab the cup from his hand and throw its contents on his face. The brown liquid splashes across his face, hair, and shirt.
Thank God everyone else is too busy dancing to notice; I would’ve been totally embarrassed. There’s just something about him—whenever he’s around, it’s like I’m not myself. I’m bold and snappy, not the identity I constructed so meticulously.
A smirk is wide on my face as I watch him wipe his face. “That does make me feel sooooo much better.”
I hand him the cup and look back at the dance floor.
There is another moment of silence between us, this time less tense. His eyes are back on me, roaming around.
“For what it’s worth, you look really good tonight,” I hear him say in a whisper that sends an electric shiver down my spine. “You should dress like that more.”
Goosebumps all over. “Learn what personal space is.”
“See you around, Meera,” he says.
I look and see he is already walking away from me, back to his friends. At least that is over with.
“Hey, what was that?” I hear Maggie say. I turn and look and see that she is now sharing the corner with me.
“Mhm?” I ask, trying to play it off.
“Eli Colby, you just threw a drink at Eli Colby.”
“That’s the usual between Eli and me.”
“Usual?” she asks, surprised. No one on campus knows that Eli and I grew up together; they don’t know of our history or that we hate each other.
“Yes, usual.”
“What are you not telling me?”
I hate to talk about this, but here it goes. “Eli and I grew up together, that is all.”
The look of surprise on Maggie’s face only grows. “Grew up together?”
I shrug, trying to make it seem like not such a big deal. “What? We just…” I sigh.
“Okay, here it goes. Our parents: great friends. Eli and I: not friends.”
“A frenemy?” she asks as her eyebrow raises further.
“No, more like a foe.”
“That’s a weird way for you to describe a childhood friend.”
I shake my head. “No, we’re not friends. Never have, never will be.”
She chuckles and crosses her arms. “Let me guess, it’s one of those Meera things that are just too complicated for anyone else to understand.”
I sigh and nod. Yes, she’s right, it’s definitely one of those things no one else will understand besides Eli and me.
“It’s not that complicated! We’re not friends!”
“Really?” she points to the bar.
I look back and see Eli casually leaning against it, facing Maggie and me. I could tell he was looking in our direction, but the moment I turned, he turned too.
“Then why is he looking at you like that? Well, he was…”
“Maggie, I want to go!” I say in this tone that even surprises me. I don’t usually snap like this, at least not with people that aren’t Eli.
“Give me five minutes, I have to head to the bathroom.”
With that, Maggie heads to the bathroom, which is located by the bar Eli is leaning on with his friends. I turn again, and he also turns again.
He really is looking at me. Maybe this dress is captivating him somehow. I look down at the dress, trying to see exactly what it is.
Could be the bright color, the length, or the cutout, but I can’t tell.
“Ready!” Maggie announces, startling me. “Oh, sweet angel, I’m sorry. Let’s go.”
She grabs my arm and leads me toward the exit.
As we walk together past the lights and the people sloppily dancing, Maggie leans closer and whispers to me, “As I was walking to the bathroom…”
We reach outside, and she stops me in the middle of the sidewalk. “Eli was talking about you.”
I raise an eyebrow, trying to find how that matters. I mean, he needs to vent about how annoying I am. “So…?”
“He was talking about the dress.”
The dress. My eyes widen slightly as I remember what he leaned and said to me. “Yes, the dress…he hates it on me…” The stupid dress.
“Let’s just go back to the dorms…” I start walking ahead of Maggie.
“Wait!” Maggie says as she grabs my arm. “I didn’t even get to finish!”
I smile at her; clearly she doesn’t know this man like I do. He just wanted her to hear that conversation.
“I’m tired, let us go,” I say. I turn and I start walking again, thinking about this whole Eli thing.
What’s he up to now? Whenever he incessantly talks about me, it is to get back at me with some stupid prank.
I just hope it’s not too big or too embarrassing. Oh gosh, just thinking about it gets me anxious; I just know he’s up to something stupid, something stupid I can’t stop.
