**Author's Note: Firstly, due apologies for the shortness of the chapters. If only I could explain with words how positively harried my life has been lately, and how I've been struggling creatively. However, here is a chapter. Yes, it's a little silly, and the fun of it is, it's supposed to be. The ending of this chapter-also a little silly, and very Muggle, and that's why I love it. You'll see what I mean, but I think you'll have a hard time saying it doesn't fit Rob Wesley to a tee. Hehe… happy reading**
CHAPTER FOURTEEN- In Which Dinner Isn't Black Tie
He'd tried to hold onto that anger all day, insisting to himself he'd need it to survive the day's classes, to survive the short practice after school, and to survive supper with Drake Mallory. Whether or not Mallory himself survived, Rob didn't much care.
But frustration or no, anger or no, as the day passed by (some moments too slowly, like arithmetic lecture, and some too quickly, like the timed history quiz), Rob found himself regretting his treatment. He should have asked if she was okay. That was the right thing to do. But he'd been so relieved to see her, relieved and confused and puzzled at the depth of his emotions, he'd just gotten cross with himself and his incompetence.
Part of him worried about her article, which would likely be printed the next Friday, what it would say, how it would sound.
But most of him didn't care about the article itself; he mostly wanted to know he'd see her again once she was done with it.
Well, seen her he had, and he'd bollocksed it all up.
Rob Wesley, he with five brothers and one sister, didn't know how to handle women, specifically one as idiosyncratic as Lovey, and no amount of classes or football strategy was going to change that.
All he wanted to know was that she was okay, and that they were okay.
~~~
She watched him practice from outside the field, standing in a spot where she could easily see without being easily seen.
That felt apropos to her, to her whole life. After all, where did Lucia Lovejoy fit among the social butterflies and the athletes? Where did she belong among families and normal people?
She didn't mind, really-as a reporter, it had benefited her to have that unerring outside eye. But…
But until you start making statements instead of asking questions, I can't tell what's wrong with you.
She supposed there was a time when she'd have to let people get to know her, as well. It was a fair way to do things.
She felt her stomach do a long, pleasant roll as Rob leapt into the air, curling his body around a ball midair. And rational Lucia knew it wasn't about fair or unfair, or even making a choice. Some people had a way of getting to you whether you let them or not. The team called practice early, the few wind-carried words telling Lucia it was because of their game the next day.
Rob hadn't mentioned a game.
But then again, Rob wasn't happy with her. No, he'd gone back to how he'd been before: tense, impatient, but now with a keen light in his eye that made her feel a little weak-kneed.
A little irrational.
She wanted to run, to head home without seeing him, for the sake of her sanity, her privacy, her independence.
But going home wouldn't change that she'd already left part of herself there. So she waited for him, banding her hair back to keep it from tangling in the wind, trying to be practical. Rob surely wanted practical, yes? Practical and unconfusing.
Rob slung his bag over his shoulder, stutter-stepped toward the showers, then shook his head and continued on his way. Early practice at least allowed him time to shower at home before sitting down with that walking dysfunction Mallory.
Besides, he felt rushed, as though there was something more urgent than stepping into the big, tepid community shower. When he came around the corner and caught sight of her, he thought he'd found his matter of import.
"Lovey," he said matter-of-factly. Good, good, keep it light, casual. "How are you?" He stepped to her side, pausing for only the barest moment to give her the signal that he was going to keep walking. He couldn't stop or his fingers would start to itch, and he'd just have to soothe them by putting them in those yards of pale hair.
She thought carefully before answering, falling into step with him and admiring a spectacularly shaded bruise on his calf. "I'm well. You're looking well." There. No questions in that exchange.
He snorted, looking sidelong at her. "I'm filthy, bruised, sweaty, and I was an arse to you… again. I doubt I'm looking well." But he was certainly pleased to hear her say it in this odd moment, this mixture of comfort and discomfort.
Lucia smiled genuinely at his candor, unable to help herself. "You always look well to me." She stopped then, put her fingertips to the crook of his elbow, feeling the heat there, the tug as he stopped to look down at her. "You weren't at fault, you know. It's only that I was scared."
It sounded silly when it all boiled down to "I was scared." Three words, and she'd wanted to push him away for them.
His brow furrowed comically, confusion writ clearly on his features. "Scared of what?"
Was there a good way to explain it to him? She thought not. Not just now, at least, when she wanted to answer a question with a question, when she didn't want to tell him what was on her mind. "I've never done anything like this before," she said instead, hoping it was just honest enough. "And you… well, you're you."
Simple, to the point. Succinct, her father would have said, tapping it with his red pen. The simplicity of the last sentence would have made it a good closer. She needed to stop thinking of life as an article, though.
Rob put his hand to her cheek. "I'm not scary," he said finally. "Well, perhaps if you get me behind the wheel of an auto, I'm a bit of a fright. And first thing in the morning, the hair's really a bit of a screamer." He grinned then, pleased with himself and flooded with relief at the simple contact. "But other than that…" He trailed off, shuffling his feet nervously and wondering if it would be untoward to fall back into the barely-formed habit of kissing her.
Then he caught a glimpse of the small watch clipped to her bag.
"Bugger!" he yelled, jumping and causing her to jump. His face turned bright red and he looked wild-eyed at her face, then at his watch. "Not you," he said desperately. "It's just… I thought I had more time than I have. Damn it!"
"You're late." Even now, as he was panicking and backing away from her in the direction of his house, she phrased it as a statement and not a question.
"Supper with Drake Mallory," he spat, backstepping down the sidewalk and looking at her forlornly. "Gen invited him, the crazy bird."
She raised her voice, trying to walk faster to keep up with him. "You underestimate him, Rob." Gen had been happy lately-Lucia may have had her head in the clouds, but she'd noticed that. He looked dumbfounded, so she added, "And you underestimate yourself."
That stopped him, and he jogged back to her, cupping his hand to the back of her head and looking down at her. Then, without a word, he slipped the band from her hair and grinned, a quick flash of dimples and teeth, and turned and ran away from her toward his house.
~~~
He wished she were there with him.
It was his own fault, he knew, but hindsight was rarely ever wrong, and this particular hindsight was making Rob Wesley wish he'd invited Lucia to dinner. Granted, he hadn't exactly let on to anyone that he was even talking to her, but…
He knew he could have brought her to dinner, and while his parents would have been surprised, and Ginny certainly would have been shocked, no one would have turned her away. They hadn't turned away a bloody Mallory, after all.
Rob snuck another glance at the fair-haired boy across the table and scowled. What had Lovey meant, underestimating him? There was nothing about the git to underestimate, except perhaps for the way he'd clearly seemed to pull the wool over the eyes of Rob's entire family, especially Genevieve. The two were paying more attention to one another then they were to their food, and the hell of it was, no one but Rob seemed to notice.
Granted, his nerves might have been a little on edge, and narrowing his eyes at Mallory, Rob wondered if like recognized like-after all, being a little… frustrated over Lucia might very well lead him to other conclusions.
He damned well hoped those weren't the conclusions to be had, though. In Rob's opinion, if Mallory was thinking about Gen in any way similar to how he'd been thinking about Lucia-well, a football wasn't the only thing Rob could kick, in that event.
And besides, the pigment-challenged freak was sitting right bloody next to him. Surely he could manage to stab him with a fork before anyone-
"Robert, Drake is asking for the salt," Mrs. Wesley insisted loudly, watching with amused eyes as her son's ears turned red from the pains it took to be polite.
She had such obedient children.
Thinking such, she edged her serving spoon closer in case of disciplinary needs.
By the end of the meal, Rob had only gotten a blow to the wrist once with that bloody spoon, but that was surely once more than if he'd not have had to eat with-
"Robert Wesley, will you listen to me for once?" His mum was hovering over him, hands on hips, a dishtowel hanging from one. "I found a garment bag balled up in your duffel. There was a tuxedo in there, Robert. Wadded into a ball."
"A wha?" He hadn't even noticed Gen get up to escort Mallory out, so intent had he been on trying to pinpoint what, precisely, about the two of them bothered him. "A tuxedo?"
"Isn't my wedding tux, is it?" his father piped up. "Seem to have misplaced that."
In the manner of long habit, his wife ignored him and focused on her son. "A garment bag with a tuxedo inside. Surely you didn't steal it, you have to know where it came from."
"The team got it," Rob said distantly, trying to think of why they'd have gotten a tuxedo. It was a masque, for God's sake, he needed a costume, not a penguin suit. As he looked into the living room where his mother had hung the abused suit, he groaned.
A white note card was pinned to the garment bag, and his mum had likely mistook it for a cleaners' number.
007.
Rob was going to have to find a way to turn Lucia into a Bond girl.