one.
Oliver Finney’s thick brown hair sat on his head in a wavy mess that, despite his lack of self-grooming, actually looked as though he did it on purpose. His shorter-than-average stature made him look a little younger than 17-years-old, however, the seemingly permanent dark circles under his eyes made him look beyond his years. Oliver had an incredibly introverted personality, which he mentally called his love. He could hide and be invisible pretty much everywhere he’d go, including college.
Oliver absolutely hated college with a passion. A burning, raging passion. He only attended to shut his parents up. All Oliver wanted to do was to get a job and have a painfully average life where he could fly under the radar to avoid anyone’s unwanted attention. His grades were good enough that he didn’t have to worry about teachers telling him to work harder or have high expectations or anything like that.
Being average in all aspects of life was completely fine with Oliver. In fact, he yearned for it. Truthfully, he was lazy and only really wanted an easy life. College would never give anyone that but if he just got through the last year of it, his parents would surely forget about him as they didn’t really care. Then he’d be able to truly relax.
The one thing, however, that Oliver particularly enjoyed at the end of the college day was a tutorial class which was basically where you could do any coursework or work on your CV or anything really. It was like an extra free period. Thankfully, his teacher, Old Man Berryford, didn’t give a shit and basically sat there for an hour and a half letting them do what they wanted until the end of the day. Actually, the old man didn’t even bother taking a register, so if anyone wanted to skip, they could.
However, Oliver didn’t. He went every single day so he could chill out before going to the chaos that was his home.
Chaotic would be a nice way to put it, actually. Oliver was the oldest out of the five of them. He had three sisters: Isabella, 15, Willow, 12, and Hallie, seven, and one brother, Indy, 15. Isabella and Indy were twins.
Any time that Oliver was able to spend out of the house, he would take it. There was no doubt about that. His parents, Noah and Charlotte, were very much workaholics. Noah was a doctor, and Charlotte had her own small business selling personalised backpacks and school accessories. It was something she began when Hallie began big school when she turned 5. Despite a thousand backpacks being available in multiple shops and supermarkets, none were to Hallie’s liking. Thus, Charlotte’s Stationary Shop was created.
Oliver’s parents worked all the hours you could think of. Sometimes Oliver thought that it was because they didn’t want to be in the house just as much as he did. His siblings made everything hectic. It wasn’t worth being in their presence for longer than he needed. The gut-wrenching feeling that Oliver got when he knew he had to be at home was awful.
“I am not exaggerating!” Oliver insisted to his best friend, Grace. She did not believe the seemingly made-up stories that Oliver would exclaim almost every day - until she saw them with her own eyes.
The two youngest, Willow and Hallie, thought it would be funny to squirt Fairy washing-up liquid down the wooden stairs and slide down them. That caused Willow to go smashing into the front door, ultimately giving herself a black eye. They were in hysterics. But guess who had to clean it all up? Oliver did. With a wide-eyed and open-mouthed Grace as a witness.
“Oh my. I get it now,” Grace said, her cheeks flushed and her heart pounding against her chest as Oliver’s mum, Charlotte, took the girls to the hospital.
It was normal for them. Oliver hated it.
Another time a couple of years previous, Isabella and Indy had a huge fight about Indy stealing Isabella’s makeup. Makeup was smeared all over the walls and carpet. Oliver had to clean that up too. So he thought, fuck it all, I am not dealing with that. And from then on, he tried his absolute hardest to spend as little time at home as he could.
So, it wasn’t a shock that Oliver despised being at home. He hoped that as his siblings grew up they would grow in maturity also; hopefully ditching the pathetic childishness along with it. Thankfully, the twins weren’t as bad as they had been previously, however, they were still annoying.
It would have been even better if his parents actually parented them properly, instead of throwing the responsibility to Oliver. He was almost a legal adult—just a handful of weeks to go. But something within Oliver just knew that things would get a lot worse from then on.
It was quite unfortunate that Oliver’s only friend, Grace, was in completely different classes from him and didn’t even share the tutorial together. However, they spent the majority of the day texting each other to get them through the senseless, boring classes and they would count down the minutes to see each other at lunch and after college ended. The two were truly like peas in a pod ever since they met when they started secondary school at age 11. Grace was also the first person Oliver confided in when he came out as gay when he was 13. They trusted each other and there wasn’t anything kept from one another. There was no such thing as secrets regarding the two of them.
“I love you, Oliver!” Grace would regularly shout out. Her dark hazel-coloured ringlet hair would bounce as she did so. Grace’s light brown skin literally glowed no matter the weather: she was the most beautiful girl Oliver had ever seen. Although he was a thousand percent gay, he could totally see why so many guys tried it on with her.
Oliver slept at Grace’s house most weekends as her parents were so accepting. Actually, Oliver hadn’t officially come out to his parents and he suspected that Indy knew but thankfully he hadn’t said anything to anyone yet. He hoped that was one of the signs that at least one-half of the duo was growing up.
Oliver really wished he could pluck up the courage to tell his parents but there hadn’t been time. They were very rarely in the same room and when they were it would definitely not be the time to say anything. One day, the time would come, but at that moment Oliver was content with them not knowing everything. Or anything for that matter.
It was a Monday, and Oliver and Grace had just had their lunch in the college canteen and were catching up on what had happened that morning: not much but that didn’t stop them from nattering on anyway. They began walking out, ready to face their next classes, Oliver had English Language and Grace had Psychology, when they heard a group of girls gasping and giggling loudly in the corner of the canteen. Being the nosey Noras that they were, they hovered around the exit to listen to their conversation.
“He is so gorgeous!” one of the girls gushed.
“How can he be a teacher though? His looks are so wasted here. He could definitely be a model,” another commented.
“I know right, I heard that Old Man Berryford had a heart attack over the weekend and he’s going to be the substitute for the foreseeable future!”
Oliver and Grace exchanged looks of shock and utter anticipation. There was supposedly a sexy new teacher and, by the looks of it, was Oliver’s tutorial teacher. The two of them were very excited to see what he looked like, whether he was truly hot or not because compared to the old man, anyone was gorgeous.
“Right, so after the next lesson, we’ll meet and walk to your tutorial together so I can catch a glimpse of him. I don’t care if I’m a couple of minutes late to mine, I need to see what the whole commotion is about. Deal?” Grace said, excitement spilling from every crevice. She was so adorable when she got her bossy bum on.
“Deal.” The two friends hugged before parting ways for the next hour and a half.
Oliver sat through his English Language class, barely paying any attention to the teacher. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard so he learned just to turn off most of the time. She was rattling on about some creative writing assessment they were going to have at some point. Oliver glanced over at the person sitting next to him and spotted that he had written down the date for a week’s time with the words creative writing love letter assessment. His eyes darted around to other people’s notebooks and the exact words were written on theirs. As he quickly jotted it down on his, everyone began getting up. The class had ended.
Which meant one thing: it was time to see the new teacher. Grace was literally bouncing up and down outside the door to Oliver’s English class.
“Come on, dickhead. Let’s get a move on and see some sexiness! More girls were talking about him in Psychology. God, he must be good-looking.” She grabbed Oliver’s arm and began pulling him down the hall and down the stairs towards his tutorial class.
To be honest, Oliver was quite excited himself. As shy and introverted as he was, he still loved to look at good-looking people. There was no doubt about that. He’d learned the art of staring without being noticed and he knew if this teacher was that good looking he’d be doing it quite often.
As they began nearing the door to the classroom, Grace squeezed Oliver’s arm, which had actually gone numb, and he walked in whilst she peered in after him. He stopped in his tracks. Pure heaven stared back at him.
“Hi, you’re the first one here! I’m Elliot Hudson, nice to meet you,”
“Oh. Hi. I’m..I’m Oliver Finney. You’re replacing Berryford?” he stuttered. He couldn’t stop looking at his eyes. So blue. So deep.
“I sure am. I don’t know how long though. Anyway, once everyone is here I’ll answer more questions. So take a seat.” Elliot pointed to the computer that sat next to his desk and Oliver felt inclined to sit there even though he usually sat right at the back.
He was truly breathtaking. Surely they shouldn’t allow teachers to be that good-looking, right? And how old was he? He only looked about 25. Fuck. Oliver knew that even if he didn’t turn up to tutorial class before, he definitely would be from then on.
