Page 27 of The Underachiever’s Guide to Love and Saving the World

COURTNEY

Sex with me is sounding pretty good right now, isn’t it?

” Bryce hissed, his forearm around my neck, his thighs caging my hips.

“All this training, all this being nice to everyone, it must be killing you.” His arm held me almost protectively against his chest. It was perhaps the softest and least impressive attempt at a choke hold ever.

Him throttling me should not make me need to throttle my feelings, yet it did. His touch spread awareness through my nerves, sparking a needy desperation between my thighs.

“I would rather volunteer at a hospital, help raise a neighbor’s barn, and give a compliment to a stranger than have sex with you,” I whispered viciously, trying not to notice the pale hair dusting his freckled forearm.

“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

After approximately two minutes of watching Bryce and me half-heartedly flailing around as we tried to grapple without actually touching each other, Cuthbert realized we were a lost cause and hollered for us to move on to sword training.

Bryce detached from me and stood. Fixing a pleasant expression on his face so no one would know we were arguing, he held out a hand for me.

Taking his hand and hoisting myself up, I followed his lead and arranged my face into a frozen mask of friendliness. “Sex with you would only make me like certain parts of you less,” I said under my breath.

“I think you’d like it,” he said brightly, talking through his smiling teeth. “I’d whisper dirty things about plaque in your ear. I know how that gets you going.”

I released his hand and made a show of wiping mine on my dress. “Why are you obsessed with me? Am I, like, the light of your life?”

“If that light is a burning trash fire, then sure.”

Being called a trash fire should not make me feel giddy and special. Except that I bet Bryce wasn’t calling other girls his trash fire, and that fact made me want to go around bragging to everyone that, sure, maybe I was a trash fire, but I was Bryce’s trash fire.

Eager fire licked between my ribs. Bryce’s insults felt like pulled pigtails on a playground; I knew it was messed up, but they made me feel like the most special girl in the world.

I was like a crush-prone hormonal teenager, blinded by glitter-gel-pen hearts.

The whole world had turned into the magical white-and-blue landscape of a homework margin.

I could practically see purple and pink doodles surrounding everything Bryce did.

At his every movement, the word hot danced before my eyes, underlined three times.

Swoopy arrows pointed at all his best features, like his veiny hands, his intelligent eyes, and the lines bracketing his mouth that appeared when he was holding back a smug smile.

Oh my god. This was truly sad. Even watching Cuthbert beat the snot out of Bryce during sword practice couldn’t dampen my crush.

Every time Cuthbert’s sword connected with Bryce’s body, little imaginary hearts and butterflies sprang out.

I rested my chin in my hand while my mind had a field day with a fantasy of nursing Bryce back to health that would, of course, involve me gently removing his clothes in the firelight, and him wincing and gasping, our eye contact the only thing keeping him tethered to the mortal plane.

I’d give him alcohol to numb the pain, and he’d grimace, his Adam’s apple lurching and sweat rolling down his chest. He’d probably grow delirious and confess that he’d been in love with me since, like, the dawn of time.

As the training session went on, Bryce’s posture began to slump, the life in his eyes chipping away, exposing something hollow and empty inside. A feeling nagged within me, intensifying with each passing minute. Nervous energy built up until I thought I might explode.

Worry. That’s the only thing it could be.

I had to occupy my hands before they did something unsavory. Like try to fulfill my fantasy of nursing him back to health.

All I wanted to do was march across the room, smack the sword out of Cuthbert’s hands, and tell him, Enough .

Bryce was never going to be that kind of fighter—the type that was bold and flashy and violent.

His strength was the type that went unnoticed.

He persevered. He stayed. He felt . It was admirable, the way he worried on behalf of the whole universe, fighting, in his own way, for people like me who had given up fighting for themselves.

The unsettled feeling within me grew more unsettling. Something was compelling me to try to make Bryce’s life less miserable instead of more miserable. I… was bothering . The very thing Bryce did that pissed me off.

What did Bryce do to me? Quitting things had become easy, but I couldn’t quit him.

It didn’t help that my village groupies were encouraging the situation. They sat clustered around me, whispering and giggling, prodding me and smiling knowingly.

An agonized moan snapped me out of my fantasy.

“Rally, soldier!” Cuthbert barked like an excited Chihuahua, prodding Bryce’s prone form with the tip of his wooden sword.

Bryce lay flat on his back, eyes squeezed shut, his sword a few feet away.

Before I could stop myself, I passed off the daisy chain I’d been making to Sage and sprang up.

I swept to Bryce’s side like he’d collapsed on a battlefield.

My crush had apparently crushed my kneecaps, because they buckled, and I half fell beside him.

“Bryce?” With one finger, I pried his eyelid open.

Bryce’s blue eye snapped to look at me. Letting out a weak cough, he whispered, “I downloaded the Bible app on my phone a month ago in the event that, if we both died, I might make it to Heaven and avoid this reunion.”

“We’re not in Hell, silly.” I laughed the laugh of a pick-me girl who’s just squealed the phrase You’re sooooo funny!

Bryce opened his other eye. “It feels like it.”

I tugged on his arm, more as an excuse to sink my claws into him than anything else.

He begrudgingly stood. Awkwardly, I tried to do that thing where you loop someone’s arm over your shoulder to support them, but his arm was too heavy, and he gave me a What the fuck are you doing? look, so I stopped.

“Sorry. Just trying to help,” I mumbled.

“Thanks, Court,” he said, brushing off his shirt, and the damn nickname made my damn heart soften.

“Don’t expect it ever again.” I tried to add my usual bite to the words but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Trust me.” He snorted softly. “I never expect anything from you.”

I rolled my eyes. On the inside, I treasured his words— I never expect anything from you —like a love letter.

The thing I ran the risk of losing every time we touched, every time one of us bothered .

If we grew too close, he’d stop saying rude, beautiful things like I never expect anything from you .

Love expected everything, and I had nothing to offer.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Bryce said, barely audible. “I can’t fight anything.”

Back when being a Chosen One felt like a competition, a game, I would have been gloating, but not now, after meeting the village girls and realizing how vital our success was.

Bryce couldn’t quit. He was the Chosen One, the reliable one.

The gravity that kept me tethered to the earth.

My moral compass. Without him, I couldn’t navigate what it meant to be a hero.

I would lose my way and fail like always.

“Nonsense. You’re fit for war.” I fetched Bryce’s sword and tucked it into his limp hand. He immediately dropped it. “Whoops. Looks like someone has a bad case of the dropsies.”

Cuthbert’s eyes grew wide. “Dropsy? Lord Bryce has come down with dropsy?”

“No,” I said. “No, no. I only mean he dropped his sword.”

But more people started gathering around murmuring, “Dropsy? The Chosen One has fallen ill with dropsy?”

“It’s a phrase!” I yelled over the chaos. “?‘Having the dropsies’ means you’re prone to dropping stuff.”

“His limbs are already failing him!” a soldier wailed and fell to his knees, his own limbs apparently failing him.

“We must boil water,” Rose yelled frantically.

“How do you think water will help?” I asked, pulling at my hair. “What do you plan on doing with it?”

“We will boil it, my lady,” said Rose.

I let out a frustrated growl. “I know he looks like a sickly, fragile Victorian man who’s constantly on the verge of death, but he’s fine .”

“He’s on the verge of death?” a third person sobbed.

Bryce’s eyes focused, flitting from one concerned face to another. “Yes,” he said quietly. Then, louder, “Yes!” He dramatically clutched a hand to his chest. “How I suffer so! How misfortune has struck the land! How the mighty have fallen!”

The castle folk nodded and clapped one another on the back, fighting off tears.

“Behold, my appendages already retain fluid. See how I have been rendered useless!” Bryce raised his arms, which were the opposite of swollen. “I fear I will no longer be able to serve as your leader. My henchwoman will take my place until I feel better.” With that, he collapsed onto the ground.