Victor: Her Ruthless Crush by Theodora Taylor (beach read book TXT) 📕

With this decided, he indicated for her to sit at the long table where he made his studies.

After a moment of hesitation, she sat down in the spot designated for tutors. He waited for her to settle before taking his own seat on his usual side of the table.

Then there came another awkward silence. This one was even more excruciating than the last.

She had broken the silence the last time. It was his turn to say something. But he had no idea what. As a future Red Diamond dragonhead, he had, of course, been taught manners, also the art of negotiation.

But in truth, he did not have much experience talking with the opposite sex. For one thing, he couldn’t speak. And for another, when women came to him, they were usually the ones with the onus to make him feel more relaxed. Not the other way around.

“I'm sorry.” The girl started speaking in a sudden rush. “I'm awkward. And I've never taught anyone before. I'm not sure where to start. Especially with someone who looks like you—”

She slapped a hand over her mouth, her dark brown eyes widening with mortification. “Oh God, did I just say that out loud? I talk too much. I'm sorry. It's just hard to be in here with you. Alone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm just really, really awkward.”

Victor's stomach rolled. He so revolted her that she could barely stand to be here?

The urge to eject her from his apartment redoubled. But dragonheads could not appear weak….

He picked up the scratch note pad he used to communicate with his tutors and wrote a message in English. A lie that would save both of them face.

“ASL is my father's idea. One lesson. We can sit here for the hour. Quiet. No talk.”

He slid the notepad across to her, and her lovely eyes widened as she read his words.

But then, instead of going quiet as he suggested, she said, “Oh, so this is just a one-time thing? Okay… I think I can deal with that.”

She smiled at him, and her obvious relief curdled Victor's stomach. For the first time since coming to Japan, he wished he was lean and pretty like Han. Not an “animal” who frightened girls on top of being physically incapable of speaking to them.

Girls preferred men like his chosen brother, who looked like he had walked out of a J-Romance. When Victor was preparing for the American tutor’s visit, he'd read online that many girls from the USA did not like the thin look of Asian men, so he’d hope perhaps this girl would appreciate his opposite build.

But of course, she did not find him appealing. He felt stupid for even hoping she would. It was a hardship for her to even be in his presence—

“If it's only a one-time thing, let's make a game of it, okay?” she said, jolting him from his miserable thoughts.

A game? He didn't understand.

Dawn grabbed the scratch paper he’d scribbled his face-saving note on and flipped it over. She wrote down several words on the blank side. EAT… DAD… HAPPY… SCHOOL… 1-10. And so on.

“Okay, that's, like, thirty words if you count all the numbers, I think,” she said, setting the pencil down. “Should be enough.”

She lifted her wrist and started pressing the side buttons on her cheap plastic watch. “I'm setting a timer for twenty minutes. We'll have that long to teach each other the signs for the words I wrote down. Then we’ll both go through the list and try to sign as many of them as we remember. The winner will be whoever can sign the most words in the other person’s sign language.”

Victor understood the rules she was setting forth but frowned and picked up the pen to ask, “You want to learn CSL? Why?”

“Why? Why not?” She shook her head at him like he was the strange one in this conversation. Then before he could write down any other questions, she said, “Okay, let’s do this!”

Pinching her fingers down on her thumb, she pressed all the tips to her mouth. “That’s the sign for EAT.”

Then she looked at him expectantly.

After a moment of hesitation, Victor made the CSL sign for EAT, pantomiming chopsticks with his right index and middle finger.

“Cool! Like chopsticks, right? That makes sense,” she said, making the same sign. “Okay, here's the sign for DAD.”

Widening her palm, she pressed her thumb to her forehead.

Victor nodded, and this time he repeated her gesture before curling his fingers and pressing the side of this thumb to his lips.

“Okay, sorta similar. I think I got it,” she said, copying his sign. “Here’s HAPPY.”

She smiled hugely and circled her hands in front of her chest.

But she scrunched her face when Victor did the same thing, more than once.

He eventually had to write down, “Your happy. My happy. Exactly the same.”

She gasped at his words, then laughed.

The sound made everything inside Victor pause to appreciate the sound up close. There she was. There was the girl he’d seen from afar in that club.

She was so pretty when she laughed. It made Victor want to laugh too. This was why he’d chosen her. This was why he’d wanted to learn her version of sign language as soon as he saw her.

Twenty minutes passed in a flash. And then it was time for each of them to do as many signs as they could.

Victor went first, efficiently pantomiming the signs he remembered and skipping over the ones he'd forgotten. In the end, he accumulated twenty-two points for remembering 22 out of 30 words.

Dawn whistled at his final tally. “Not bad. Okay, my turn!”

This was when Victor discovered something new about the girl from the club. She was completely untrustworthy.

While he had exacting standards for himself and had skipped over the words he didn't know, Dawn wasn't nearly as honorable. The first time she came to a word she didn’t know for certain, instead of skipping over