"So yeah, by the way, how's Alejandra?" I hush towards Sawyer in between the class.

"Ha ha, very funny, huh. Listen to her now." He looks at me from the corner of his eyes, while squinting them partially shut and pointing his index finger towards the middle-aged female teacher.

"As if you are listening to her."

"Yeah agreed, but I am not the 'yes ma'am' girl out of the both of us."

"I'm not a 'yes ma'am' girl."

"Yeah sure, you're not. Happy?" he says, while emphasising too much on his words while he gives me a squint eye look again. "By the way, do I smell jealousy here?"

"Yeah sure, cause you're the most eligible bachelor they have out there," I speak, as I roll my eyes.

I do not know how we reached here, but we did, somehow. We have been talking to each other since our second conversation, and it seems like we have known each other for ages. It is pretty comfortable with him, things are easy, and we never even have to make an effort to keep the conversation going, for some reason that I have not been able to understand yet. Whenever we talked about a thing, we always ended up talking about something completely different in the next 15 minutes, going off of various tangents along the way.

Those silly girls from his high school have shifted their focus of shipping him with Alejandra, towards shipping him with me and secretly clicking our photos when we are sitting in the class together and sending them to us on our class WhatsApp group.

This shipping gave me a wider space and an excuse to flirt with him.

The thing comes back to how much is too much here. I have no idea about who can and who cannot be trusted anymore. Clearly, I am not a very good judge of human nature.

Moreover, the classes are almost over. Just two weeks more for the classes to end and three weeks to go for my undergrad college classes to begin.

"And, again for the nth time, Alejandra is just a friend."

"Okay, that's sad. So Mr. Sawyer got friendzoned by yet another girl."

"I couldn't care less, as long as I have you," he says as he winks at me.

"So, you think you're not in the friendzone here? High hopes, my friend," I tease while I shoot my eyebrows up.

"I don't know. Am I?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Take a shot, and you'll know," I shrug.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you are really good."

"Do you know anything, for that matter?"

"I kinda do, by the way. I did not ask this before because we weren't that close, so it didn't deem appropriate at that time. What's up with the guy you were with, about a month ago in that McD down the street. You guys a thing or...?"

His innocent and light-hearted inquiry makes a shiver run down my spine as I open my mouth to speak but words do not seem to form on my lips.

"Oh, sorry! Did I pluck a nerve there?"

I sigh, but still stay silent.

"Nikita?" he inquires, this time with apprehension clear on his face. "I am so sorry. I did not mean invade your privacy. Are you alright?"

"Hmm," is all that I could muster out of my throat while I slowly nod.

I can practically feel my heart rate rising up and my adrenaline glands acting in defence mode, ready to pounce on a predator whenever it is needed.

Sawyer turns his head towards the teacher and tries to copy the design that is projected on the white board. He is trying hard not to look at me and give me my space.

My heart suddenly sinks down to my abdomen, which now wants to discharge the sandwich that I had this morning. I can feel the sour taste rising in my throat.

I remember reaching home and being welcomed with 100s of WhatsApp texts about how "great the kiss was". I called him up and burst out on Eliot with all the swear words I had in my dictionary. He "apologised" for what happened and then I cut the phone and him off completely.

It has been more than a month since that incident, I have blocked him from everywhere. I still do not feel safe.

The turmoil in my mind is basically between, the "it was just a kiss" thing, versus being forced to do something against my will, and being completely helpless in a situation. It is still stuck in my mind.

While my mind fills up with a month old dug up dirt, the teacher leaves as the class has ended.

Sawyer turns his head left to look at me.

"Why do you look so miserable?"

Without directly looking at him, keeping my eyes still on same spot, I simply nod my head.

"I am sorry Nikita. I did not mean to hurt you."

I finally look at him, he had a blend of guilt and concern in his dark brown eyes.

"Is there anything I can do to help you or make you feel better?"

"I don't know," I say as I look at him directly now. "He blackmailed me into kissing him, in the darkened staircase of the mall across the street. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even push him away. I couldn't help myself. I had no choice but to give in. Maybe it was not really about a kiss, it was about being powerless. About not being able to help myself and say 'no', even though I wanted to say it."

He looks intently at me, as I continue, "he blackmailed me with screenshots of our mishap sexting, that we once had when I was down. The main thing is that I just felt helpless at that moment, I had no choice at that point, but to give in."

"What was his name again?" he asks, his forehead scrunches and his eyebrows now almost meet.

"Eliot."

"Give me your phone."

"Why?! What are you going to do?" my voice gets high pitched and I start to panic.

"I just want to talk to this... umm... friend of yours."

"Why?" I look at him as I ask, baffled, while he pushes his eyebrows up and doesn't respond. "Sawyer?"

"Do you want closure? Do you want to feel safe again? Or do you want to keep feeling helpless for a significant time in the future? Trust me, I won't do anything that is wrong. But maybe you will, just like he did."

I tentatively hand over my phone, as he opens my SMS application, which pops up with 100s of spam messages clouding my inbox.

He texted Eliot and asked him to come meet "me", that is Nikita, in the same location he made me kiss him, in the next half an hour or so.

I have no idea what Sawyer has in mind. I have a feeling that he is planning to break his bones or something like that. I do not want him to get a lawsuit against him because of this random jerk that he does not even know personally. But he has got his mind set to it and blood pumped up in his body.

I feel both excited and terrified at the same time. I am dying in the mere anticipation of what is coming next, while we stride around in the mall, looking at shops and waiting for Eliot to call me up when he reaches the decided location.

Eliot was pretty excited to hear from me after a long time. He thought I had forgiven him and was calling him for a date or something. Sawyer made sure that he did not drop any signals of any kind of either a date or what we are going to do now. He was just straight forward and cold about his points and made sure his message (both in context and metaphorically) was received.

When he calls and tells me that he has reached the premises and is parking his motorcycle, we rush to the stairs. I stand on the 1st step of the stairs. The wooden door to the stairs opens on the inside and Sawyer hides behind it.

I hate this place. This dimly lit deserted area of this mall gives me the creeps. People usually use either the elevators or the escalators. It is pretty rare that someone might use the stairs, with their shopping bags and trolleys, with an addition of heels wearing them down.

As I see him from a distance, walking over here, I can feel that fear and adrenaline pumping up again. My blood boils up and my mind now wants me to "fight".

Eliot sees me standing here alone so he walks over with confidence and does not hesitate even once. As he slowly walks over, with a 'oh she can't resist me' smirk on his face, my legs start getting restless.

As he walks inside the door, with the same smile on his punchable face, Sawyer gets a hold of the collar of his T-shirt from behind and pushes the door shut, so no one could see or hear about what is happening here.

Eliot looks around in horror because of the unexpected turn of events that took play, contrary to what he had planned out in his creepy and perverted mind. He tries to free himself by trying to turn his skeleton body around and wriggling. Eliot went from a semi-colon capital C to colon capital O real quick.

"What is going on here!?" he shouts out at me.

"What do you feel like when you look at him Nikita?" Sawyer looks at me, while he open his eyes wide and stares down Eliot's soul and purses his lips.

"I feel like punching him," I mutter angrily under my breath.

"What?" Eliot says this time, with his eyes now wider than before. His bushy eyebrows shout up and his lips are now further apart than before.

"You don't have to repeat that for him, Nikita. Just do it."

I look up at Sawyer, who is still holding his stern face and giving me an assuring nod.

"Is this about that day? Because I apologised to you. Didn't I?" I look at Eliot who is blabbering in fear.

"Just do it Nikita. It was never about apology or about a stupid kiss. It was about being in control of yourself. Feeling secure about yourself, isn't that what you told me, about an hour ago?"

I look up at Sawyer again.

"Just do it Nikita."

My hand is starting to get restless now, the blood circulation in my right arm has increased and it is ready to punch or even win an arm wrestling match with the Undertaker at the moment as I feel this sudden surge of energy rising up in me.

I crack my fingers and in less then a second it gets a mind of its own and it bounces off of Eliot's nose and comes back down.

I feel a lot better now, very relaxed and my fears start to settle down as I look down at my hand.

I look up to see Eliot's now bloody nose as I hear him groan in pain.

"Umm, I think he has a broken nose, Sawyer. We should take him to the nearby nursing home."

Sawyers looks at me and asks me for the final time, before letting Eliot go from his grip, "you're alright? You sure you don't need another one?"

"Yup! I've never felt better than this, like ever."