When I looked up, Ronan was eyeing me excitedly.
“That does not fucking mean I’ll be naked,” I said, jabbing my finger into his chest.
Ronan’s face fell into a disappointed frown, but I ignored him.
“What is all this shit?” I asked, waving my hand over the arrangement of glasses and plates. “It looks like a grandma’s china cabinet.”
There were half a dozen glasses, four plates, and more silverware than my six roommates and I had between us all during senior year of college. I was staring at the fine crystal that twinkled with coloured light from the ornate stained-glass ceiling of the library when a narrow black pointer extended into view. I nearly went cross-eyed staring at the tip a mere inch or two from the end of my nose.
My eyes slid to Ronan, who was holding the long pointer as if it were a lance in a bout of jousting.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked.
Ronan grinned and moved the pointer to tap twice on the seat of the chair directly in front of the table arrangement.
“Class is commencing, Ms Evans.”
I shoved aside the pointer with a bored sigh and was about to take my seat when I felt a little smack on my ass. My head whipped around to spot Ronan darting away with a childish bout of laughter.
“Do you intend to always be this immature?” I asked, roughly pulling out the chair.
Ronan was rolling an antique lectern from the corner of the library and shouldered it into place by the table. “I do hate to disappoint.”
Ronan disappeared behind the lectern and re-emerged with a World’s Greatest Teacher mug. He sipped from it daintily with a raised pinkie.
“I’m guessing it’s not coffee in there,” I grumbled.
Ronan winked down at me. “Smart cookie.”
“So what is all this shit? Why are there like four wine glasses?” I asked, reaching for a random wine glass, a small, almost miniature one, only to yank back my hand to my chest when Ronan smacked his pointer smartly across my knuckles.
“Ow,” I complained. “What the hell was that for?”
Ronan eyed me over the lip of his mug. “Schooner,” he said.
“What?”
“Schooner. It’s called a schooner.”
“A schooner?” I repeated dumbly.
Ronan nudged the glass back into place with the tip of his pointer. “It’s for sherry.”
I blinked up at him in confusion. “Sherry?”
When I looked back at the weird little wine glass again Ronan smacked my elbow with the pointer. I howled angrily and rubbed at the spot as I glared up at him.
“Ow,” I complained, emphasizing my protest even more this time.
“Sherry,” Ronan repeated before smacking me again, this time on the side of my ass. “Schooner. Sherry. Schooner.”
“Ow, ow, ow,” I shouted. “Why are you hitting me?”
Ronan could barely hold back his shit-eating grin as he drummed his pointer against his open palm and explained, “In my preparation for teaching you the ancient ways of society’s elite, I read many books discussing various pedagogical theory.”
He began to pace back and forth behind the lectern. I groaned and slumped forward with my elbows on the edge of the table. This earned me two more slaps of the pointer.
“Elbows, Ms Evans!”
“Stop hitting me!”
Ronan ignored my complaints and continued to pace as he continued, “During my extensive reading—”
I interrupted him with an amused snort.
“During my extensive reading,” Ronan repeated, “I learned that the brain may build stronger long-term connections with information consumed during periods of extreme emotion.”
I stared up at him and shrugged my shoulders. “So?”
Ronan stopped his pacing. “So,” he said, “there’s a method to my madness, Ms Evans.”
I yelped when he whacked my pinkie.
“Sherry. Schooner.”
I swatted irritably at the pointer, but Ronan easily pulled it back like a fishing reel. He raised a pointed eyebrow as he held the pointer out of reach from me.
“Any strong emotion will do according to my studies,” he said. “We could try arousal if you aren’t particularly inclined toward anger.”
He couldn’t hold back his grin as he eyed the crumbled mini uniform behind me. His attention moved back to me.
“But I know how easily anger comes for you, love.”
I shifted in my chair so I was fully facing the table and said, “I imagine most women who come into any type of contact with you find anger comes quite easily.”
Ronan chuckled. “It is strange, is it not?”
I rolled my eyes.
Ronan began to go through each of the glasses and plates and napkins and forks and knives and spoons and shakers and place cards and saucers in front of me. He went through when you use, when you don’t use, how you use it, how you don’t use it, where it goes, where it doesn’t go, what you call it, what you never call it unless you want the whole goddamn world to implode.
It would have been mind-numbingly boring and irritatingly useless information to learn had it not been for the scattered pricks and prods, smacks and whips, slaps and pats of Ronan’s pointer. He did it just intermittently enough to keep me from saying fuck it all to hell, upending the table, and stalking out to take a dip in the pool after asking for a margarita from Benson. My anger would threaten to boil over and Ronan would promise to stop only long enough for me to cool off enough to start up all over again. He was the worst kind of fly: a strategic, intelligent, cunning fly.
He hovered around me, darting this way and that when I lashed my arm out at him. His laughter buzzed in one ear, then the other. Ronan seemed to have trained his whole life in the subtle art of being a constant pest and getting away with it.
I finally burst after an hour of Ronan drilling me with pompous, ridiculous, snobby extraneous terms like demitasse and fish fork and goddamn mother fucking schooner.
Throwing my hands up into the air in frustration, I moaned, “Why do I need to know any of this? What is the point?”
Ronan grinned mischievously. “Oh, you want to know the point?”
The tip of his pointer nudged my ass again and that was it, that was fucking it. The legs of my chair screeched horribly against the dark panelled floors of the library as I stood.
“Give me that,” I growled through gritted teeth and wrenched the pointer from Ronan’s loosened grip.
“I am sick and tired of you acting like you’re better than me just because you call this a champagne ‘flute’ instead of just a funny-looking cup,” I shouted before whacking the flute.
It shattered as Ronan watched with an amused grin. He leaned lazily against his lectern as my tirade stormed on.
“Oh, look at me,” I said in my most offensive posh accent possible, “I’m so rich and powerful because I know a teaspoon from a dessert spoon.”
I sent the teaspoon and dessert spoon flying across the library, respectively. Ronan smiled and sipped from his World’s Greatest Teacher mug as he watched me destroy the table arrangement, making a complete mess of things as I went through plate after plate, glass after glass, spoon after spoon.
By the time I was done I was winded and red-cheeked and the pointer was hanging limply by my side. Ronan lifted his mug once more and then smacked his lips.