Don’t Push Your Luck

Running late for work, I had no choice but to call an Uber.

As luck would have it, my boss turned out to be my Uber driver.

We stared at each other awkwardly.

He raised an eyebrow and asked, "Let me guess... running late?"

Me: ...

Later, he docked my pay.

I gave him a one-star review.

I still can't figure out how I got tangled up with Jake Harrison in the first place.

It all started one random afternoon in elementary school.

He pulled my hair.

I slapped him right across the face.

And somehow, that legendary slap tied me to this CEO's son for half my life.

In elementary school, we were desk mates. I bent down to tie my shoelace.

He held my neck down, refusing to let me up.

In middle school, we were in the same class. I mentioned the wind was strong outside.

He told everyone sitting by the windows to open them all.

In high school, I thought I'd finally escaped him. But on the first day, he planted himself in the seat right behind me.

"Thought I'd gone off to private school, didn't you?"

With his sharp features and bright eyes, he still had that boyish charm.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I decided to earn my way into college."

"..."

Like your spot at Westbrook High wasn't pulled by connections!

I watched him transform from the kid everyone avoided in middle school to Mr. Popular with friends in every direction.

Partly because he got really handsome, but mostly because everyone finally realized: being rich is awesome.

At that age when everyone was kind of status-conscious, he casually gave everyone in our class a PSP for his birthday.

He taught us an early life lesson: Sure, all roads lead to Rome, but some people are just born there.

In high school, Jake copied all my homework.

Yet somehow ended up first in class every year.

It turns out it wasn't just natural talent - this guy was secretly grinding through practice problems at midnight.

His friends really backed the wrong horse.

During the day, he'd mess around with his buddies, not studying at all.

At night, he'd study like crazy - I even caught him online practicing vocabulary at 3 AM several times, betraying their whole "too cool for school" act.

When he decided to grind, he really went all in.

He changed from knowing nothing in middle school to acing everything in high school.

I asked him why.

He gave me that sly smile of his.

"With your grades being so good, how else am I gonna get into the same university as you?"

Talk about being haunted.

Looks like he was determined to follow up on that slap all the way to college.

But we didn't end up at the same university after all.

He went abroad - classic trust fund kid move.

I thought that was it for us, each heading off to our own adventures.

Then one day, he