Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
MILES
Her paper is fine.
“Are you serious with this?” I wave the pages of her essay at her. I don’t understand what kind of game she’s playing, turning up to tutoring with something like this.
Annie’s complexion pales as her fingers freeze over the keyboard of her laptop. She’s been working on another assignment while I read over her essay. I read the damn thing twice just to be sure… There’s nothing wrong with her writing.
“Is it that bad?” she asks, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip.
I study that motion, the way the bite seems designed to draw my eye toward her perfectly pink lips with the delicate Cupid’s bow of her upper lip.
Either Annie hired the best damn essay writer on the internet to do this assignment for her or she’s running one hell of a con. She could be pretending to fail the class because she heard I would be tutoring. She wouldn’t be the first chick at this college to mistakenly think she could get my attention by asking for my academic help.
Most women learn quickly that I’m not a warm and friendly classmate. Maybe she didn’t get the memo.
“I want to read your last essay.” I point at Annie’s open laptop and drop her new essay on the table. “Pull it up.”
She looks like a cartoon character as her eyebrows rise in high arches halfway up her forehead. She nods an unnecessary number of times as her fingers fly over the touchpad of her laptop.
“This is only a first draft. I can rewrite whatever you think needs more work.” Annie bites her lip again as she slides her laptop across to me.
“Stop talking.” I turn down the brightness on her screen and skim over the first page of her last essay.
Then the second page.
I don’t bother reading the rest of her paper. The last essay is better than the newest one. More confident. If this is the level of writing she’s been turning in, I don’t see how she could say her essays have been getting worse over time. Her first essay for the class would have been doctorate-level work by that logic.
“What grade did you receive on this paper?” I ask her, shoving the laptop away from me.
“Uh…” She trails off, looking away toward the rows of bookshelves separating us from the most populated parts of the library.
I’m certain that we’re secluded enough that nothing will interrupt and rescue her from giving me an answer. Of course, I should know better than to assume that while my cousin and I attend the same college.
“Oh, hey!” Lainey calls out at a volume inappropriate for a library setting. She has a student job shelving books and still can’t seem to nail down proper library etiquette for herself.
I reluctantly turn my head toward the shelves to glare at the interruption. Lainey is half the reason I wanted my tutoring session with Annie to take place in a seldom-used corner of the library. She grins widely as she pokes out from between two shelves, her black hair pulled into two neat pigtails beneath her ears. She’s wearing a furry purple sweater that isn’t quite weather-appropriate yet.
“Hey,” Annie greets my cousin.
I’m dumbstruck as it dawns on me that Lainey isn’t smiling at me—she’s greeting the woman across from me. Lainey’s attention turns to me next, her dark eyes going wide as she registers my presence.
“Why are you here?” Lainey blurts out, her gaze bouncing rapidly between Annie and me.
“This is my tutor, Miles.” Annie waves her hands vaguely towards me. She looks more like she’s attempting a magic trick but I guess we all get the point.
Lainey props her chin on her hand and pauses as if taking in this information. “Annie… This is my cousin.”
“Who?” Annie looks around like someone else has materialized.
“Miles.” Lainey laughs nervously and points at me so Annie can’t look around for some other guy named Miles who might have happened to wander by.
“You two are related?” Annie’s voice rises an octave as she shoves her chair back and leaps to her feet. Her shock is so palatable that it cannot be contained in a seated position. Her shock needs space to spread out.
I relax against the back of my seat. “Indeed.”
I’m not immune to the tension this revelation has brought, but I’ll be damned if I let either of them know that. Even on a bad day, my brain moves faster than the average person’s, so I make a couple of connections very quickly.
One: Lainey’s face only lights up like that when she talks about one particular friend from college. A best friend she met during summer orientation whose name I never bother registering. Annie is clearly said friend based on my cousin’s enthusiastic greeting.
And two: If Annie is the friend that Lainey talks about constantly, she could also be the friend whose mom is wasting space in my uncle’s office. That would make Annie the freshman daughter of Hannah Kirkpatrick, the woman whose name unfortunately has registered despite my best efforts to think of her only as Office Barbie.
This second point is confirmed when I glance down at Annie’s laptop which is still facing in my direction. Sure enough, the header reads ANNIE KIRKPATRICK in bold font.
Now that I think about it, the resemblance is notable. Annie’s look is more classic whereas her mother is beautifully chaotic. The eyes and hair color nonetheless are the same. Maybe the most surprising part of all of this is that I didn’t realize the connection sooner on my own.
“Wow.” Lainey purses her lips and blows out a long, low whistle. “So Miles is the asshole tutor you’ve been complaining about? That’s hilarious!” She smirks in my direction as if I give a shit about Annie’s opinion of me.
Annie is the one who needs me . As far as I’m concerned, she’s interchangeable with whatever other student the tutoring center would have assigned me if she hadn’t come along.
“I didn’t call you an asshole,” Annie protests.
“Whatever you say, Blue.” I grab my bag and stand. If these two want to have a friendly chat, then I have the right to consider our tutoring session formally over. I’m stuck with her on my schedule again on Wednesday anyway.
“Where are you going?” Annie asks. She hurriedly starts to pack her things as Lainey awkwardly hovers in wait a few feet away. She’s crazy if she thinks she’s going with me. “You haven’t told me what’s wrong with my essay!”
The only thing wrong with her essay is that she’s using it to get close to me.
“You’ll figure things out,” I tell her dryly. Before she can dare try to follow me, I sling my bag over my shoulder and take off. I have my own shit to do; I’m done playing her games for today.