Chapter Seven #2
Without warning, she yanks my textbook away from me.
“Hey! I was reading that,” I protest. She levels me with a serious gaze.
“I saw you read it three times. It’s quiz time.” She finishes the mandarin, then turns in her chair.
She rattles off four psychological variables and makes me answer whether they are nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio. It’s an easy question, and I have a feeling she’s just trying to build my confidence.
On a blank paper, she draws a tree. “You don’t need this now, but this is a decision tree. It’ll help you identify the course of action. Goal, variables, groups, and prediction path. Peek at it when you need to.”
She must see the bewildered look on my face because she shifts to variables.
I don’t do as well on those, but she explains the basic idea with such ease that I think if everything were given to me through her brain first, I’d pass this class with flying colors.
“You’re good at this,” I say, knocking her knee with mine.
“It helps not having a terrible student, I guess.” Then she closes my textbook with a dramatic thump. “Don’t look at this for another hour. That’s when you test yourself again and really solidify that information into your brain.”
“An hour? You want me to whip this out as a bedtime read?”
“Yes, Kian. Read it by candlelight for all I care. Just read it,” she says. “You’re off the hook. Next week, same time?”
“That’s it? I think I’m going to need another session before I hand in the assignment.”
Scarlett starts to shake her head. “I only do—”
“Come on, you can’t just leave me hanging for the rest of the week,” I beg. “I’ll even bring food so you don’t have to move at all.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “I don’t usually tutor. Even this is more than I want to offer.”
“Two days a week. That’s it.”
“Fine. You can bring food, but not in my dorm. I study somewhere else.”
“You have a top-secret study spot in this school? Shit, Scar, that’s like next-level nerd stuff.”
“This nerd is tutoring you twice a week. I’d be careful with my words.”
I shut my mouth, doing a zipper motion before tossing the key. That makes her smile. “If only all men were as easy to shut up.”
“Oh, that reminds me, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can help you, and I know what our first order of business will be.”
Within the library walls, it’s easy to forget the reason I even have a tutor.
Scarlett is herself here, head bent over her textbook, not like the girl afraid of what half the campus whispers about her.
Ever since people found out we’re friends, they’ve asked me about her.
I’ve flipped off one too many people this week.
I snag her phone from the table before she can second-guess this.
“What are you doing?” she asks as I hold it out for her to unlock.
I pull up the app store and download Hugger.
Her eyes go wide. “Oh, no way. I am not going on a dating app.”
“Relax. This is part of the process.” I slide back her phone. She drags her fingers across the screen, hesitantly creating an account.
Then she gives the phone to me. “I’m trying to fix my reputation. Some guy holding a fish and forcing a deep, rumbly voice recording isn’t going to do that for me.”
“Look, people know we’re friends and I’ll happily shout that from the rooftops some more, but we need to lay the groundwork.”
“I haven’t been on a real date in ages, and if I have, it was for a one-night stand.” Her voice dips like she regrets the admission.
“This isn’t about finding your soulmate. I want you to prove to yourself you can go on a harmless date without any expectations. You control it.”
She frowns. “Won’t I be leading some dude on?”
“Hey, first dates are like job interviews. They ghost people all the time. Besides, we’re doing this for you—and I’ll even put your dating goals as fun, casual dates. No pressure.”
She lets me build her profile, nervously chewing on her pen beside me. I scroll through her photos until I hit one with her hair in loose waves, tattoos on display.
“You look great in this one,” I say. “I’ll put it as the first one.”
“Shouldn’t we go for something more…modest?”
“What do you mean?”
She starts to answer, then closes her mouth. “Guys are going to be looking at that. I’m not exactly sure they’ll put that in the ‘girlfriend’ category of their cavemen brains.”
I look at the picture again. To me, Scarlett looks like herself—pretty, expressive, kind…and, who am I kidding, hot as hell. That’s no secret. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that most guys would think of her as just the latter. Somehow that irritates me too.
“This isn’t about what they think. We’re doing this for you.”
As I’m swiping, I land on a picture of her with two braids, holding a book, beaming happily. She looks different in this one. Softer. I stare too long. For a second, I forget what I’m doing. I select it, then unselect, shaking my head.
“Why not that one?” she asks curiously.
I make a noise in my throat, unable to come up with an answer. The thought of some weirdo staring at that picture? No way.