19
Huxley
Val is the first thing I see when I leave class, and thank god for that. Even with the little bit of hope she gave me before class, it was still hard as fuck to understand what that professor was saying.
I walk straight up to her and drop my head onto her shoulder.
She shakes with a silent laugh. “That bad?”
“Good luck getting me to pass at all,” I mumble into her shirt.
She slips her hand into mine and pulls me so I have to lift my head. “Come on. Let’s go study over the material you just learned.”
She turns, but I instantly pull her back to me. Her smile starts to lift on her lips, but instantly falls when she sees I’m not smiling. Probably far from it right now, actually.
“What is it?”
“Where are we going?”
“The library.”
I shake my head quickly. I’m not going there. I’m not going to be even more of an embarrassment than people already think I am.
Val takes a step closer to me and moves her hands up my arms, rubbing them up and down to try and calm me. I wish it worked.
“Huxley, it’s okay,” she says softly. “You don’t have to be embarrassed over this.”
“Well, I am.”
She shrugs with one shoulder. “We can go to your apartment? I would say mine, but I think Birdie and Ava will be there for a while.”
I’ve never had people over to my apartment before.
My family hasn’t even seen where I live.
And now she’s suggesting it like it’s so easy to let her into my space.
The space that I’ve kept for just me for so long, so the world couldn’t ruin it.
But she won’t ruin it. She’ll make it come alive.
And I don’t know if I’m ready for that either.
“You want to come to my apartment?” I ask her slowly.
Her hands tense on my arms. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I guess it felt like something that came later.”
We haven’t even been dating for a full month, and I haven’t kissed her yet, but she wants to come to my apartment and see into a part of me that no one’s seen. Not that she knows that.
Her hands slip from my arms completely as she wraps her arms around her chest, guarding herself off from me. “Do you not want me there?”
Shit. “No. That’s not what I mean.” I pull her hands back into mine, giving them an assuring squeeze. “You’re welcome. More than welcome, actually.”
Great. Now she probably thinks I’m lying just to make her feel better. And the weak smile on her face only confirms that.
The drive to my apartment is in silence, and not the comfortable kind. Her nerves only tack onto my own, making it impossible for either of us to speak.
The one time she’s sure of something in our relationship, and I let my nerves get the better of me.
When we get to my apartment, Val just stands there, looking at the floor. I close the door, and she grips her bag tighter.
“We can just—” I start to say as I point to the living room.
“Yeah, sure.” She takes off towards the coffee table and sits on the floor beside it, her back leaning against the couch.
So, my girl might be weird.
She looks up at me and pats the spot on the floor next to her. “Come on. While it’s still in your head.”
But call me weird, too, because I go and sit right next to her. And it only takes me five minutes to get confused.
I drop my head to the coffee table and groan. “It’s hopeless. I’ll never be an accountant now.”
“Alright, let me see.” Val pulls on the paper, so I lift my head for her to take it. She looks over the page for only a second before she turns to me.
“Okay, here.” She pulls my pen from my hand and taps the paper.
“This number right here will always be here in the new equation. And the same goes for the other numbers as well.” She pulls out another piece of paper and starts scribbling down another equation.
“So this number here moves here, this one comes over to this side, and this is what it equals now.”
I look back and forth over the page, but I just don’t get it. “Okay, but what does that mean? What’s the math behind it?”
“There isn’t any.” We look at each other at the same time, except she’s calm, and I’m beyond confused now. She smiles softly and turns more to me.
“Let me give you some advice. Learning math isn’t about finding the correct answer. It’s about using the right processes to get the correct answer.”
Yup, I’m even more confused now. “What does that even mean?”
“No one will ever use these formulas outside of these classes.” She shrugs. “Unless they are teaching it or are mathematicians and scientists.”
“So you’re saying I don’t need to know any of this, and this is all a waste of time.”
“No. What I’m saying is the process of learning math is merely there to help us think critically.”
I must still look confused—because I am—so Val turns back to the paper in front of us.
“Here we have our question. We’re given everything we need to solve the question, we just have to figure out how to get to the correct answer.
For this type of problem, really, it’s all about memory.
Memorizing how to write something from this form to this form.
There’s no real math being done here. All you’re doing is moving numbers around.
In the end, math is just critical thinking.
And if you don’t get the answer right the first time, you try again. ”
Okay, that sort of makes sense. But at the same time, why? “I just don’t understand the purpose of having to move things around like this.”
Val taps the paper and looks around the room, which is the actual reason I didn’t want her to help me. I didn’t want her to see how stupid I am.
It’s math. It’s numbers that I can use a calculator for. And like this, specifically, she says it’s just moving things around. She’s probably wondering why she’s with me when I can’t even figure out basic math.
She turns to me quickly, her eyes a little brighter. “You write songs, don’t you?”
“Uh, yeah?” Why is she talking about this now?
“And how do you do that?”
I shrug. “Depends. Sometimes I have a riff that sounds good, but I don’t know what to do with it until I put lyrics to it. Sometimes I have lyrics and have to add a melody.”
She turns back to the table and pulls another piece of paper out. “Let’s say this is your song, your end result.” She starts scribbling down lyrics. I lean closer to try to read them.
“Taylor Swift?” It’s specifically Sparks Fly by Taylor Swift, but I don’t dare say that out loud. Mainly because I went and listened to the woman’s entire discography after Val said she was her favorite artist. Great music, I must say.
“And here I thought Mr. Rock n’ Roll wouldn’t know Country.” She glances at me, so I just roll my eyes. And the smile she thought she could hide breaks through a little as she looks back at the paper.
“So here we have the lyrics. And here…” She starts humming the song while writing down the piano notes to match. And I think my mind is going to explode.
“Seriously?” I whisper, leaning closer to her to watch her write. She looks up at me quickly, pulling her hand away from the paper.
“What?” Worry fills her eyes as she glances back and forth from me to the paper.
“You can write down the notes to a melody just like that?”
I’ve never seen anyone do that before. Hell, I’ve never seen someone memorize and write down the notes to a song before either.
But this girl right here, the girl who didn’t know she could sing, is able to hum a song and write the notes to play it.
Call me weird, but that might be the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Is that weird?” Her voice is so quiet, it breaks my heart.
“God no.” Her eyes snap back to mine. “I wish I could do that.”
The fear slowly leaves her eyes, and my heart can stop breaking.
“The point is, you have all the parts of the song right here. But when you write the song, sometimes you write this line before this line.” She circles a few lines and draws arrows in opposite directions.
“Sometimes you have this part of the melody but need the middle part.” She draws even more lines to connect the lyrics to the melody. I lean closer to watch her work.
“You have everything you need for your final product. But the only way to get there is to move things around and put them in the right order.” She quickly writes up another equation and solves it. “It’s all the same.”
She turns to me, but I haven’t pulled away. And that makes her so close to me that our lips nearly brush. She swallows hard, and my eyes jump to her lips.
I could kiss her now. This feels like the perfect time. This moment that I thought would be too embarrassing for me has just become perfect.
“So yeah. That’s that.” Val quickly turns away from me and takes the perfect moment with her. “If you have any questions, you can text me.” She moves quickly, gathering all of her stuff and standing up.
“Wait. You’re leaving?”
She vaguely gestures to the door. “Yeah. I have this thing, and I have to go.”
“Valentine, come on,” I groan. Is she really going to lie about this? Just to leave? But she answers me as she heads for the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Valentina, wait.”
She shuts the door behind her, leaving me alone on the floor of my living room. And that’s when it really hits me. She didn’t want to kiss me. She ran away at the possibility of us kissing. I thought she was ready. I thought this was what she wanted.
I look down at the paper she wrote the lyrics on—her talent littered all over the page. And I guess maybe that’s all this will be. Val will find herself in the end. And I’ll be left with a broken heart.