Chapter 4
Lucy
He looks at his phone for a second too long before he picks the pencil back up.
I notice. I’m pretending to re-tab a page in his textbook that doesn’t need re-tabbing.
The screen lights his face from below. His thumb does the small motion that means he’s reading something, and his mouth does a small thing at the corner — a quarter-twitch — and then he puts the phone face down next to his elbow and goes back to work.
I tell myself I’m not curious about who’s texting him. Unfortunately, I am very curious about who’s texting him.
I open my Real Analysis textbook to where I left off Sunday night. Problem 3.1.4. I read the first sentence. Let f be a continuous function on the closed interval [0,1] such that f of zero equals f of one.
I read it again. Benson Reeve is sitting four feet from me, and I cannot process a single word of Real Analysis.
There is something sitting in the air between us.
And fortunately, it’s not Axe body spray.
Whatever this is, it’s not floral. There’s something in it that’s wood and something in it that’s soap. It’s not loud.
Let f be a continuous function on the closed interval [0,1].
He grips the pencil weirdly. I noticed it a few times in the last forty-five minutes. It looks like a grip that should produce illegible handwriting. His handwriting, when I’ve been able to glance at it across the table, is fine. It’s angled and a little loose and entirely legible.
He doesn’t fidget. I’ve been tutoring athletes for years.
I cannot, in that entire time, recall one of them sitting across from me without doing something with their body.
The football kid drummed his thigh. The basketball forward clicked his pen.
The wrestler folded the corner of every page into a tiny triangle and then unfolded it.
Benson bounced his knee a little at first, but now he’s just sitting there, working. He’s leaning forward over the page with his right elbow on the table and his left hand resting flat next to the textbook, and he’s at peace in his body in a way that is, somehow, worse than fidgeting.
I read Problem 3.1.4 a fifth time. The pen on the table is the wrong pen. I brought a blue pen. I always work in blue. The pen is the green one I sometimes lend out, which means I picked it up by accident in the apartment this morning.
I look up. He glances up at the same time. His eyes are a shade of brown. We both look back down. I read the words closed interval again. I write nothing. My entire identity is built on my brain working, but right now it’s not.
He’s your best friend’s brother, I tell myself. He’s your tutee. He’s a Tuesday-and-Thursday standing block in your Google Calendar that ends in November. The line connecting now and the rest of your life is straight, and that line runs through a tutoring session twice a week, and that’s all.
I read Problem 3.1.4 again.
He sets the pencil down and pushes the paper across the table.
“I think I got it.”
I pull the page toward me. He’s done all the problems. Problem one, conditional probability, set up correctly, executed correctly, answer correct. Problem two, set up correctly, executed correctly, answer correct. Problem three—
He’s written 0.667 as 66.7%.
The problem is stated as a decimal.
I draw a small circle around the percent sign and slide the page back.
“Three for three. Except you wrote the answer in the wrong format on the last one. Decimal, not percentage.”
He looks at the page and closes his eyes for half a second.
“Are you serious?”
“Markham has rules about it. Decimal versus percentage on his midterms is the difference between full credit and zero. He told us about it on the first day of class last year. He printed out a worksheet about it.”
“You went to the same Markham class I’m in.”
I nod. “I did.”
“And he made a worksheet about format that he didn’t bother to mention this semester.”
I shrug. “He underlines the word in the question. On the midterm. On the homework. On the worksheet about it. Always underlines.”
He picks his pencil back up. In the margin of the notebook I gave him, the one with his name on the washi tape on the cover, he writes decimal unless underlined. He underlines underlined and draws a small box around the whole thing.
He’s not annoyed at me. He’s annoyed at himself. He notes the mistake and moves on. No defensiveness, no excuse.
I lean back in my chair. “I feel like I didn’t teach you anything today. So, I think you need an accountability partner more than a tutor.”
He leans back too. Mirrored. He puts his pencil down on the closed notebook and tilts his head, half a degree. “Is that your professional opinion?”
His voice does something at the back of professional.
A small dryness. His eyes are staring straight into mine.
I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm or amusement or the way Benson Reeve naturally talks to people he’s spent ninety minutes with.
I’m not going to assume anything else, because if I assume anything else and I’m wrong, I’ll think about it until Thursday. I can’t have that.
I make myself look away, and then heat crawls up my neck when my eyes divert back to him. He’s still looking at me.
I look back at the notebook. “If you think you’ve got the material, we can be done here.” It comes out clipped, but I don’t do well with flirting. I want to keep this professional.
“No,” he says, easily. “I need the tutoring. Coach’s orders.”
I nod, biting my bottom lip. “Right. Yes.”
He asks, “Thursday at four?”
“Thursday at four,” I say kindly, meeting his eyes again.
“Same room?”
“If I can book it. They usually let me have it.”
“Okay.” He nods.
I glance at my phone face up on the table. The lock screen has the calendar widget I added at the beginning of the semester for tracking sessions.
We pack up. He puts one of my pencils into his bag, and I almost ask for it back. I remind myself not to be petty or weird about a pencil. I have a hundred others. He picks up the notebook with his name on it and says, “You bought this for me?”
“It’s no big deal.” I nod. “I do it for everyone I tutor.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
That’s not what everyone typically replies with, so I blink. “Oh, no. That’s alright.”
“Do you use your own money every time?”
I swallow, glancing at it. “Yes.”
He smirks. “Has anyone ever paid you back?”
I don’t want to answer, but I can tell he’s waiting for my reply. I shake my head quickly.
His eyebrows raise. “Well, then I owe you.”
He stands, and I’ve completely forgotten the conversation when he rises to his full height.
His legs are really long. I glance down at them, wondering where he finds pants to fit them.
Then I realize I’m staring at his crotch across the table, so I stand, pushing the chair out from under me.
The height thing is way more daunting in person than in a picture on my fridge.
I think he’s easily a foot taller than me.
I finish putting everything away, and to my surprise, he waits for me to finish packing. He opens the door for me, holds it with one hand, and steps back. I look up at him, unable to find my voice to thank him. He’s ridiculously tall, so I walk under his arm. His scent fills my senses.
I purposely keep a fast stride, walking ahead of him. In the hallway, I take a step toward the elevator.
“Lucy.”
I turn at the sound of his deep voice calling my name. My heart hammers against my chest. He’s standing in the doorway of 3B, hand still on the doorframe. The front of his hair has separated into two slightly distinct sections.
“Thanks for the past hour. Seriously. I was — yeah. Thank you.”
I murmur, “You’re welcome.”
He nods once, turns, and walks toward the stairs. I watch him go. Maybe he wants to avoid me just as much as I want to avoid him.
The elevator takes seventeen seconds.
Outside, the light has gone gold. I cross the south lawn with my bag on one shoulder and my hands in the pockets of the jacket I’ve been carrying around all day.
Lists are how I manage. I’ve made a list out of every difficult day of my life since I was nine years old. It’s my coping mechanism, and one that has become second nature. But I can’t write this down. I don’t want it to see the light of day.
First, Benson is not dumb. He asked questions in the right order, picked up everything at full speed, made one careless format error on the final problem, and corrected himself.
He’s not a jerk. He was respectful. He did not roll his eyes once or complain.
That’s rare. Maybe I’ll give it a few more weeks before I make a list. A big one is that he smelled good.
And he said my name in the hallway to tell me thank you.
I cross Birchwood at the light. The Vietnamese place on the corner of Main is open and the smell of the broth they’ve been simmering since 3 a.m. is in the air, the way it is in our apartment by 6 p.m. with all the windows closed.
I climb the stairs.
When I enter my apartment, Gianna is on the couch. Gray sweats, the long-sleeve Wolves shirt she stole from the equipment cage. Mixing bowl of popcorn in her lap. Her laptop is open on the coffee table playing a baking show.
She pauses it the second I walk in. “Well?”
I drop my bag, take off my jacket, and hang it on the hook on the wall. “It was fine.”
“Fine like fine, or fine like you’re not telling me something.”
I look at her concerned face. She’s worried like hell. I answer nonchalantly, “Fine like fine.”
She squints at me over the popcorn bowl.
“How was he?”
“He was good.” My voice is a little too high. “He’s smart.”
“I told you he was smart.”
I smile. “You did, and I’m confirming that you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
I sit down on the other end of the couch and pull the throw blanket over my legs. The apartment is cold.
“Was he a douche?”
“No.” It’s out of my mouth before I hear the question. I look over at her and shake my head. I hadn’t even suspected he would be a douche.
She reaches into the popcorn bowl and puts the whole fistful in her mouth.
“Good,” she says, with her mouth full. “I would have killed him.”
I grab some popcorn and eat it. I look at the TV console, at the photo of him, and then I zone out on the black TV.
“Why are you watching it on your laptop?”
She shrugs. “Because I was too lazy to sign in. I hate how it’s always signing me out.”
I lean back. “Yeah, that’s pretty annoying.” I get up and grab a handful of popcorn. “I’m going to take a shower.”
She clicks play on her laptop as I walk down the hall and shower.
When I’m done, I sit at my desk and open the laptop. The Real Analysis problem set is still open to 3.1.4. I read the problem, and the words enter my head and stay this time. I finish it, and then I grab my phone to text my brother, noticing that my mom didn’t text me back.
Me: How was your day?Bear: Ok Me: Did mom sign the field trip form? Bear: Yeah Me: Yay Bear: [meme of a frog wearing a tiny hat] Me: [meme of a frog wearing a different tiny hat]Bear: Good night Me: Good night. Love you.
I do a bit of homework and then turn off the lights. My mom couldn’t even thank me or confirm that she received the Venmo payment. I lie in bed, trying not to think about the situation back at home. I’m out of there for a reason.