Chapter 15
Benson
My chest is tight, and I have to swallow the lump in my throat. She’s smiling back, so that’s a good sign, right?
The clock shows that she’s made me wait eight minutes. To be honest, those eight minutes were torment. I thought she wasn’t going to show. I’ve been counting the seconds.
Her hair’s down, and she’s in a turtleneck.
The smile makes my world flip upside. I don’t know what to do with that.
There’s a sharp catch under my sternum when her perfume travels across the room.
I sit up straighter without meaning to. I look at her, noticing that something’s off.
I catch the faint mark running on her jawline and down her neck, covered by the turtleneck.
“Sorry, I’m late,” she says.
“You’re good,” I say back. Every minute deflated my ego, but hey, you’re here now.
“I was on the second floor and lost track of time.”
“No need to explain.”
She looks a little nervous, so I lean back in my chair to let her know I’m at ease. Even though I’m not, but for her, I try.
She walks to a chair across from me, sets her tote bag down, and pulls out her things. The pencil with her bite marks on it.
“Um,” she says quietly. “Where should we start?”
I answer, “Five three.”
“Okay.”
She flips to 5.3.
I have a quiet moment here. I could say how are you feeling. I could say can we talk first.
I don’t. She doesn’t either.
She slides the textbook so it’s between us, opens it flat, and taps the page once with the pencil.
“Walk me through what you know.”
I pick up my pencil. “Okay.”
I walk her through 5.3. I get most of it right. She stops me on the second-to-last step and points to a line in the textbook, and I see what I missed. I redo it. She nods in approval.
“Good.”
We move to 5.4. She reads the problem aloud.
I try not to look at her, focusing heavily on the work in front of me.
My brain fails me, stealing a quick glance at her lips.
Her voice is her tutoring voice. Not cold exactly, but not warm either.
Her attention is entirely on the page, and all I can think about is the way she moved to the music in my living room on Friday.
I swallow, turning back to the text.
“Got it?” she asks.
I nod and work on the problem. When I’m done, she scans it and nods in approval.
The next problem is conditional probability with a Bayes flip in it, which I would have taken twenty-two minutes to recognize three weeks ago and now I see in eight seconds.
I write the setup. I do the math. I get the answer in the right format because she has trained me to circle the format on the first read and I now circle the format on the first read.
I slide it across.
She reads it, makes one small mark, and slides it back. “Good.”
“Thanks.”
This continues for the next twenty minutes.
With her help, I’m able to get all the answers right.
I’m on a roll, but I need to Camdenk this tension.
It’s suffocating. She’s purposely not looking at me, and like any egotistic meathead, I need her attention, or I’m going to die.
I swear I’m not this thirsty for attention from girls ever. I put the pencil down.
“Lucy.”
She looks at me, finally. I search her eyes, and she knows what’s coming. I watch her retreat into her shell, putting on a mask to hide what she’s really feeling.
I had three opening lines for this moment. I drove home Friday night with one of them and woke up Saturday with the second and have been chewing on the third since Tuesday. None of them are the one I use.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you this week.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have my number.”
That’s a fact, but it’s also a fact that I could have asked Gianna for it. Sure, it would make it obvious, but I had the opportunity to ask and didn’t. I didn’t want to risk hearing it from my sister. I also could have found her on social media. I didn’t do that either.
“G wouldn’t tell me what happened Saturday morning.” I play with the pencil. “Are you okay?”
She nods. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m sorry I had to cancel Tuesday’s session.”
I offer a small smile. “It’s okay. I know you weren’t feeling good.”
“I’m still kind of not,” she admits.
“Oh,” I say, feeling guilty. “You could’ve rescheduled today.”
She shakes her head. “I’m powering through.”
I lean forward. “Is everything okay?”
Her shoulders come down half an inch. She takes her thumbs off the pencil. “It was bad.” She nods. “I had an allergic reaction. My face was, uh, not my face for a few days.”
I look at her face, noting the red mark is actually rash-like. “Allergic reaction to what?”
She deadpans, “To kissing you.”
I lean forward, her words cutting off my air supply. I fucking cough. My heart skips a beat, dread filling my veins. “What?”
She turns bright red, hiding her smile as she stares down at the papers sprawled between us. “Sorry,” she starts to laugh. “I had to.” She shrugs. “You set it up so well.”
I feel my face. It’s burning hot like I just stepped into the sun. She just scorched me. I cover my face, trying to calm my racing heart. I clear my throat, taking a deep Camdenth.
She says, “It was a mango allergy.”
I look up at her. That confession causes me to double-take. “Are you being serious now?”
She nods. “Dead serious.”
I lean back and think. Shit. “Percy puts mango chunks in his punch.”
She nods. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Shit, Lucy. I’m so sorry. I wish you had told me. I could’ve helped.”
She blushes, lifting a shoulder. “I’m okay now. Urgent care gave me medicine. I was still swollen on Tuesday, but it’s mostly gone now.”
I sit forward and put my hand out. I notice the intimacy of reaching for her, so I pull my hand back. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t know I was allergic.” She puts her hands on the table, and my heart patters against my ribs like maybe she’s giving me permission to touch her.
I lose confidence and pull back. I rub my sweaty palms on my pants and readjust myself in this chair. The room has changed since she told me. The tutor version of Lucy is gone, and I have the real her. I admit I like it a little too much.
I press my luck and say, “About Friday night.”
She stills, looking down. I wait for her to look at me. A few beats pass, and then she glances into my eyes when she can’t take the silence any longer.
“I—” I begin, but I forgot what I was going to say when her eyes stare into mine.
My Camdenth catches. I don’t know what I’m going to do about this girl.
I don’t know her, but it feels like I do.
I don’t even need to say anything to communicate.
Her eyes are telling me everything I need to know.
It’s reflecting how I feel. “I know we don’t know each other.
” I sit forward. “I mean, we’ve only known each other for a week, but it feels like I’ve always known you. ”
She nods. “I feel the same.”
My hands start to sweat, so I wipe them together. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
She whispers, “Me either.”
I blurt, “Are you saying that to be agreeable?”
“No,” she says automatically.
“What––” I clear my throat and sit back. “What do we do?”
She watches me.
“For full transparency, I’m being drafted in seven months.”
She says, “I don’t know what that means.”
That makes me smile. I don’t know whether to find it refreshing or annoying that I have to spell it out to her.
“It means I have the opportunity to be picked up from a team, and that’s looking like it could be Vancouver. And so, I’ll be out of here.”
“Out of the country?” she asks.
I nod.
“Wow,” she says, looking down. “That’s –– that’s amazing. It sounds far.”
“It’s very far, so if you don’t want –– I mean if you, you know.
” I don’t know what I’m saying, and I’m starting to stumble over my own words.
I’m normally confident in what I want, but right now, it feels like I have no control in how this goes.
She could reject the hell out of this and run for the hills.
She’s quiet for a moment, looking down at the papers. My heart is slamming against my chest. I didn’t expect to have this chat so soon, but I understand if she’s not willing to put herself out for a man who’s going to be leaving.
When she speaks, I hold my Camdenth.
“We don’t have to decide.” Her voice is quiet. “We could take it day by day,” she offers.
I look up and catch her pretty brown eyes. “Yeah?”
She blushes. “Yeah, I mean, if that’s what you want to do.”
“I would love to do that as long as you’re up for it,” I say. My nerves are slowly dissipating. I lined up my shot, hit it, and it just hit the back of the net in a loud thud. That thud is my heart.
She nods, half shrugging.
I swallow. This went well. “Okay.”
She picks up her pencil. I pick up mine. We go back to 5.7. It’s not the same session it was twenty minutes ago. The air is different.
She reads 5.8 aloud. Her voice has gone back a quarter-step toward the voice from the porch on Friday — the one that came out when she was telling me about her mom.
I appreciate it. I work on the problem and get it correct. This one earns me a smile.
“Good.”
“Thank you.”
We get to the last one on the practice set, and I get it without a problem.
Our time is up, so we pack at the same speed, both of us slower than necessary and both of us aware of it. She slides her laptop into her tote. I close the notebook and put it in my backpack.
“I saw there was a reschedule, and I approved of it.”
I smile, knowing that I made the request this morning, but I’ll never admit it to her. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow at nine?”
She nods and zips the front pocket of her bag.
We’re both standing now on either side of the table.
“Okay then,” she says, Camdenking the silence.
“Okay.”
I open the door for her and watch her walk to the elevator. She turns around when it opens, lifting a hand. I wave back. We stare at each other until the doors close.
I make it to Hawthorne at six-fourteen. The kitchen smells like Rowan’s chicken. Stanley is on the couch yelling at the Lions. I sit down at the kitchen island, and Blue puts a protein shake in front of me without asking.
Blue looks at me, and I nod. He nods once and goes back to whatever he is doing at the cutting board. I chug the protein shake.
“Where the fuck’s Percy?”
Rowan looks around. “He was just in here.”
“Pers!” I shout.
“Percy’s taking a shit,” Stanley calls out.
I shake my head and yell, “You’re not going to believe this shit, man.”
Percy rounds the corner. He wasn’t taking a shit. “What?” he asks.
“You know those mango chunks you put in the punch?”
“Yeah, it’s my specialty.”
“They made Lucy sick all week.”
Blue turns his head, and Rowan makes a sound.
Stanley walks over from the couch and says, “Why are we still talking about the tutor?”
“Percy’s punch got her fucking sick, man. I feel like shit about it.”
Stanley scoffs, and like a magician, he suddenly lifts the posterboard that has the main house rule on it. “Do you know how to read, Reeve?” He pops his head over the top. “I think you do, sir, but your comprehension is shit. Read it with me. Do Not––”
“Fuck off, Stan. I’m trying to talk to Percy.”
He puts the poster down just a couple of inches and says, “I just want to know why we’re still talking about the damn tutor. Are you falling for her?”
“The fuck?” I look around at everyone. “I’m just letting everyone know that he has to change the recipe.”
“Change the recipe?” Stanley laughs, grating on my nerves. “She doesn’t even come to parties.”
“She does now,” I say back, staring right at him.
Stanley cackles. “Then read the fucking Hawthorne House rules with me, Reeve.” He points to them on the whiteboard.
They’re written in Sharpie, so it’s permanent.
“There are rules in this house for a reason. We don’t need to change the recipe.
And you just need to get your dick wet. Don’t fall in love. ”
Percy says, “I can start making two different punches.”
“He’ll start making two punches.”
I look over at Blue, who’s watching this unfold.
“Two punches?” I ask Percy.
He nods once.
I walk over to Stanley and stare him right in the eye. “Back off about these rules. She’s just my tutor and my sister’s best friend. Got it?”
Stanley stares back at me. “Got it, cap.”
I turn and walk to the couch. I turn his stupid game off and flick it to hockey. I clench my jaw, trying to figure out how I’m going to get Lucy to come to the party tomorrow night.