Chapter 5 River
Five
River
“I’m going to start by giving your summer-addled minds a wake-up call,” Mr. Reynolds said.
The congenial math teacher with a bristly mustache and thick glasses drew x and y axes on the whiteboard in blue marker.
“We’ll start with a refresher on the connection between differentiability and continuity. ”
I sighed with relief. After all the crazy shit that went down at Chance’s party on Saturday, I’d spent the entire weekend trying not to think about my two minutes in the closet with Holden Parish.
I already had too many mixed emotions and confusion in my life; I didn’t need more.
Math was solid. Exact. It had unbreakable rules.
Until that night, I thought my life did too.
Morning light spilled in through the window as the entire AP Calculus class—only about twelve of us, since it was optional—pulled out their pencils and opened notebooks.
As I shook out of my letterman jacket, my pencil rolled off my desk and went behind me.
Harris Reed, a thin, wiry guy I knew from last year’s Algebra II, snatched it up and handed it back with a nervous smile.
“Here you go.”
I gave him my friendliest smile in return. “Thanks, man.”
The guys in my group would label Harris a geek or nerd, if they thought about him at all. But I’d vowed never to make anyone feel like shit for no reason. Besides, I probably had more to talk about with Harris than any guy on the football team.
“Oh, and congrats,” Harris added.
“For what?”
He gave a confused smile. “For being made homecoming king. This morning?”
“Oh right,” I said with a laugh. “Thanks.”
Earlier at a pep rally in the gym, Violet McNamara and I had been named homecoming queen and king. It was out of my mind ten minutes after the rally ended.
Pencil retrieved, I turned back around and nearly dropped it again. Holden Parish lounged in the doorway.
Goddamn…
He leaned his tall frame against the entry languidly, like he owned the damn place. Despite the warm day, he wore a gray wool coat over a green shirt that was the same color as his eyes. His silvery hair was swept off his face in thick waves.
He was fucking beautiful. Heart-stoppingly, jaw-droppingly hot. There was no way around it. My eyes, mind, and body all came to the same conclusion, and I was helpless to deny it.
Holden scanned the classroom intently until his gaze landed on me. As if a current ran from me to him, the connection instantly zipped down my spine to my groin.
“Can I help you?” Mr. Reynolds asked, smiling warmly. “The class has already begun.”
“Every hallway on this godforsaken campus looks the same,” Holden griped and slipped Reynolds a piece of paper. “I’m transferring.”
Reynolds scanned the paper and frowned. “You’re dropping French to be here? Any particular reason?”
“?a ne m’apporte plus rien,” he said in a flawless accent. “I doubt this class has anything to teach me either, frankly, but…” His gaze on me softened slightly. “It’s possible I have a few things left to learn.”
“We’re happy to have you.” Reynolds glanced at Holden’s outfit with a perplexed smile. “Take off your coat and stay a while,” he teased.
“No, thanks.” Holden strode through the class, ignoring the curious stares that followed. Half the desks were empty, so naturally, he sat beside me.
Shit.
I faced forward, intent on the lesson, but my heart was beating too fast. Holden lounged sideways in his seat, making no pretense about staring me down; I could feel his gaze move over my skin, sending icy-hot shivers over my arm and neck.
Finally, I turned to face him. “Can I help you?” I whispered.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered back.
“You transferred into an advanced calculus class just to talk to me?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I learned this stuff years ago. My intentions are benevolent.”
“Uh-huh.” I crossed my arms, fighting my gaze that kept drifting toward his mouth. “You totally ruined the Blaylocks’ dining room table. Chance is grounded for two weeks. He was almost banned from playing at the homecoming game next week.”
Holden rolled his eyes. “A tragedy, I’m sure.”
I tilted my head. “Are you always this much of an asshole to total strangers?”
“I’m never always anything,” he replied. “And don’t get your jockstrap in a twist. Mr. Blaylock phoned my uncle, and they had a delightful conversation in which it was agreed that I’d pay for a brand-new table. And not from the local Crate & Barrel either.”
“So you made a big mess and used your money to clean it up.”
He frowned, confused. “Isn’t that what it’s for?”
A laugh nearly burst out of me. “Does personal responsibility mean anything to you?”
“I’m vaguely familiar with the term,” he said, his angular expression softening. “It’s why I’m here, actually. For you.”
My pulse quickened, and I tightened my crossed arms at those words, though I couldn’t tell if I was keeping them out or holding them in. “Say again?”
“I want to talk to you about the night of the party. What I said in the closet—”
“Forget it,” I said and whipped forward, suddenly paranoid that the entire class was listening in.
“But I—”
“I said, forget it. Nothing happened. I was drunk as shit. I don’t remember anything, so just fucking drop it.”
“Mr. Whitmore,” Reynolds called from the whiteboard. “Since you’re so chatty, perhaps you can share with the class. Can you please give me all values of x at which f is continuous but not differentiable?”
Holden leaned back in his chair, an infuriating smile on his lips. I tore my angry glare off him and studied the small graph with its curved and V-shaped tangent lines and worked out a few factors in my notebook. Solid answers that would never change.
“Negative two and zero,” I said.
Reynolds beamed. “Excellent.”
Many students in the class beamed at me too. The girls appreciatively, the guys worshipful.
“Hail to the king,” Holden muttered. “I’m surprised the class doesn’t break out into applause.”
“They do,” I said. “When I’m on the field.”
Holden arched a brow. “Touché, Whitmore.”
“And Mr. Parish,” Reynolds said loudly. “What rule do you think helped River arrive at that answer?”
Holden didn’t reply, and I didn’t look away.
We couldn’t take our eyes off each other if our lives depended on it, and for a few precious moments, I didn’t care what anyone thought.
The self-consciousness fled, and we just observed each other, smiles touching our lips and something foreign unfolding in my heart.
“Mr. Parish?”
Holden’s eyes never left mine. “A continuous function fails to be differentiable at a point in its domain.”
“Very good! We’re off to a great start this year. You two are a dynamic duo.”
I glanced quickly down at my notebook, the self-consciousness swooping back in, constricting my heart and slamming doors that wanted to open.
“Hear that?” Holden mused. “We’re a duo.”
“No,” I said, low and cold. “We’re not.”
Like the calculus formula. We can’t be made into something different.
I said nothing more for the duration of class, half of me feeling like shit for ignoring Holden and the other half denying that I gave a fuck. He trashed my best friend’s house. He was a pompous asshole who thought he knew me. I didn’t owe him anything.
I repeated the thoughts to drown out other unwanted feelings. Like my body’s hyperawareness of Holden’s proximity and the constant urge to look at him. To soak him up. As if he were a classic painting with a thousand details waiting to be discovered under all those layers…
Stop.
When the bell rang, I gathered my stuff and tried to hurry out, wondering how I was going to get through the semester with Holden sitting beside me.
There was a bottleneck at the door as Reynolds handed out study guides.
Holden lounged in his seat, making no damn effort to conceal who he was watching.
Frustration bit at me. The same flavor of frustration I’d had at the party, where I wanted to grip him by the lapels of his fancy coat and—
Tear it off?
Goddammit, I shouldn’t be having these thoughts or reactions. I didn’t have them until Holden.
Didn’t have them or didn’t hear them?
Not going there.
A couple of students asked me about the Central Capitals’chances this year for another championship and if I’d seen the latest season of Black Mirror. I muttered a few polite answers and wished the damn line would speed up. Holden had risen from his seat and was only a few paces behind me.
“I heard about your mom, River,” Angela Reyes, a shy, quiet girl said in a low voice. “I’m so sorry.”
The punch to the gut was swift and hard. I’d forgotten about my mother, and I blamed Holden for that too. He’d infiltrated me, uninvited, and sucked out everything but him.
“Yeah, thanks.”
I snatched the guide out of Reynolds’s hand and pushed out into the brilliant sun. Around a corner, I leaned against the wall, crumpling the paper into a ball.
Holden came around the corner a moment later. “You okay?”
“Sure. Great. Never better.”
“What happened to your mom?” he asked quietly. “If I may.”
I nearly didn’t tell him. Why would I? Why let him get closer?
“Cancer. Stage IV. It started in her liver, and now it’s in her pancreas and small intestine.”
Holden’s face went still. “I’m sorry.”
I pushed off the wall. “Yeah, thanks. I gotta go.”
“River, wait—”
I whirled back around. “Jesus, why? What do you want?”
“To apologize. For what I said in the closet.”
I tensed all over. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
Holden’s green eyes bored into mine. “Isn’t there?”
Again, it was as if he were seeing straight into my heart and mind, reading every secret I had hidden away…even those buried down so deep, I’d forgotten they were there. Until him.
“Look, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I don’t need this bullshit,” I snapped. “Just leave me alone.”
Holden’s jaw clenched, pain flashing across his eyes. And even though it felt like shutting a door he’d opened, I walked away.
***