19 - Ethan
Ethan
I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was, but when I opened my dorm door and found Elizabeth standing there armed like she was preparing to storm a library, I still blinked and did a double take.
She had a canvas tote digging into her shoulder, highlighters sticking out of the front pocket of her hoodie, a stack of flashcards fanned neatly in one hand, and at least four different snack options tucked under her arm.
“You brought… a lot of supplies,” I said.
“I brought survival,” she corrected as she brushed past me and stepped into the room.
My roommate, Darren, looked up from his desk, took in the spread of color-coded organization now taking over my bed, and smirked.
“Tutoring session?”
“Excuse you,” Elizabeth said, looking like she’d been struck. “This isn’t a tutoring session. This is an academic rescue mission!”
I swallowed my laugh, not knowing how serious she was. And the last thing I needed at that point was to upset her and have her walk out on me.
Darren gave me a look that said ‘good luck’ and went back to whatever he was pretending to study.
Elizabeth dropped her bag and immediately began arranging everything as if she’d done it a thousand times before. Flashcards on one pile, blank ones on another. Highlighters sorted by color and, of course, the study guide front and center. I shut the door slowly, unsure of how afraid I should be.
“You’re really intense,” I said, stepping forward. “I thought our last session blew things out of the park, but this is next level.”
“It only feels like that because you have a habit of being unprepared,” she responded.
I put a hand to my chest, acting incredibly hurt. “Now you’re just being rude.”
“No, I’m being accurate. It’s not my fault you’re sensitive.”
She winked at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I liked this side of us. I didn’t feel offended when she gave her opinion, and she didn’t take my comments the wrong way. We had an awesome dynamic, and I think that was what helped me understand the work so easily.
Elizabeth got up, pulled out my office chair and turned it to face her instead of the wall. But I still stood there, waiting for her to give me an order. She must’ve picked up on that because she patted the chair and gave me a sweet smile.
“So we’re starting with cellular respiration?” she asked, picking up my textbook. “Teach me what you know about the subject.”
I blinked at her, totally confused. “Aren’t you supposed to be the tutor?”
“I’m not here to read you a book and hope you understand, if that’s what you mean. The best way to learn is to rehearse what you know, and then I’ll fill in the gaps. It’s the best way for the human mind to retain information.”
I gave her a wicked smile. “That’s pure evil.”
“Actually, it’s very effective.”
I leaned back, feeling a little self-conscious.
I never really struggled with biology, but I had issues with being put on the spot.
So her approach would be the best thing for me at this stage.
I just didn’t know if I was ready for it, mostly because I didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of her.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “Glucose breaks down into ATP.”
She gave me an unreadable look.
“In the mitochondria,” I quickly added. “And…” she said, making me wonder what I had missed.
“And… energy?”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and I realized I had just jumbled everything up.
I sighed. “Okay, let’s try that again from the beginning. The process starts with glycolysis. Then we move to the cytoplasm, which is followed by the Krebs cycle. Then the electron transport chain.”
“That sounds better,” she said.
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling proud. “See, I knew the answer.”
“Mmm hmm,” she said with a knowing look.
I almost lost my confidence, but I figured she was just testing me to see if I’d give up.
I wasn’t going to. This was my chance to make it in school and football, and I would not let that slip through my fingers.
The problem was that 20 minutes later, I could not, in fact, answer that simple question.
“What’s the net gain of ATP from glycolysis?” she asked, tapping her pen against her notebook.
“Four,” I said enthusiastically.
She tilted her head, trying to conceal her amusement, but it was too late.
“Two,” I corrected, less sure of myself.
“Net.”
It was one simple word, but at that exact moment, it carried so much weight. Far more than my little brain could bear. I stared at her, but instead of giving me the answer, she just stared back.
“Two,” I said again, feeling far less confident than I had the entire night.
“Good,” she said with a smile.
I leaned back and ran a hand through my hair. I used to think I knew a thing or two about biology, but the more we went through the work, the more prominent my problem with the work became.
“This is humiliating,” I muttered.
“It’s building,” she gently corrected.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No,” she slid a flashcard toward me. “Humiliating is failing because you didn’t try. This is you trying.”
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have a comeback. She was completely right, and it was something that couldn’t be argued. So I kept pushing with the idea that it would leave me with something, but an hour in, the words just started blurring together.
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “What is the difference between aerobic and anaerobic respiration?”
“The one requires oxygen, and the other doesn’t,” I said immediately.
“And?” she asked as if I had forgotten the most important thing.
“And… one makes more ATP?”
Elizabeth gave me one of her unreadable looks, and for a moment I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not. Did I get it wrong?
“How much more?” she carefully asked.
“Just more,” I scoffed.
“Ethan…”
I dropped my head, and it landed on the desk with a dull thud. I didn’t mean to be difficult or to act like an idiot. My mind had just stopped cooperating, and I was having a really hard time coming up with the right answers.
Elizabeth laughed softly. “Hey.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.”
“It’s only been an hour.”
I looked at my watch. “Seriously? It feels like it’s been a lifetime and then some.”
She moved the book aside and leaned forward. Her expression was soft and caring, but it still felt like I was about to get chewed out.
Instead, she nudged my shoulder and said, “Come on. The hits you have taken were far worse than this.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it, though? You thought statistics was an invincible beast, but when you compared it to football, you came out on top.”
I lifted my head again. “Aerobic yields… thirty-six? Thirty-eight?”
Her eyes lit up, and I could tell that I was onto something. The question was, were the figures right?
“It will depend on the cell,” she said teasingly. “But yes.”
I exhaled slowly. “Okay… making progress. Just gotta keep my eyes on the prize so I can keep going.”
Unfortunately, that didn’t last as long as I had hoped it would. Twenty minutes later, I was in exactly the same spot again.
“What feeds into the Krebs cycle?” She asked.
“Pyruvate?” I breathed.
“And before that?”
I just sat there blinking at her as I willed my mind to come up with an answer. She waited patiently, but my brain felt like it was on a constant buffering loop.
“Glucose?” I tried.
She shook her head. “A few minutes ago you mentioned glycolysis.”
“Right. Glycolysis.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This wasn’t like reading a playbook.
There were no patterns to memorize. No opponent tendencies to exploit.
It was just layers of information that kept stacking on top of each other until they were on the verge of collapsing.
I turned around to reach for my water bottle, but ended up knocking over a stack of flashcards instead.
“Great,” I muttered. “Can’t even get water without destroying everything around me.”
She laughed as she slid off the bed to gather them. “You’re spiraling.”
“I am not,” I said defensively.
“You most definitely are.”
A chair scraped across the floor, drawing us from our discussion. Darren stood abruptly and shoved his laptop into his backpack.
“Study hard, Romeo,” he said on his way out.
I froze. “Shut up, dude.”
Elizabeth grinned as the door clicked shut behind him, but neither of us said anything.
The silence settled, and for the first time, it was real silence.
There were no keyboard taps or background noises that could make it less awkward.
The only thing that kept things from getting creepy was the low hum of the building.
Elizabeth sat cross-legged on my bed, quietly reorganizing my academic disaster.
I took a moment to just appreciate the sight.
Since she arrived, I had been so stressed, and we had been so busy that I hadn’t had a moment to actually breathe her in.
She looked absolutely gorgeous in her loose-fitting tracksuit pants and crop top, but the most beautiful part of her look was her hair.
For the first time since we met, she didn’t tie it up.
It curved around her shoulders, making me want to run my fingers through it.
“Okay,” she said, her voice softer than it had been before. “Look at me.”
I hadn’t stopped looking at her since Darren left. I wished I could just keep looking at her for the rest of the night.
“You’re not bad at this,” she said. “You just panic when the answer doesn’t immediately come to you. And right now, that’s your downfall because once you panic, you draw a blank.”
“I don’t panic,” I scoffed, feeling incredibly self-conscious.
“You literally slammed your head into a desk. It can’t be more obvious than that.”
“That was just for emphasis.”
She gave me a smile that said she was seeing right through me, and suddenly I didn’t feel so embarrassed.
I felt a little exposed, but that wasn’t half as bad.
So we pushed through again. That time I made it for an hour and a half before I mixed up ATP and ADP.
She made me repeat it three times after that, but then I accidentally said that mitochondria happened in the nucleus.
Elizabeth laughed out loud and then gave me a look of mock horror.
“That’s it,” she said, slapping the desk. “You’re officially banned from the field of science.”
“If it means I can rest, I’ll gladly take it,” I groaned. “I’m so damn tired.”
“Good. That means your brain is working.”
I wanted a break, to stretch my legs and rest my eyes, but Elizabeth was ruthless.
She hadn’t stopped since she arrived, and that wasn’t something I was used to.
It was probably why I made so many mistakes, but I wanted to learn, so I let her do things her way.
Two hours later, though, things weren’t as simple anymore.
The words on the page started multiplying, and I instantly knew I couldn’t keep going.
“What’s the role of NADH?” She asked, confusing me completely.
“If we studied it, it must be important.”
She laughed. “That’s not an answer.”
“Does it carry electrons?”
She stared at me, and I blinked, not knowing what else she wanted me to say. Her mouth twitched with amusement, but I was too tired to play along. Feeling completely defeated, I leaned back in my chair.
“Can we please have a break? My mind doesn’t want to play this game anymore.”
She studied me for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay, let’s take a break.”
Feeling relieved, I got up and stretched my legs. Elizabeth got up as well and wandered to my shelf where she scanned over the small stack of vinyl and CDs that I had brought from home.
“You have decent taste,” she remarked.
“Careful,” I warned.
She pulled one out, and I automatically took a step toward her.
“No way.” She turned around, eyebrows lifting. “You like them?”
“They’re my favorite,” I admitted, feeling a little shy.
She blinked at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No… that’s actually my favorite album.”
Without saying another word, she crossed the room and connected her phone to my speaker. The riff of the opening guitar filled the space, and as it always did, it sent a chill down my spine. I stared at her, unable to do anything else.
“This is your favorite song, isn’t it?” she asked, and I nodded. “Do you know how ridiculous this is?”
I shrugged, still thinking that she was referring to my taste in music.
“I went to their show in the city last year,” I said, running a shaky hand through my hair.
“What row were you in?”
“On the floor… Row F, I think. Two seats from the aisle.”
“Shut up!” she said, slapping my chest. “I was at the same concert, in the same row, aisle seat.”
The pieces finally started falling into place. She wasn’t judging my taste in music. She was enjoying it. I looked over at her, trying to find the lie in her words, but I couldn’t see anything like that. She was telling the truth, as unbelievable as it sounded.
“You were there,” I said quietly. “We were two seats apart…”
She laughed softly, her eyes glistening with disbelief. “Just two.”
We both grew quiet as the music washed over us. The atmosphere in the room was charged, and the stolen glances we shared were loaded. Things were getting intense in a way biology could only dream of.
“Can you believe it?” she asked. “A year ago we were basically strangers and now we’re—”
She stopped herself, and that annoyed me. I wanted to know what she was thinking, but I couldn’t if she didn’t speak her mind.
“Now we’re what?” I asked, but it came out harsher than intended.
She looked at me while the music hummed in the background. Her eyes flickered to my mouth and then back up. Without thinking about it, I took a step closer to her.
“Now we’re what?” I asked again, softer this time.
She didn’t answer, but her breathing changed.
So had mine. I slowly reached for her, giving her every chance she needed to pull away, but she didn’t.
My hand slipped around her waist, and her fingers tangled in my shirt as I pressed my lips to hers.
This time it wasn’t rushed like it had been on the field.
It wasn’t driven by adrenaline or exposed to the public.
It was just the two of us, sharing a slow, deliberate kiss.
She didn’t hesitate either. She kissed me back immediately.
She had wanted it as much as I did, and that only made me want her even more.
Her hands slipped up the back of my neck and tangled in my hair.
The music blurred into the background. My brain, which had been tripping over enzymes, had gone completely quiet.
There were no thoughts about tests, my shoulder, or the pressure on my back. The only thing that existed was her. When we finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard, but she stayed close to me.
“Better than glycolysis?” I murmured.
“Infinitely,” she said with a laugh.
She rested her forehead against mine, and all I could think about was pinning her to my bed and taking my time to undress her.