Chapter 11
ETHAN
“Your form is shit,” Troy tells Freddie, who's doing pushups while we sprawl across the quad pretending to study.
“Your face is shit,” Freddie pants back, not missing a rep.
“Both of you are shit,” Alfie says without looking up from his quantum physics textbook. He's somehow reading while juggling a soccer ball with his feet, which should be physically impossible, but here we are.
I'm lying on my back, tossing a football up and catching it one-handed—muscle memory from years of drills. The sun's warm, the grass smells like spring, and for once, I'm not thinking about my game or my dad or—
Holy fuck.
Piper Renner is walking across the quad in ripped jeans and a tank top I've never seen her wear before. Her hair's up in this messy bun thing that shows her neck, and she's laughing at something her friend is saying.
I haven't seen her in a couple of days.
The football hits me in the face.
“Smooth,” Troy observes.
“Shut up.” I sit up, grass stuck in my hair, and wave at Piper because I'm apparently twelve years old.
She sees me and freezes like a deer in headlights. Her friend—tiny girl with dark hair who looks surprised? Excited?—grabs her arm and starts hissing something.
“Piper!” I call out before I can stop myself. “Come here, I need you to settle something.”
“What do we need settled?” Freddie asks, still doing pushups.
“I don't know, I'll figure it out when she gets here.”
“You're so weird,” Troy says.
“Weird and smart,” I correct as Piper's friend literally drags her over.
And now she's standing above me, backlit by the sun and I realize I'm staring at her legs. They're... Christ, when did she get legs like that?
Has she always had legs like that?
“This is Piper,” I announce, sitting up and trying to look like I wasn't just admiring her. “I’m helping her with that narrative thing.”
“The girl from the diner!” Freddie stops mid-pushup. “Ethan won't shut up about—”
“—tutoring,” I interrupt, because Freddie's about to say something about how I described her eyes as 'criminally pretty' after three beers the other night. “He means the tutoring.”
Troy smirks because he's an asshole who was present for the eye conversation. “Right. The tutoring.”
“I'm Riya,” Piper's friend announces, sitting down like she owns the place. I immediately like her. “Piper's told me absolutely nothing about any of you, which is criminal.”
“What? I’m shocked. I thought we were friends,” I say, patting the grass next to me. When she sits, her thigh almost touches mine.
She smells like vanilla and something flowery. How does someone who works at a diner smell this good?
Piper rolls her eyes.
“We’re assigned friends. What do you need, Ethan?”
"Who do you two lovely ladies think can do more pushups, me or my boy Troy?"
"Twenty bucks on Freddie," Tara says, appearing out of nowhere because she has supernatural timing. She drops next to Alfie and steals his juice box. "Troy's all show."
"Ethan said me or him, Freddie's not even included!" Troy whines.
We strip off our shirts because,well,it's not a real competition unless someone's being ridiculous. I catch Piper's eyes flick down to my chest, then away so fast I almost miss it. Almost.
God, she's trying so hard not to look. This is fucking perfect.
"First to fail buys pizza tonight," Troy declares, getting into position.
We start strong, both of us keeping perfect form. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. My shoulder starts its familiar burn around forty, that deep ache that reminds me why I can't throw anymore. But Piper's watching—I can feel it even with my eyes on the grass—and there's no way I'm losing now.
"Getting tired, Prescott?" Troy pants at fifty.
"Just warming up," I lie. My arms are shaking. Fifty-five. Sixty.
I glance up and catch Piper definitely checking out the flex of my shoulders. She realizes I've caught her and immediately becomes fascinated by her phone, but her cheeks are pink.
Oh, this is too good.
Seventy. Troy's form is breaking. Seventy-five and he collapses.
"Fuck!" He gasps. "You win, asshole."
I do five more just to be obnoxious, my shoulder screaming the entire time, before collapsing next to him. When I sit up, I catch Piper's eye and wink. "Like what you see, Renner?"
She turns even redder. "I was making sure they were all valid reps."
"Right." I flex unnecessarily while reaching for my water bottle. "Very academic of you."
Troy throws grass at me. "Stop flirting and put your shirt back on. You're making us all look bad in front of Piper."
But I catch Piper biting back a smile, and yeah—the shoulder pain was absolutely worth it.
And when I lean across her to grab Alfie's water bottle—completely unnecessarily—she doesn't pull away.
“Speaking of this lovely lady, she's basically a genius,” I announce, needing them to know she's brilliant. “Got into Jenkins' AI research lab for next year.”
“Jenkins?” Alfie actually looks up from his book, which never happens. “The behavioral prediction lab? With the supercomputer access?”
Piper turns pink. “It's not that big a deal—”
“Are you kidding?” Alfie interrupts. “I know three insanely smart dudes who got rejected.” He looks genuinely impressed. “That's incredible.”
“Yeah, well.” She fidgets with her phone. “It all depends on me passing Creative Writing, which depends on Ethan actually being a decent tutor.” She glances at me. “He's actually been really helpful so far. Surprisingly.”
“Surprisingly?” I put a hand over my heart, playing up the offense, but inside I'm ridiculously pleased. Piper Renner thinks I'm helpful. “I'm an excellent tutor. Tell them about the three-act structure breakthrough.”
“There was no breakthrough—”
“She finally understood that stories need emotional beats, not just plot points,” I tell the group. “Only took two sessions.”
“Two very long sessions,” she corrects, but there's warmth in her voice that makes my chest tight.
“Jenkins' lab, though,” Alfie continues, still looking star-struck. “You'll be published before you graduate. That's a solid pipeline to MIT, Stanford—anywhere you want.”
“If I can keep my GPA up,” Piper says quietly, and I see the stress she's carrying.
“She will,” I say with more confidence than I probably should have. “She's too stubborn to fail. And she’s got the best tutor around.”
“Stubborn?” She turns to me, eyebrow raised.
“Determined,” I correct. “Forcefully determined.”
“That's just stubborn with extra words.”
“It's stubborn with respect,” I counter, and when she almost smiles, I count it as a victory.
“Speaking of determined,” I say, unable to resist, “how's that app of yours coming? Still matching people at scientifically proven rates?”
Piper's eyes narrow. “It's fine.”
“Find any more interesting... compatibilities?” I keep my voice casual, but Riya's head whips toward Piper so fast I'm surprised she doesn't get whiplash.
“Nope. Nothing interesting. At all.” Piper's voice is flat, dangerous.
“Really? Not even—”
“Ethan.” She says my name like a warning. “Drop it.”
“What compatibility?” Riya demands. “What did you not tell me?”
“Nothing. There's nothing to tell.”
“Oh, there's definitely something,” Riya says, studying Piper's red face. “We're discussing this later.”
Troy looks between us, confused. “Did we miss something?”
“Piper's building a dating app,” I explain, enjoying how she squirms. “Uses algorithms to find your perfect match. Very scientific. Very accurate.”
“It's still in beta phase and has lots of work to be done,” Piper says quickly.
“It’s about…ninety percent accurate though, right?” I can't help myself.
She kicks my shin. Hard.
“Ow!”
“Mosquito,” she says sweetly. “Got it.”
I rub my leg, grinning. She's so easy to rile up. And the fact that she's this defensive about our compatibility score? That has to mean something.
But ninety percent? What does that even mean? That we'd work nine times out of ten? That there's only a ten percent chance of failure?
The thing is, Paige has made me fucking suspicious of everyone. She was smarter than me too. She was a PhD student in astrophysics—literally studying the cosmos while I struggled through undergraduate game design.
Don't get me wrong—I'm not intimidated by women who are smarter than me. Hell, I find intelligence sexy as fuck. I love learning new things, love when someone can teach me something I don't know.
Bug Paige…she used her brain to play me. Turns out I was just convenient. Easy. Someone to warm her bed between study sessions.
And now here's Piper—brilliant, a little awkward, building algorithms I can barely understand. Another girl whose brain works on levels I can't reach. What if I'm just the dumb jock again, entertainment until she finds someone who can actually keep up with her intellectually?
Plus, I'm not exactly relationship material right now. I can barely figure out what I want to do after graduation, let alone be what someone else needs. Piper should be with someone who has his shit together, not someone still trying to prove to his dad that game design is a real career.
Plus, she's my student. There're probably rules about that. Definitely rules.
But…it can’t hurt to be friendly, right? Maybe a little harmless teasing? It’s just so much fun.
I can see Riya watching us with laser focus.
When Piper's phone buzzes, her whole demeanor changes. Her shoulders tense, her jaw tightens slightly.
I bump her shoulder with mine, gentle enough to seem casual but deliberate enough that she knows I'm here.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just... school stuff.”
School stuff, my ass, but I don't push. Not here, not in front of everyone.
When she stands to leave, I have to physically stop myself from asking her to stay. Her tank top has ridden up slightly, showing a strip of skin above her jeans, and I'm having very impure thoughts about my tutee.
“You're both coming to the party next Saturday, right? Alex invited you?” Freddie asks the girls, but I'm watching Piper.
“Absolutely. Well, Pipes is. I can’t make it this time.” She pouts. “But it’s so nice to meet you guys,” Riya says, and Piper looks like she wants to argue but doesn't.
As they walk away, Piper glances back. Our eyes meet and something passes between us—anticipation, maybe.
“You're so fucked,” Troy says the second they're gone.
“What?”
“You're catching feelings.”
“I'm not catching feelings.”
“You so are. You kept checking if she was laughing,” Alfie says, not looking up from his book.
“I did not—”
“Four times. She laughed four times, and each time you looked like someone gave you a present,” Freddie adds.
“Also, you kept finding excuses to touch her,” Tara contributes. “Very not subtle.”
“And you wanted to impress her with push-ups,” Troy says flatly.
Okay, that one's true.
“She's...” I run my hands through my hair. “Have you ever met someone who's exactly themselves? Like, she doesn't try to be anything else. She's just brilliantly, awkwardly, honestly herself. I just like her company.” I shrug.
“You've got it bad,” Freddie diagnoses.
“It's supposed to be just tutoring,” I protest, but even I hear how weak it sounds.
The truth is, I've been thinking about that ninety percent all week. She seemed pretty confident in it. Could it be true? And why did she look so panicked when she saw the results?
Part of me wants to believe it—that there's some scientific reason we fit. But the rational part knows better. You can't algorithm your way to love. You can't predict who's going to break your heart with data points and compatibility scores.
And smart, pretty girls with their theories and calculations? They're the most dangerous of all.
“It's complicated,” I finally say.
“It's really not,” Alfie says, finally looking up. “You like her. She clearly likes you—”
“She doesn't—”
“She's totally into you.”
But even if she is, I remind myself, I'm not dating right now. I'm focusing on graduating, on my game, on proving to my dad that I made the right choice. Not on girls who think they can solve love with code.
Even if their code says we're ninety percent compatible.
Even if I can't stop wondering what that means.