Chapter 6
Six
Scarlett
18 Years Old
The sound of Scarlett’s keys hitting her concrete front step mimicked glass shattering. She reached down to pick up the ring, loaded down with various key chains, and looked sideways at Colin, nervous that he was judging her for the excessive trinkets and for fumbling with them to begin with. “I lose my keys a lot,” she explained. “And my aunt had this event thing that I went to with her where they had a bunch of free key chains, and I thought if my keys made a bunch of noise and were clunky, I’d be able to find them better. Last week I thought I might lose them forever because I—” She cut herself off, realizing she was about to go on another long tangent while her poor tutor suffered through it because he was too nice to tell her to shut up. On second thought, he might not be nice at all. He was probably annoyed to be here and annoyed to be her lab partner. His looming presence and her inability to get a read on him were what had made her drop the keys in the first place.
“Because you…” Colin raised his eyebrows like he was genuinely waiting for the rest of the story. “I assume you found them because of the added key chains? Or did this story take place before you added the key chains and that was your catalyst to acquire all of them later on? I don’t know when the event you went to with your aunt was.”
Scarlett slid her key into the lock and smiled to herself. “I was actually trying to find my keys in order to go to the event with all the key chains.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “I hadn’t considered that option. Where did you eventually find them?”
“In the fridge,” she said, unlocking the deadbolt.
“That’s hilarious.” It was said in such a deadpan way that she thought he was poking fun at her, but he didn’t have that haughty twinkle in his eyes that people got when they delivered sarcasm, and he had already told her once that he didn’t do sarcasm.
“Welcome to my humble abode.” With a push of the front door, Scarlett brandished her hand outward to the open living room. There wasn’t much time to second-guess her exaggerated introduction to her house as she stepped inside, but she grimaced at her word choice. From the second she had introduced herself to Colin at their lab station the other day, she could not stop talking to save her life. Words flew out of her mouth at the speed of light, so there was no way to retract them once they popped into her head. All of Colin’s words, on the other hand, seemed to be carefully chosen, and yet some of the things he shared were so jaw-droppingly truthful that she couldn’t imagine they had been planned.
“Nice.” Colin followed behind her, his backpack slung properly over both shoulders.
“So we can do it in the kitchen at the table.”
“It?”
“Studying,” Scarlett clarified. Everything felt sexual in undertone with Colin, but he also seemed to be none the wiser to it. He was either relentlessly flirting with her, or it was all in her head and she would embarrass herself if she called attention to all the double meanings. Colin didn’t hang out with many people at school, and she couldn’t imagine being the exception to the rule. She wasn’t special in any sense of the word. Everything she did in life felt exceptionally average. There was no way someone who read nonfiction as a hobby and collected facts like Pokémon cards would ever be interested in her. “How much am I supposed to pay you, by the way?”
“I don’t know, ten bucks?” Colin said as they moved out from the entryway into the hallway.
Scarlett stopped to guffaw at him. “What? No. That’s ridiculous.”
“Too much?”
“Too little,” she said.
“Scarlett, I really like science. This is fun for me.” Colin’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, so if she’d had any qualms about him telling the truth, they were no more. “Plus, I’m rich. I don’t need your money.”
“He likes science, and he’s rich.” Scarlett grinned. “What a catch.”
Colin pinched his brows together. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“I’m joking, but I’m also serious,” she explained, moving down the hallway again.
“That makes no sense.”
“Science is awful, but the people that are into it are a catch. I was more or less just teasing you about being a ladies’ man with your fat stacks of cash and the telescope or… microscope you most likely have in your room?”
“Microscope,” he confirmed. “I used to have a telescope, but space freaks me out too much because it’s mostly uncharted. I gave it to my brother Carter, and I think he uses it to drape dirty clothes over.”
They had made it to the end of the hallway when Colin stopped his progression abruptly, pausing to look at a framed picture hanging on the wall. Scarlett dry-swallowed when she realized which picture it was: an old one of her and her two siblings. Her sister Harper was beaming at the camera alongside a five-year-old version of herself. Tucker still had all of his hair, and his smile sliced through her heart like a shard of ice.
“Is this why you hate science?” Colin asked. She could tell his eyes were fixed on Tucker in the picture, but not in a pitying way like so many other people. He just looked sad.
“It’s definitely part of it. If everything around us is science, then so was that, and no one fixed it.” She looked away from the picture, afraid she would start crying if she stared at it for too long. “Science is out of reach to me. I’ll never be extraordinary enough to solve that kind of problem. But you, you are the kind of person that will change the world.”
“I think you’ll change the world, too.” He said it as a whisper, so quiet she could barely hear him, his eyes still locked on the picture. She couldn’t tell if he was looking at the younger version of her or at Tucker anymore.
“Why do you think that?” she couldn’t help but to ask.
“Because you’re kind.” It was so simple, and yet her heart cinched and pulled taut. “And you remind me a little of my parents.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I do?”
“Yeah.” Colin looked up at the ceiling. “You don’t seem to mind when I say something socially unacceptable or if I’m blunt.”
“It’s refreshing,” Scarlett said, meaning it. “Your parents sounded wonderful.”
“I don’t have very many friends that aren’t family members. It’s pathetic that they were my best friends, right?” His eyes weren’t glassy with tears, but the sadness behind them was so poignant that her face fell, and she reached out to touch his arm.
“I don’t think that’s pathetic at all. My brother was my idol. I was probably the uncool little sister to him, but I was desperate to be his best friend. And my sister is one of my best friends. If she thinks I’m uncool, then that’s too bad, because she’s stuck with me.” Colin leaned into her touch, and Scarlett let her fingers wrap around his bicep.
“I think you’re cool,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get you to think I’m cool.”
“I was sold from the second you made a cum joke.” Scarlett grinned, and Colin looked briefly down at her hand on his arm, slowly cracking into a smile.
“I can make more of them.”
“Don’t tempt me with a good time.” She smirked.
“Maybe I want to tempt you,” he said. Her face felt instantly hot, but when she looked at Colin’s expression to gauge whether he was flirting, it gave nothing away. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” Scarlett admitted.
“Why not?”
She let out a long sigh and dropped her hand away from him. “Because it has the potential to be embarrassing for me. Would you tell me what you were thinking if I asked?”
Colin nodded toward the dining area with his head and started to move out of the hallway, calling back over his shoulder. “If you ask, I’ll tell you.”
Scurrying after him, Scarlett got to the table and started unpacking her backpack, trying to calm down enough to ask him when he slid two books across the table to her. Her eyes practically bugged out of her head. “Oh, these are… the books?” She picked one up and almost dropped it when she read the title Kama Sutra .
“That’s one of the books with pictures,” Colin explained. Hesitantly, she opened to somewhere in the middle where there was, in fact, a contorted sex position stretched across the page. She didn’t even realize Colin had come to stand behind her to look over her shoulder until he spoke. She flinched and fought the urge to shut the book immediately, berating herself with a chant of you’re an adult, act like one . “That position looks painful to me. I don’t think I’d be into that. Can’t say for sure, obviously, because?—”
“Right, right, because of the lack of experience,” Scarlett interrupted. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why he wasn’t experienced. Besides his towering height, daunting eyes, and hot nerd appeal, he was also genuinely nice and truthful. And maybe that was his problem. Too many green flags when the girls her age seemed to always be into bad boys who were bound to break their hearts. Scarlett had zero interest in red flags. She already had enough of those because her mom had fallen in love with one. No one would think it from her father’s accounting degree and stable appearance, but he was the charismatic jock in high school that had women flocking to him. Which is why it took him exactly zero seconds to find himself a new wife and family after Tucker died. It wasn’t lost on her or Harper that their father acted as though he was no longer a dad after his only son died despite having two daughters that were still very much alive.
Colin moved around her to casually pull out his science textbook like they had just been talking about the weather and sat down at the table, all business. Carefully closing the litany of intimidating sex positions in her hand, Scarlett set the book back down, her eyes landing on the second one Colin had brought. It had a bright pink cover with a picture of a tan zipper peeled back to reveal a red fabric and the white lettering on it read Come As You Are .
“That one doesn’t have pictures.” Colin pointed at it. “But it’s my favorite one I’ve read. It’s mostly about women, actually, so I thought you might like it. It’s all information everyone should know. It does have science in it, but I promise it’s titillating.”
“ Titillating ,” Scarlett parroted back.
“Weird word, right?” Colin popped his head up from the textbook he was looking at.
For a split second, she thought his eyes dropped to her chest. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy had looked at her breasts. All the women in her family were going to have some serious back problems when they were older. Usually, she tried to avoid that kind of attention, but this time she had the urge to bend over more so he could see. She just wanted to know if he was interested. She wouldn’t act on it, she just wanted to know for certain, because he kept delivering lines in a statuesque manner that had her second-guessing herself every three seconds.
The curiosity won out, and she finally bit the bullet. “What are you thinking about right now?”
Colin drummed his fingers on the table. “Tits.”
“Right, because of the word titillating and your love of a good pun?” Scarlett reasoned, her face flushing.
“And because I’m having a really hard time not looking at yours.” His eyes dropped—for sure this time—to her chest before he shook his head and looked away. “I’m your tutor, so the power dynamic is not really appropriate.”
Scarlett’s nerves were practically vibrating as she edged a little closer to him, almost brushing against his arm. “Well, you’re more than just my tutor, right? We’re friends?”
Colin leaned into her a little bit, the lengths of their arms connecting. “No, we aren’t. I don’t want to be your friend, Scarlett.”
She swallowed and pulled away from his side. “Oh.” Curling her lips over her teeth, she shook her head. “Okay. Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t know why I thought—I assumed that you liked me or at least tolerated me. I know I ramble a lot, but you didn’t seem to mind. Maybe you do mind, and I just thought you didn’t. Did I do something to?—”
“Wait.” Colin held a hand up, and she instantly snapped her mouth shut. “What did you think I meant by that? I mean, I can only handle you in this setting because I have to tutor you. I have a specific goal to achieve.”
It really felt like slapping her in the face would have hurt less. “Wow, okay. I get it. I’m intolerable.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “This tutoring agreement works because I have something to focus on. I don’t think you’re supposed to want to fuck your friends, so anything outside of this won’t work. Granted, I don’t have a lot of friends, so maybe that’s normal behavior, but it seems like it’d be violating to you if you’re expecting friendship and I’m constantly thinking about you naked.”
Her stomach somersaulted, then her brain replayed everything out of order, trying to make sense of it before looping the same sentence over and over again . I don’t think you’re supposed to want to fuck your friends. “You don’t hate me or think I’m annoying? You want to hook up with me?”
“I thought that was obvious, assuming that ‘hook up’ means sex to you.” She sat down at the table beside him, and he stiffened, his spine going ramrod straight. And she might have been tempting fate or doing it on purpose at this point, but now that she knew she had some sort of an effect on him, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching her hand out to touch his arm. Colin let out a shaky breath and forcefully flipped a page in his textbook. “Can we please focus?”
“Honestly, I don’t think I can now,” Scarlett snorted.
“Well, you have to. You’re paying me to tutor you, so.” He gestured to his textbook.
She wiggled in her seat. “No one has ever blatantly told me they wanted to hook up with me before.”
“Surely the people you’ve had sex with have.” Colin rolled his eyes, and she bit back a smile at how sassy he was being.
“Do you think I’m some sort of a maneater or something?”
“I think sex is a normal thing people our age are engaging in. I have no opinion on your sexual tendencies, nor does it matter for our tutoring sessions.”
“So,” Scarlett pushed ahead. “You don’t think it’s normal to be a virgin at our age? Even though you are one?”
“I am one due to lack of opportunity, not lack of wanting to, but even so, no, I don’t think it’s unusual to be a virgin, either.”
She nodded slowly. “And do you think?—”
“I think ,” Colin said pointedly. “That we should study, and you should go get the Play-Doh.”
“And then you can make me Play-Doh figurines of all the sex positions you want me in?”
He sighed loudly. “Scarlett.” He wasn’t super great at telling when she was joking, but he seemed to get that she was messing with him this time.
“You’re kinda grumpy,” she teased.
“We are studying . You’re purposely making me grumpy.”
“Getting laid would probably help that.” She was sure she had never been so overt about sex in her life, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Does it actually help?” Colin fidgeted with his hands.
The question made her retract, folding in on herself and looking away. “I wouldn’t know,” she said.
“Because you’re always happy?”
She mumbled the next part, the last word unintelligible. “Because I’m a hmm-mmm.”
Colin’s face screwed up. “A what?”
“I’m a virgin, too, okay? No sex-goddessery happening here!” She gestured to herself from head to foot then immediately wanted to set fire to the word “sex-goddessery.” The tendency to invent words and phrases frequently popped up when she was nervous, along with rambling stories that were so long they could be developed into novels if the plot wasn’t a clusterfuck of epic proportions. They always included too many extra details and tangents that didn’t matter. No one needed to know that it happened on a Tuesday at ten p.m. and her mother’s birthday was the following day, which they had lemon poppyseed cake for. Also, if she took a drug test after eating said poppyseed cake, would she fail it? Was that still a thing? What were they talking about again? Right, sex, or the lack of it, at least.
“Oh. Okay.” The unbothered way Colin was still looking at his textbook made her want to pull her hair out. Okay . Like she hadn’t just divulged a semi-embarrassing fact about herself.
“How are you this cavalier about everything?” she huffed. She had about three hundred follow-up questions, but she held her tongue in the greatest show of self control since that time she didn’t eat an entire bag of potato chips the day prior.
“I’m not. I just think we should study, and you can’t seem to focus on anything other than me thinking about you naked, so, clearly, I shouldn’t have told you that. Your sexual history or lack thereof doesn’t have to do with chemistry or statistics.” In the most dramatic display of his height, he sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. Her eyes immediately went to his crotch, because he was right and she was just a vessel for thoughts about sex now. If cocks were proportionate to the size of the person, then Colin was packing a fucking horse in his pants, she just knew it. “I’ll level with you. If you let me tutor you for at least an hour, then we can talk about my less-than-professional tendencies.”
“I can ask you any question I want?” She raised her eyebrows. “Even if my question is just asking exactly what you’ve thought of me? No matter how inappropriate?”
“Yes, but first,” Colin pointed down at the book, “let’s review the basics, so I can gauge how much you already know about chemistry.”
“I know nothing. I learn it, then I immediately forget about it.” Scarlett got up from her seat, wanting to postpone how dumb she was about to feel. “Shouldn’t I make you coffee or tea or something? My sister works at the coffeehouse, but I despise coffee, so I don’t actually know how to make it.”
“Scarlett.” Colin’s voice darkened, and her body immediately jolted to attention. “Sit down, or I’m never going to tell you any of the dirty things I think about you.”
Properly threatened, it was truly shocking how fast her ass dropped down into the seat. “Fine. Just don’t be annoyed when you have to reteach me everything, okay?”
“Like I said, this is fun for me. You not knowing anything means that I get to tell you. I won’t be annoyed, I promise.”
Colin sat up straighter, genuinely looking excited as he slid their chemistry textbook toward her.