3. Buzz
BUZZ
THEN
The hallway outside Peterson’s biology classroom smelled like industrial floor cleaner, dry-erase markers, and the burnt coffee teachers apparently survived on exclusively.
I sat slouched against the cinderblock wall with one leg stretched across the tile and my hockey bag dumped beside me while I bounced a tennis ball off the opposite wall hard enough to irritate people on purpose.
Catch.
Throw.
Catch.
Throw.
The empty hallway amplified every sound after school hours. Lockers clanging somewhere farther down near the math wing. A janitor dragging a garbage can across tile. The faint squeak of sneakers from the gym.
Peterson’s classroom door stayed closed. Which felt personal at this point. Potentially still failing biology. The game tomorrow night suddenly felt very theoretical.
The tennis ball smacked against the wall again.
“Mr. Burns.”
I looked up. Vice Principal Hennessey stood halfway down the hallway already looking tired of me specifically.
“Stop throwing things at school property.”
“It’s a tennis ball.”
“It’s annoying.”
I caught the ball one last time and stuffed it into my hoodie pocket while Hennessey kept walking with the expression of a man deeply reconsidering his career in public education.
I leaned my head back against the wall and exhaled slowly.
Okay. Maybe slightly freaking out.
Not because I thought I failed. I definitely thought I failed.
But because Lucy had spent weeks trying to force mitochondria into my skull like she personally refused to let me remain academically illiterate.
And now if I bombed the test anyway?
She was never letting me live it down.
That thought should not have made me grin.
Unfortunately, it did.
Which honestly felt medically concerning at this point.
The night before kept replaying in my head on an endless loop.
Frozen lake.
Cold air.
Lucy kissing me like she was nervous and brave at the same time.
Will you be my girlfriend?
Yeah.
Simple as that.
No dramatic speech.
No fireworks.
Just Lucy standing there in my hoodie with pink cheeks and snow caught in her hair looking at me like maybe she wanted this as badly as I did.
My stomach immediately did something stupid remembering it. I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Jesus Christ.
I had officially become one of those guys. The kind who smiled at his phone for no reason. Disgusting behavior.
The classroom door finally opened.
I straightened immediately.
Peterson stepped out carrying a stack of papers against his chest and stopped when he saw me sitting there.
He sighed heavily. “Burns.”
“Petey.”
“Do not call me that.”
“Sorry, Mr. Peterson.”
“You are physically incapable of sounding sincere.”
“That’s not true.”
“It absolutely is.”
He adjusted the papers against his chest and looked down at me over his glasses. “Why are you still here?”
I blinked at him. “You told me grades would be finalized after school.”
“That was not an invitation to loiter outside my classroom like a raccoon.”
“I’m invested in my academic future.”
“You bounced a tennis ball against the wall for twenty straight minutes.”
“It was stress management.”
Peterson sighed the way teachers did when they were professionally exhausted by somebody specifically. “I genuinely do not understand how you function in society,” he muttered.
“Natural talent.”
“At what?”
“That remains unclear.”
A reluctant smile tugged briefly at the corner of his mouth before disappearing again.
Progress.
He looked back down at the stack of tests in his hands. “You know if you failed this, Coach isn’t letting you dress tomorrow.”
My stomach tightened instantly.
There it was. The real thing underneath all the jokes. Hockey players learned young how to act like nothing rattled them. Didn’t mean it worked.
“I know,” I muttered.
Peterson studied me for a second longer than usual. Then his expression shifted slightly. “You actually studied this time,” he said.
I shrugged one shoulder casually even though we both knew the answer already.
Lucy making color-coded flash cards while threatening violence every time I got distracted.
Lucy glaring at me across library tables.
Lucy refusing to let me quit halfway through chapter reviews even after I complained dramatically for two straight hours.
I looked away toward the empty hallway. “You gonna tell me or keep psychologically torturing me for fun?”
Before he could answer, soft footsteps echoed around the corner farther down the hallway.
Lucy turned the corner carrying a stack of textbooks against her chest, and every coherent thought immediately left my body.
The hallway lights caught against auburn curls where they spilled loose over one shoulder, and my hoodie hung from her arm beneath her winter coat like she’d been carrying it around with her all day without realizing it.
She slowed slightly when she spotted me outside Peterson’s classroom, surprise flickering briefly across her face before softening into something smaller and warmer that settled directly beneath my ribs. “You’re still here?” she asked as she reached us, her voice light with amusement.
I pushed myself up from the floor immediately, trying to look like I had not just spent the last twenty minutes psychologically unraveling over both biology and the existence of girlfriends.
“Academic dedication,” I replied smoothly.
Peterson made a low sound under his breath that was dangerously close to a laugh.
Lucy’s eyes drifted toward the obvious bulge of the tennis ball still shoved inside my hoodie pocket before lifting back to my face knowingly. “Right,” she said. “Very scholarly behavior.”
“He spent half an hour throwing a tennis ball at the wall,” Peterson informed her.
Lucy nodded seriously. “That tracks.” The smile she tried to suppress widened anyway.
God.
That smile.
The hallway around us had gone mostly quiet this late in the afternoon. The noise from the gym drifted faintly through the building somewhere in the distance while winter light stretched pale and gold through the narrow windows lining the far end of the corridor.
Lucy shifted the books slightly in her arms, and my attention snagged immediately on the silver ring she always wore on her right hand. I had noticed it during sophomore English and somehow never stopped noticing it after that.
Now I wanted to hold that hand so badly my fingers physically twitched.
Get a grip, Burns.
I had played varsity hockey in front of packed student sections without blinking.
One pretty girl looked at me too softly and suddenly I forgot how to function like a normal human being.
“So,” I said, forcing my brain back online before I embarrassed myself catastrophically, “what are you doing here?”
“I left my sketchbook in art.”
“Wow.” I nodded slowly. “Responsible student behavior.”
Lucy’s mouth twitched. “You’re sitting outside a biology classroom waiting for a grade like a Victorian orphan.”
Peterson outright laughed this time before catching himself immediately.
I looked back at Lucy. “You’re supposed to be on my side now.”
The words came out naturally. The second they landed between us, the entire atmosphere shifted.
Lucy’s cheeks flushed pink almost instantly. Enough that my heartbeat stumbled directly into a wall.
Because there it was again.
That holy shit this is real feeling.
The realization kept hitting in random waves all day long like my brain still hadn’t fully caught up yet.
Lucy looked down briefly, trying and failing to hide her smile behind the edge of the books pressed against her chest.
Peterson cleared his throat loudly enough to remind us he unfortunately still existed.
Right. Biology.
Potential academic ruin.
Important things.
He looked between us once with the exhausted expression of a man realizing exactly why my grades had suddenly improved. Then he pulled one paper free from the stack in his hands. “You,” he informed Lucy flatly, “are the only reason this boy understands cellular respiration.”
Lucy laughed softly under her breath.
And I swear to God I wanted that grade more than oxygen itself.
Peterson looked down at the paper once more like he was reconsidering all his life choices before finally holding it out toward me. “B plus.”
For a second, I genuinely thought I heard him wrong. My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“B plus, Burns.” Peterson sounded almost annoyed about it. “Which means against all odds, you are capable of learning.”
I stared at the paper in complete disbelief before grabbing it from his hand. Not barely passing. Not academic survival by miracle. An actual good grade.
Holy shit.
“I got a B plus?” I repeated.
Peterson pointed at the test. “That is generally how letters work, yes.”
I looked back down at the paper again just to make sure it hadn’t somehow changed in the last three seconds. The giant red B+ still sat there at the top of the page.
Something electric shot straight through my chest.
Not because of the grade itself exactly.
Because I had worked for it. Not like I worked at hockey, where instinct and repetition took over until my body knew what to do before I even thought about it.
Not the kind of work that came from being naturally good at something where things came easy enough that nobody noticed the effort underneath.
Hours sitting in the library while Lucy forced me to relearn entire chapters I’d half ignored in class.
Flash cards spread across cafeteria tables.
Her color-coded notes shoved into my hockey bag between rolls of tape and protein bars.
Re-reading sections of the textbook so many times the words started blurring together until Lucy would sigh dramatically and start explaining it all over again from the beginning.
And somehow she never made me feel stupid while she did it.
Most teachers looked at me and saw hockey first. Most people did. Big varsity idiot. Future athlete. Guy who could fight and score and probably wouldn’t need biology once junior hockey took over his life completely.
Lucy never looked at me like that.
She got annoyed with me constantly, sure.