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Time ticked by, and soon it was a few minutes past the beginning of the session. I was getting aggravated, and by five minutes past the time, I was gathering up my materials, ready to leave. Just before I jotted down a note to tell him I'd canceled for no-show, the door to the study room opened and Camden rushed in.
I didn't even pretend not to glare at him. Turning around to face him, I cocked my hip, planted a hand on it, and narrowed my eyes.
"I see you make a habit of not being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there," I said.
Camden's eyes widened, and his mouth fell open slightly.
"Kristen?" he asked, obviously shocked to see me standing there. "What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you," I said. "I almost left because you're late. Again."
"The confirmation I got after I signed up gave me the wrong study room number," he said. "I went to the one on the first floor. If that had been the right room, I would have been early. What are you doing here?"
"I'm pretty sure I just answered that question," I said.
"No, I mean, why are you… I'm here for tutoring," he said.
I rolled my eyes so hard it threatened to knock me over backward.
"Yeah, I'm aware. Why do you think I'm here?"
"I'm still unclear on that. The signup confirmation just gave me the place to come and said a tutor would be here. I had no idea you were a tutor," he said.
"I'm not," I said. He looked at me quizzically, and I sighed. "Not a student tutor. I give extra help sessions for certain circumstances. Usually more difficult issues or older students who might be uncomfortable with a teenager helping them."
That was probably a slightly lower blow than I should have gone for. This conversation was rapidly descending into the adult version of petty playground nonsense. Any second now he was going to blow a spitball at me.
"I guess I fit into the second one," he said. "Though I don't think I'd really care who was helping me if I could figure this damn assignment out, so maybe I'm actually the first kind. That and I am just kind of difficult in general."
There was a hint of sparkle in his eyes, and I couldn't help but smile.
"Maybe a little," I said. "All right, well since you finally made it here, I guess we should go ahead and do some tutoring."
He made a face, and I muffled a chuckle as I sat down. Pulling a small computer out of his bag, he placed it on the table, then dug out a notebook stuffed with papers that stuck out from all sides. I stared at it as he plopped it down next to the laptop.
"So, I'm supposed to be writing a research paper," Camden said. "And I'm having a really hard time with all the requirements for the sources and quotes and everything. The professor wants ten different sources, only two are allowed to be Internet-based, and there have to be at least seven properly attributed quotes or paraphrases."
I nodded, waiting for him to tell me the problem. "Okay."
He didn't say anything, and I looked over at him questioningly. He was staring back with widened eyes.
"I don't know how to do any of that," he said. "Do you realize how long it's been since I wrote a paper? And it was like four pages with research taken right out of my textbook and a book from the high school library. I've never done any of this stuff."
He sounded so flustered; I couldn't help but laugh.
"All right. Don't worry. You're going to be fine. It's not as hard as it sounds. You probably do research all the time for your business and don't even realize it."
"I mean, I look stuff up, but I've never had to compile it into an actual paper like this," Camden said.
"I think you've probably done things closer than you think. First, do you have ideas about what you want to say?" I asked.
He pushed the notebook toward me and opened the cover, showing the scrambled notes across the papers inside.
"Those," he said.
I laughed and shook my head. "It definitely has been a long time since you’ve been a student."
He smiled at me, and my belly fluttered. That draw to him so was strong, there was no denying it. I would just have to try to resist him.
