As much as I want to argue and try to blow off studying, I don’t. Jonah has proven to be a great tutor so far and I’m actually getting excited about seeing all my grades go up. We do my homework and study for my upcoming math test. With fifteen minutes left of tutorials, I start in on some extra credit worksheets. I finish the second one when I remember what these things mean.
“Can I still ask a question?” I ask, placing the completed worksheet on top of his notebook. “One question per worksheet?”
“What more could you possibly want to know about me?” Jonah asks, tilting his head while he looks over my paper.
I shrug. “You’re still a mystery, Jonah.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m going to take that as a yes,” I say, sitting straighter. “Have you ever kissed a girl on a date and then gone four days without texting her?”
“That’s oddly specific,” he says, furrowing his brow.
“Answer the question.”
He finishes scanning my answers on the worksheet and puts it at the bottom of the stack. “No. I only kiss girls I’m dating, and if I’m dating a girl then I don’t go that long without talking to her.”
I rest my chin in my hand while I watch him. “So…if you ask a girl on a date but then you bring your friends with you to the date, is it still considered a date?”
“One question per worksheet,” he says.
I shove the second paper at him. “I did two already.”
“Natalie…” he says with a sigh. “I agreed to answer questions aboutmyself, not to give you covert dating advice.”
“I am asking about you. Wouldyouconsider that a date?”
He contemplates it for a moment. “Maybe. But not really. A date is something intimate.”
I open my mouth to say more, but he points at the stack of papers. “One question per paper.”
I blow a raspberry at him and get back to work, flipping through the pages until I find one with only four questions. Jonah’s phone buzzes and he texts back to whoever texted him. It takes a lot of willpower on my end not to ask who he’s talking to, because I know he’ll try to count that as my question for this worksheet.
When I’m finished, I hand it to him. “What did you mean the other day at lunch when you said you think youhopefullydeserve better than Lara?”
He stares at the worksheet while he thinks about it. “It means I think I deserve better than the kind of girls I’ve dated lately,” he says after a moment. I stare at him until he gives me more information. “I’m not an asshole, okay? I’m a good person. I’m nice. I don’t cheat on girls or have random hookups that don’t mean anything. I don’t think it’s too much to want a girl to be nice to me in return, you know?”
I nod, thinking that’s all I’ll get out of him, but now he’s looking off in the distance, his thoughts clearly focusing on the topic at hand. “I just…I’m not some popular jock and I’m not the most jacked manly man ever, but that doesn’t mean I should settle for someone who treats me like shit. So I said Ihopefullydeserve better, because I think I do. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, it’s just—” He sighs.
“I know what you mean,” I say, finding the words he can’t seem to say. “You are a good guy. Youdodeserve better than your ex-girlfriend. There’s nothing wrong in admitting that.”
“You should take some of your own advice,” he says, poking me in the arm with his pen.
I lift an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“A guy kissed you then didn’t text you for four days?” He shakes his head. “Ditch that asshole. He’s not worth it.”
“That was a hypothetical,” I say quickly. “Totally not real.”
His lips flatten as he looks at me and I know he’s not buying it.
The librarian clears her throat and I realize she’s looking at us. “Tutorials and detention are over,” she says with an exhausted wave of her hand. “Time to get out of here. You’re the last ones left.”
“Shit,” I say, looking down at our table filled with papers and books. We totally talked past the bell that dismissed us from tutorials. Jonah and I gather up our stuff. The last thing he grabs is his notebook, which is opened to my page.
“Hey,” he says, tilting it toward me. “Today marks our one month of tutoring completed.” He grins in this boyish way, like he’s truly proud of the accomplishment. “Only one month left.”
“That’s definitely cooler than talking about my dating failures,” I say as I sling my backpack over my shoulder.
“I thought you were speaking in hypotheticals,” he says as he walks toward the parking lot.
