It was true. I knew that Luke rarely lost his temper and was obviously supersmart, but I hadn’t been prepared for how patient he was, how willing he was to go at my pace and compliment me.
“Should I not be nice?” he asked, and his gaze on my face from just inches away was like a physical touch.
“No, nice is good. I like nice.” When I realized what I’d said, I scribbled hard and fast on my paper. Even if I got the problem wrong, at least the sound of our quiet breaths and my loud, traitorous heart would be drowned out by our voices again as we went over it.
I managed to avoid doing anything really embarrassing for the rest of the lesson, and then we were done and packing up.
“You’ve got this,” Luke said. “We can meet a couple nights a week until your final, if that works for you.”
“That would be so great. What do I owe you? I can pay you, you know.”
He shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Wow, okay—thanks,” I said before bounding away like an excitable puppy. Later, I wondered if I should have hugged him. I could probably have gotten away with it, right? He was doing me an enormous favor after all.
Thankfully, the next time we met was significantly less awkward. Mel was in her room taking a nap and Rowan was at work, so it was just us, with Sydney by our feet. We seemed to always schedule our tutoring sessions while Rowan was at work, and since we worked around Luke’s schedule, I wondered if that was intentional on his part. Maybe he thought Ro would be a distraction. He probably would, but I found myself missing him all the same. He’d gone back to being MIA ever since that morning he’d snuck into my room. He was hardly ever at home when I was at the Cohen house, and he barely answered my texts. I told myself that he was just busy, or he was just struggling with Mel’s illness, but I couldn’t help wondering once again why Rowan had become so distant.
I ignored the ache in my chest and focused on the present, this moment, with Luke.
That second time, while I worked on problems, we chatted about a bunch of things—Mel’s treatment. Senior year. College.
“Mom really wants me to go,” Luke said, watching as I scribbled out a problem from the textbook. “She says it feels better for her to see us living our lives instead of putting them on hold for ... however long.”
However long, we both knew, meant as long as Mel had left. The one thing about Mel’s Big Bad was that it had never given us any hope. There was no good outcome; it was only a matter of when.
“That maybe this way, she might even get to see me graduate college,” he continued, his voice dry.
“So maybe you’ll go?” I asked now.
“I ... I think so.” He raked his hand through his hair, and I could feel his conflict. “Is that whatyou ... You still wouldn’t?”
It was a weird question for him to ask. Did he care that much about my opinion? What I would do if Mel was my mom?
“I won’t judge you for going, if that’s what you mean,” I said at last, because it was the truest thing I could think of to say. It was easy for me to make declarations about what I would and wouldn’t do if I were Mel’s daughter, but as Ro had painfully pointed out all those weeks ago, I wasn’t. I got to love her in that selfish, uncomplicated way people who weren’t related got to love each other. And, like I’d come to see over the years, maybe that was why Mel meant so much to me. Her love for me was optional and totally unwarranted, not forced upon her by blood or relation or any sort of obligation, making it all the more special and unusual. In the same way, I got to love her with as much bias as I wanted. I didn’t have to know whether she was bad with money. I didn’t have to care if she had been as unfair to Dr. Cohen as he had been to her. I got to blindly choose her side. All her suggestions to me were just that—suggestions—but to Ro and Luke, they were directives.
Maybe I loved her just as much as they did, but I loved her differently.
I could admit that.
At my next tutoring session, Luke seemed distracted and didn’t offer many directions, corrections, or compliments as I worked. He didn’t say much of anything.
“Is everything okay?” I asked at last, worried as I always was that something had happened with Mel that no one had told me. As privileged as I was to have our uncomplicated love, I was also at a disadvantage: I didn’t live with them. They weren’t obligated to tell me everything.
Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “You know how I said you didn’t owe me anything? You still don’t,” he said quickly. “But I could use your help with something.”
“Okay, shoot,” I said, sitting up straighter.
Minutes later, Luke was opening the door of his bedroom and leading me in. He had revealed the reason for his distraction, and it led us on a mission, of all things, to find him something to wear. Sydney, who had trailed us up the stairs, weaved around me and settled in a spot at the foot of his bed. I followed her, knelt, and stroked her fur, pretending not to be the least bit affected by being in Luke Cohen’s room.
“Sorry about the mess,” Luke said, as if the state of his living space even registered on my radar. Of all the rooms in the Cohen house, Luke’s was by far the place where I spent the least amount of time. I’d been in it a bunch when we were younger, playing games on his computer or spreading out a board game on his carpet because his room had more space than Ro’s. But it had been a couple of years since I had seen more than glimpses through an open door.
His room was nowhere as neat as mine. He had piles of books everywhere—on his table, in stacks on the floor, and spilling over off his two shelves. There were a bunch of weights in one corner and shoes in another. His bed was unmade, but clean-looking.
“Hey, Sydney,” Luke said now. “Should we show Jessi our little trick?”
Sydney jumped up obediently at the sound of her name and ran over to him.
“Ready?” Luke asked, and I grinned, not sure whether he was talking to me or the dog.
