I shrugged and set my cup down so I could accept the change before slipping it into my backpack. “I don’t know. School administration? Starbucks? The coffee gods?”
Scott rolled his eyes and waved me off. “Never change, Emma.”
“Never stop providing me with my energy source, and I won’t have to,” I said just as an upperclassman came up to the cart. I picked my cup back up and scooted away, trying to give Scott a finger wave while holding both coffees. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Bright and early, unless the coffee gods smite me first.”
I wove my way through the throng of students switching classes before reaching Noah’s table in the middle of the Student Union’s patio.
His sharp eyes followed my approach, and I wondered just how long he’d been watching me.
“Your coffee, sir,” I announced. I reached the table and placed the cup in front of him with an accompanying bow.
“Thank you,” Noah said as I slid onto the stone bench across the table from him. “I was wondering about your piano tutoring over the weekend. How long have you been doing that?”
“Oh, I’ve been tutoring for years,” I said. “It’s the only job my parents let me do in high school, since it involved the piano.”
“They’re fairly strict, I gather?”
I snorted. He didn’t know the half of it. “You could say that.”
“How do they feel about you attending college so far away?”
I fought a smile and attempted to quirk a brow. “Is this another game of twenty questions?”
“Sort of. I’ve been wondering a few things.”
I hesitated before answering, not sure how much I wanted to share. “My mother is totally on board with Westcroft. She thinks Slade walks on water and couldn’t have dreamed of getting a better mentor for me. I don’t think she realized I’d only see him during lectures.”
Even if it’d finally gotten through to my mother, she certainly didn’t accept it.
“And your father?”
I tried to hide my wince. If my father had his way, I would’ve stayed home and continued doing recitals. “He came around.”
Noah pulled the lid off his coffee to let it cool faster. I wanted to do the same but didn’t want to seem like a copycat, so I just sat there and let my coffee take its own sweet time.
“Are you close with your family?” he asked as he looked up.
I blinked in surprise at the personal question. “No, not really. You said you don’t talk to yours, right?”
“No,” Noah said easily, as if I hadn’t been pulling teeth to get answers from him a few days earlier. “My mother and I in particular never got along, but I like to think she’s happy with where I’ve ended up.”
I swallowed, not sure how to interpret that.
Did he mean happy with me or his life in general?
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“I am,” Noah said with sincerity, not even taking a moment to think about it. “Although, one thing has been troubling me lately.”
“What is it?”
“You,” he said, pulling my gaze back up to his. His usual unyielding demeanor was cracking, and a flash of frustration peeked through. “I can’t seem to figure you out.”
I swallowed. “What’s there to figure out?”
“Why aren’t you close with your family, Emma?” Noah squared off his shoulders toward me—as if preparing for battle. “Or anyone truly, for that matter. That’s what I can’t understand about you. You’re the most easygoing person I’ve met, yet aside from your roommate and the boy at the coffee cart, you tend to keep to yourself.”
