Jeremy’s expression darkens, and I prepare to backpedal out of whatever I got myself into. “My room’s the one on the right at the end of the hallway. Just in case you aren’t kidding.”
Nick chucks a stray pen at Jeremy. “Dude, fuck off and stop trying to get in my tutor’s pants. I don’t want Ramirez to kill me if I fail again.”
“Ooh, is someone getting a little possessive?” Jeremy coos.
Nick sputters. “What? No. Fuck you.”
Aww, flustered Nick is adorable. Maybe I’ll teach him some swear words in Mandarin so I can see him blush again.
“Sorry about my douche of a friend,” Nick mutters after shooing Jeremy away. “He’s been kind of weird since the start of the semester, but I can tell him to back off if he becomes too much.”
“Nah, I’m good. It’s funny.” I purse my lips, deciding to change the subject away from Jeremy. “Alright, why don’t we go over the assignment now?”
Nick clicks around on his laptop and turns the screen toward me. I skim the assignment—the class has to write a hundred characters describing a friend, and it seems like Nick chose someone called Ian. Leaning closer, I squint at the next line.
And then I laugh.
Not because Nick’s answer is necessarilywrong, but damn, as I find out through reading the rest of the paragraph, it’sunhinged.
“So, the grammar isn’t bad,” I start, and I have to take a second to collect my thoughts. “But I have a few comments.”
“Hit me.”
“The first two sentences are mostly fine, but it kind of goes off the rails after that.” I clear my throat and start translating. “‘Ian is anidiot, but he is my best friend.’”
“Yeah, we bond by annoying each other as much as we can.”
“I get it, but this is anassignment. For agrade, and I can tell you used some kind of dictionary because there’s no way you learned these words in class.”
“I might have had some help,” he supplies.
Ignoring him, I continue reading. “‘Because he is nice, he is also very loyal because if someone annoys his,’ uh, lover? ‘He will—’” I have to stifle another laugh. “‘He will slice a whore.’”
“Uh-huh. He’d cut a bitch for the people he loves.”
I let out a disbelieving scoff that’s maybe a little too loud. “Okay, you can’t just take something in English and put it in another language. And again, this is for agrade.”
He scratches the back of his neck, leaning back and giving me a better view of the blush creeping up toward his sharp, square jaw. “Yeah, you're right.”
“Okay, let’s make some changes.” I look at him for approval, and he nods. “First off, did you mean to refer to Ian as ‘she’ here?” I click on the character in question to select it.
“No. Did I do that?”
“Yeah. So one thing to know is that every pronoun in Chinesesoundsthe same, but the characters are slightly different. You typing this out is probably what tripped you up.”
“Oh my god. I give up,” he mutters.
“Dude, you don’t have a choice. You made your bed.”
“At least you’re in it, too.”
I snicker, a blush of my own threatening to make an appearance, and remind myself Nick is just doing that funny bro-flirting we guys have somehow adopted for the purposes of platonic bonding.
If he’s into guys, my best guess is he wouldn’t be acting like this without knowing I’m gay. I haven’t seen him on any of the apps, and yeah, while I stayed off social media, I made sure to double-check the dating apps the night after our first tutoring session.
Nobody new was online, only the usual rotation, so I’m out of luck.
On the flip side, I’m also fluent in straight man, and I can dish it out real good myself. “Yeah, but we aren’t going there until you get this right. If you’re gonna give me brain, I need to know you have one.”
