Page 25 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

“Could you believe that explosion,” a boy said.

“Fucking awesome,” his friend agreed.

“Sooo hot,” some girl said, sending two others into peals of giggles.

Were they talking about Cooper? Well, yes, they must be since they were coming out of his class. I struggled to wrap my mind around the general excitement radiating from the students. Surely no one would consider the first Fun Chem lecture to be awesome, let alone Cooper, himself.

A kaleidoscope of butterflies began swirling around my stomach at the prospect of seeing him at the front of my room. It would be much easier if Cooper weren’t an asshole. If he were dull and amiable, my life would be so much simpler. I wouldn’t have to spend mental energy smothering raging butterflies when I needed to focus on my lesson.

I had been especially looking forward to my Advanced Chemistry section. This had been my favorite class in high school, and I was eager to dive back into the gritty details that make chemistry so fun.

The fact that the AP exam could be worth college credit hadn’t been particularly important to me, but I knew some kids—and parents—took it incredibly seriously. Regardless of my indifference, I had scored a very respectable four out of five, good enough for three college credit hours. Only two students in my year had scored better than me—a perfect five out of five—and with a shocking jolt of memory, I realized that one of the two students to earn the perfect score was none other than Jackson Cooper.

The cobwebs had finally cleared from that undisturbed corner of my brain. I saw him in my mind’s eye as he was then, tall and frightfully gangly—absurdly long, skinny limbs that he didn’t know what to do with. He had been ghostly quiet. I barely remembered him speaking in class, let alone to anyone outside of class. Though, surely he had friends while he was in school? Maybe he had just been shy. In my experience, shyness was a fairly common trait of tall people, at least until they grew comfortable with their height.

The last students filtered out, leaving the path into the room clear. Cooper stood at the front of the room with his back to me, and I studied him with my fresh perspective. He was just as tall now as he had been then—perhaps six-three or six-four—but he had grown into the height, adding lean mass over his frame. The muscles in his back flexed and pulled as he waved the eraser in long strokes over the whiteboard.

He set the eraser down and brushed the dry marker dust off his hands before turning to collect his backpack. He spotted me as soon as he turned, and I watched his face transform from placid to irate.

“There she is,” he said, his voice low and sharp. “Are you happy with yourself for that little stunt?”

My smile melted off my face, and I slowed my approach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

He huffed a humorless laugh and put his hands on his hips. “Oh really? You’re seriously going to stand there and tell me that there was only one shitty, yellow marker when you got here this morning?”

“Why didn’t you just use the other one?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and prowled around the desk. “Perhaps someone took the other marker and left only the one that was illegible?” He stepped forward into my space and plucked the blue marker from the front pocket of my trousers. He held it up, wiggling it an inch from my nose in a gesture that might have been playful if it hadn’t been so patronizing.

My jaw dropped. I had no memory of putting the marker in my pocket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Save it, Princess. It’s fine if you don’t like my lesson plan, but I really didn’t think you would stoop to obstructing me.”

I gasped. “It was an accident. I would never—”

“A prank, then? If that’s how you want to play things, then fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. The classroom suddenly felt tight and stifling.

Rather than answering me, he shook his head and stalked away through the flow of incoming students.

I turned my back to the room, so no one could see my face while I tried to regain my composure. I looked at the blue marker in my hand. It had been an accident. I’d been using that marker for the better part of an hour and must have slipped it into my pocket without thinking.

Cooper didn’t believe me. He thought so little of me that he assumed I would commit sabotage via petty marker theft—and on the first day.

Absolutely ridiculous. Utter bullshit.

I sucked in a deep breath to the count of four and blew it out.

In a few seconds, I would need to turn around and start the lesson. I needed to bring my A-game for the advanced students. They were counting on me. I would give myself two more breaths to get my shit together.

It took five breaths. The man was that exasperating.

But when I finally turned around, my flare of white-hot indignation had dulled to a low-simmering irritation. My signature smile was back in place, and I beamed at the twenty-one new faces. Immediately, I remembered why I was here and shoved all remaining thoughts of Cooper to the back of my mind.

“Welcome to Advanced Chemistry,” I called brightly. “We have a lot of material to cover over the next sixteen weeks, so we’re going to get started right away reviewing what you learned last year in Fun Chem. I’m Ms. Burke, and I’ll be your teacher for this term. A little something about me is that I love chemistry jokes and will be telling them periodically…”

The words came more easily than they had this morning. Perhaps it was because they had been studying chemistry longer, but this group of students felt more locked in. Their posture was straighter, more attentive, and several of them raised their hands when I asked questions. A few even laughed at my jokes. More and more of the tension in my chest and shoulders loosened as the period progressed.