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“She seems nice,” Connor said as we sat back down, gaze drawn in the direction she’d walked. “You two sound alike.”
“The extent of our similarities,” I replied, picking up my near-finished paper rose and turning it over in my grip. One of the creases was off by a millimeter, but it would require re-folding. “Once you’re finished, flip to the homework section and we’re going to problems one, five, and ten.” That way, there’d be a varied difficulty level he’d be working with.
“But we didn’t go over—”
“Trust me,” I said firmly. He had one elbow planted on the tabletop and his head propped into his hand, fingers woven through his hair. Those hazel eyes were already on me. “I want to see if you can work through them.”
I waited for his skepticism, but it didn’t come. His stare felt probing and curious, like there was a math equation written on my forehead he was tasked to solve. “You know, you let Alex off the hook a lot easier than I thought you would today. All because you secretly tried out for the cheer squad once upon a time?”
My stomach did a somersault, a stumbling one that almost didn’t stick the landing. “You must not have heard the part where I said Ididn’t.”
“Jade’s not a liar.”
Ha, was it bad that I doubted that? “So you’re sayingI’mone?”
“I’m saying you let Alex off the hook awfully easy.” Connor lifted his chin so he could size me up. “He hurt your feelings.”
“And he apologized.”
“But it hurts. It hurts when the people we trust the most betray us. It’s allowed to upset you.”
I hated how he could tell. Even though we were practically strangers, he could see straight into me, past all the defenses I built as if they were made of glass. Feeling exposed with anyone wasn’t fun, but I hated that out of everyone at Brentwood High, I felt exposed withhim.
Connor flipped his pencil around between his fingers, much like a drummer might twirl a drumstick.
“Problems one, five, and ten,” I said, slamming the door shut on the conversation and turning back to my origami. My fingers trembled as I unfolded the paper, starting from the beginning. “I want to see if you can do them.”
He listened to me this time, flipping back open his notebook and using the eraser of his pencil to trace the problem. The first thing he did was copy down the problem onto the paper, and then from there, he began to simplify the equation, pencil scrawling in slow spurts. We both worked in silence, but I kept a careful eye on the progress, trying my best to translate the upside-down numbers and variables.
It took him a few minutes, but soon he finished the three problems and turned the notebook for me to see.
“You didn’t factor the exponent correctly in number five,” I told him, pointing at the error. “You dropped it in the second round of simplifying. But otherwise, the rest of them are right.”
Connor nodded a little, scrubbing his eraser across the page to try again. “It wasn’t that much different from the last section.”
I turned the notebook back toward him. “I think it has something to do with writing things down,” I said, tapping on his notebook. “You’re able to visualize things clearer after you write them down, right? I think that’s going to really help you here. Writing down the intro instructions can help you remember the steps when it comes time to solve the problems. Have you ever done that before with math?”
Connor eyed the book like it’d transformed in the blink of an eye, turning from a simple book to something akin to a wild animal. “No, I’ve never copied the instructions down.”
“It’s not going to be the magic fix-all for understanding stuff, but I think it’s something that will help.” I sorted through the slick pages of the textbook to the next section, doing a quick scan of the topic. “Let’s do the same with this part since you have that previous section covered.Polynomial functions. Copy down the instructions on this page now.”
We worked a bit longer than our normal hour today since we had so much to go over. Connor copied down expression for expression in terms of instructions, and when he didn’t have questions, I passed the time by folding paper roses. The silence, though, gave me time for my mind to wander, straying off the path ofhere and now. When I caught myself thinking about things—like Madison and the Most Likely To list—I jerked back to the present like my thoughts were on a leash.
He ended up having a bit more trouble with this section, the polynomials confusing him more than the previous simplifying. Even so, we finished up two sections by the end of our tutoring session, which left me feeling more confident about his progress than before.
Once the hour was up, Connor began packing up his supplies, and I gathered the four paper roses I’d made. Two of them I’d attempted to fold with a piece of paper that wasn’t square, so the outcome was a bit lumpy, making it destined for the trash can. “How are you feeling with everything?” I asked him. “What’s your confidence level like?”
“Better after today, I guess. Writing things down beforehand helped. Some things are still confusing, though.”
“Which is okay. Practice makes perfect. You can work on some of those equations as homework if you’d like, but no pressure. We have two weeks to go through everything.”
He nodded a little, and then his demeanor changed. His relaxed posture straightened as he sat forward, stacking his hands underneath his chin, and giving me his undivided attention. His hazel eyes were bright underneath the gallery’s lights, and from this distance, they came off more green than brown. “Have you ever tried playing hard to get with Alex?”
Jeez, that subject change nearly gave me whiplash. Was this our segue into his tutoring session now? I simultaneously wanted him to drop the whole “love advice” play and wanted to hear what tip he’d have for me this time. “Playing games is stupid.”
“Depends on the game. Some guys like the chase. After almost a year of being together, maybe heneedsmore of a chase. You shouldn’t have let go of Friday so easily.”
We were back to that? “So, what? I should’ve been a jerk about it?”
