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His laugh is mirthless. “Oh, so now becauseIdon’t want to go on a date withyou, I’m abusive. That’s laying it pretty thick, don’t you think?”
“Well, you haven’t hit me, but the other words in the song? Liar? Pathetic? Alone? Yeah.”
His sneer dims as my words hit their mark. Stepping back, I retrieve Trusty, taking slight comfort in the sight of the threadbare fabric, the pressure of the worn straps settling onto my shoulders as I stand as tall as I can. I might be leaning onto my toes as I stare down his arrogance. Anger checks the burning in my eyes. There will be time for that later. “I’m sorry to have taken so much of your time and for my many faults. I do appreciate you helping me graduate, but I won’t trouble you any longer.”
Or ever again.
Chapter 23
Good Riddance
Noah leaned against the table,watching Grace walk away and feeling rather proud of himself.
The pit in his stomach had to be hunger.
He sat back down in his chair, allowing plenty of time for Grace to clear the area and pretending to check his phone as his thoughts spun. She would pass her class and graduate, securing a job guiding rich people several yards from their fancy cars to some hardcore glamping, and never think of him again.
Usually Noah’s first impressions were spot-on. He rarely expected anything from anyone, and they therefore rarely disappointed. Humans were a predictably unreliable lot. But Ryan had built up his expectations for Grace before their date, and the first time Noah had seen her—the very first time—it had been like sunshine after a long rain. Fresh. Warming. Hopeful.
There she’d been, playing with her sister’s baby on the floor, smiling and laughing and blissfully unaware of his reaction to her. The clouds that typically shrouded his mind had parted as their eyes met. He smiled. She smiled. The fortifications around his heart had opened a little, topossibility.
Then she’d stood to meet him, andSLAM.
She had slapped her shutters closed and refused to let him see any more of that light, refused to connect with him, refused to acknowledge him as anything more than the flat tire on their double date. It was unexpected so soon in their acquaintance, but he knew what to do with rejection. He’d wrapped the hurt in a thick blanket of resentment and buried it with his other baggage.
Clearly, Ryan had been wrong about her.
The second time Noah had seen Grace was more like blinding winter sunlight through the fog of a developing inversion: indirect, glaring, more annoying than warm. His old, blanketed sliver of resentment had remembered Grace the moment she stepped into the math lab, though it had taken his eyes and brain longer to accept. When she’d refused to recognize him, the sliver had morphed into a living thing with an ugly head and a voracious appetite.
He had made a choice, in that moment when she’d unknowingly reintroduced herself and held out a self-serving-disguised-as-friendly hand. He would tutor her—he needed the money—but he wouldnotlike it, and he would definitely not let on that he knew her. He would use the time to catalog every lousy, miserable fault she had and feed it to his resentment.
Like her snarky playfulness. Ithadto be fake. No one felt that happy all the time. Even when the math had been exceptionally frustrating, she had always presented him with that irritating, definitely fake smile that somehow transformed her fairly average face into something more—especially when she teased him by pretending she understood less than she actually did. When that happened, the smile spread into her eyes and made them sparkle in a way Noah had thought was confined to cheap novels.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t.
Surely her attitude resulted directly from her idyllic background. Her life must have been so blissfully trial-free that she knew nothing of sadness or pain. That would explain the annoying good humor. Maintaining his dislike for her through all that cheerfulness hadn’t been difficult since he considered bubbly people annoying as a matter of principle.
She’s not annoying like Amy.
The thought rang true, but he shoved it aside, focusing on how spoiled Grace was, taking all those easy classes and not even holding a job. He knew from a few things Ryan had said that her family was well-off. Grace had enrolled in a bunch of meaningless classes to fill out her final semester around the required math with no worry over how to pay for such wastefulness. Noah cared too little about fashion to know what her clothes cost, but if he were a betting man, he’d wager that her understated style didn’t come cheap. Her ridiculous named backpackwasbeaten and threadbare, but she probably kept it out of novelty rather than an inability to replace it. If anything, that proved even more how spoiled she was. Keeping something well past its expiration date was a choice for her, not a necessity. She’d neverwantedfor anything, let alone had to work for it.
Speaking of work, since when hadrecreationcounted as a career? Grace was bright, even if she wasn’t mathematically gifted. Only someone immature and spoiled would spend time and money pursuing a degree in having fun. Degrees should be difficult and demanding—like his own Master of Accounting program was.
Then there was her nosiness. Every week she had poked and prodded and provoked him, trying to force him into giving her information about his personal life that was none of her business. And all the details she’d dropped about herself—though he had paid as little attention as possible—were of no interest to him.
However, ignoring her details had become increasingly difficult when he’d bumped into her off campus. Forgetting how she’d looked trail running or in that Halloween getup was just not possible. Simple math became challenging when images of her strong legs or the dark-chocolate waves in her hair danced about in his head, taunting him. Even the stars mocked him, conjuring images of her huddled up against the cold around a telescope with her perfect father.
In spite of Grace’s physical attractiveness, it was her dogged mental efforts in math that had really threatened Noah’s armor of resentment. From the first day of tutoring it had been clear to him that she had no confidence in her ability to manipulate variables, regardless of the ease with which she managed calculations. Yet, unlike others he had tutored, she’d refused to settle for memorizing steps or simply arriving at the right answer, insisting on understandingwhycertain problems were approached certain ways,whyshe had to follow the order of operations,whyshe needed to learn algebra at all. He reluctantly conceded that she’d shown a remarkable level of determination for one so obviously coddled.
He could give her that, but no more.
Besides, in light of the self-centered and thoughtless behavior he’d witnessed on their date, even her determination became a fault. He’d never felt as invisible in his life as when she had resolved to ignore him that night, and that was saying something.
At least he’d made some money off the tutoring—enough to supplement what he’d earned working construction over the summer and generating some welcome slack in his tight budget.
If only he hadn’t caved in a moment of weakness and talked about his father. That must have been why she’d asked him out—a courtesy date for the poor tutor with no dad to take him stargazing or anywhere else.
Well, Noah wasn’t about to be anyone’s charity case, least of all hers.
