‘What do I want?’ He stepped closer, the strap of my backpack still caught in his fist, the muscles in his neck bulging and his nostrils flaring like a bull on the verge of charging. ‘I want to make you pay for that little stunt in auto shop. I want to bring the pain and make you bleed and cry like the little bitch you are.’
I narrowed my eyes. The hell. ‘You might be able to make me bleed, but you’ll never make me cry. Crying is for cowards who can’t fight without the help of their bitches.’ I indicated his mates with a jerk of my chin, and they bristled. One of them growled.
Then a teacher rounded the corner. She slowed a bit, like she was assessing the details of the scene from a distance before judging what was taking place.
Wynn dropped my strap and sneered. ‘I’ll be watchin’ you, assface. There won’t always be someone around to save you from the whoppin’ you deserve.’ He bumped my shoulder as he passed.
LUCAS
I checked my email, expecting nothing important. Mostly, I planned to scrap the draft to Jackie about dropping the class, since that no longer applied. I did delete that message – but not for the expected reason.
Two emails stood out from the half dozen others, as if they’d been highlighted. One was from Heller – subject line: Jacqueline Wallace. The other … was from JWallace.
I opened Heller’s first.
Landon,
The above referenced student is currently enrolled in the econ section you tutor. She’s missed a couple of weeks of class, unfortunately including the midterm. She intends to salvage her grade, and to that end, I’m allowing her to replace the midterm grade with a research project (information attached). I’ve given her your email address and told her she must contact you to get started. Before your sense of justice goes into overdrive, know that the project will require quite a bit more work than the missed exam, so she’s not escaping easily. (Neither am I, since I’ll have to grade the damned thing when she’s finished. She’s apparently suffered something comparable to Carlie’s recent trouble, though, and after watching my daughter self-destruct a bit before finally bobbing back to the surface, I have renewed sympathy for emotionally distressed students.) I imagine she’ll need individual tutoring to catch up on the new material before the third exam. If she fails to do what I’ve asked of her, she’ll simply receive whatever grade she’s earned at the end of the semester. I’m requesting that you assist her insofar as your tutoring duties extend, but she must complete the work alone. Hopefully she’ll give her academic career precedence over some idiot boy in the future.
CH
I reread Heller’s email. Twice.
She and Moore were broken up, but she hadn’t dropped the class.
She was no longer Moore’s girlfriend, but she was still my student.
She’d nearly thrown a gear when she saw me across the counter at the Starbucks this afternoon – which didn’t exactly indicate awareness that the guy who’d beat up her assailant Saturday night was also the tutor in her economics class. My email address was an ambiguous LMaxfield.
‘Son of a bitch,’ I said to Francis, earning me a yawn combined with a meow.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t care.
But I did.
Dear Mr Maxfield,
Dr Heller told me to contact you regarding a research project for macroeconomics that he wants me to complete. I missed two weeks of class after an unexpected breakup, which means I also missed the midterm. I know that doesn’t excuse me for skipping classes, however. I’ll do my best to complete the project and catch up on the new material as quickly as possible. Please let me know when you’re available and what additional information you need from me.
Thank you,
Jacqueline Wallace
I shot an answer back immediately, informing her that I didn’t need to know the reasons she’d skipped class, and suggesting when and where we could meet.
Things my answer shouldn’t have done, but did: (1) It made me sound like an asshole. An insensitive, superior asshole. (2) Who didn’t care that her heart had been broken by an actual asshole. (3) It was signed LM. (4) It made me sound like an asshole.
I shut my laptop and paced around the apartment, earning a dirty look from my cat, who’d probably never had girl problems – because he accepted that he was a self-governing asshole who refused to become emotionally attached. I’d aspired to that since I was sixteen, and thought I was something of an expert.
Pulling to a halt, I realized I’d slid halfway down the rabbit hole before I knew I was falling. I didn’t just want this girl. I cared about her. I’d wanted to destroy that guy Saturday night – I wanted to hit him until he’d never get up, and if she hadn’t made a noise in the truck, I might have done just that.
Fucking hell.
I sat back down and reopened the laptop. Minutes later, my inbox alert chimed.
I’d pissed her off. That much was clear. She told me she tutored at the middle school, but didn’t say what she tutored. Then she wrote: I’m sure I can catch up on the regular coursework on my own. She signed off as Jacqueline, not Jackie.
Throwing on shorts and a T-shirt, I assessed and reassessed every nuance of her message, looking for an opening – a place to change course. My thoughts in a jumble, I laced up my running shoes and jogged down the steps. I would pound the pavement under my feet until I either eliminated her from my mind or came up with a solution.
I couldn’t tell her through email that I was the guy from Saturday night. She was afraid of that guy, but she needed me to pass econ. She’d know as soon as we met up, of course. My only hope was to convince her, as the class tutor, that she could trust me.
Switching to Jacqueline instead of Ms Wallace, I suggested a meeting time and added a postscript: What do you tutor?
Her next email kicked my ass, because it opened with Landon. She must have got that from Heller. No one else on campus called me by the name I’d discarded when I left home at eighteen. Shit.
I concentrated on the rest of her message, where I learned she played the upright bass. The thought of her magical fingers coaxing music from an instrument that was roughly my height made my body tighten.
I needed another run and a much colder shower than the one I’d just taken.
After discovering that our schedules wouldn’t coordinate easily, and in the interest of not scaring her away completely – at least, that’s what I told myself – I offered to send her the information through email and conduct our tutoring sessions online for the time being.