Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

4

Grayson

Idon’t get nervous.

Nerves are a bodily reaction to stress. Simple as that. Your mind perceives what it thinks to be a threat, so it throws up its defenses in overdrive. An increased production of adrenaline and hormones leads to a primitive set of physiological responses, all of which are naturally designed to manage the pressure of the situation you find yourself stuck in.

It’s fight or flight. Basic biology.

Flipping the page, I barely scan it before checking the door to the library study room. It’s exactly where I left it. Propped open two and a half inches.

When I return to my textbook, spread out on the table, I blink. How did I finish that chapter so quickly? Oh, wait. I skipped ahead two pages. I go back, the edge of a sheet sticking to my hand. Wiping my palm on my knee, I verify, once more, that the door is still open an exact two and a half inches.

Moving to an unfamiliar home, starting a new school, standardized tests, public speaking—those things don’t affect me like they used to. Not since I realized why they made me react the way they did. Once you realize that those things—stress, nerves, worries—are all in your head, regulating those natural impulses becomes practicable. You can control your body’s instinct to fight. To take any sudden urge to run and cut it off at the knees. Remind yourself that you’re not actually afraid. You’re not in danger. You have no reason to be apprehensive. You’re getting worked up over a psychosomatic reflex.

You’re not nervous.

I pick up a pen to take notes. Two minutes later, I realize I’m rapidly clicking the cap against the table and staring at the door. I stop doing both.

It’s just the brain—an influx of chemicals—trying to protect you for going a little outside your comfort zone.

So I reiterate: I do not get nervous.

For fuck’s sake, it’s just tutoring. This is my comfort zone.

I throw the pen down and grab my book. Leaning back, I prop one foot on the edge of the table to keep my tilted chair steady. Textbook settled on my thigh, I keep my mind and my eyes resolutely fixed on that, instead of wandering back to the door.

Soon, it works. While I’m lost in paragraphs on curation and annotation, quality control and structure prediction, my breathing evens and the jumping pulse in my wrist decides to chill the fuck out.

A small, flat object slips from the gutter onto my lap when I turn another page. I hold it up for inspection. Asymmetrical folded edges. Wings bent at irregular angles, making it appear like the animal it’s supposed to resemble has three heads.

Apparently, Natalie took up origami over the summer break. So she explained to me just outside the library, where I’d run into her and Morris between classes and she’d tried to sneak the paper crane into the back pocket of my jeans.

After complaining about how particularly non-appreciative I was of her groping my ass, she’d tucked the tiny craft into my text as a bookmark instead. Adding, “If you’re not going to let Theo help with the car, then I thought this could help.”

I hadn’t had time to look at it, on account that Morris hastily ushered them along. He, too, hadn’t seemed that keen on her wayward handsiness. So they’d left, with Natalie calling back one last, “Just think about it. Oh! And when you’re done studying, we’re all meeting at Kellermann’s for lunch.”

I haven’t told either of them yet that I’ve found another solution for the car

More like, she found me.

Two subjects. At one hundred bucks a lesson. Allowing for multiple meetings a week, in an estimated sixteen-week college semester, adding extra for midterms and final exams, subtracting for holidays…

I’ve run the math over and over.

It’s more than enough. More than enough and thensome. To build up my savings again. To buy the parts I need to fix my car, or new lenses that don’t make me squint. To cover more expenses, like phone bills and insurance and gas—those small things that seem so inconsequential to some, but for me, added up, means making a decision about what meals to skip that week.

I never conceived of pulling all that off in a single semester.

Then again, it never occurred to me that the answer to all my problems would seek me out wearing a dress dotted with tiny purple flowers.

Which is completely immaterial. I shake that detail away and unfold Natalie’s bookmark.

It’s a flyer. One I recognize, since it had been hanging up in Prescott Hall right outside my first class this morning. For the Prescott internship.

I’d laugh at the irony. If that pang of longing didn’t strike me right in the chest again.

Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.

“—should have thought of that before you signed up.”

At once, all of me snaps. Blood rushes through arteries. Moisture collects on palms. Air comes in quick, short inhales. And my attention, before so thoroughly distracted, fixates entirely on the door.

A glimpse of yellow. A shock of pink. That’s all I can see of the figure making her way down the hall, even as her voice grows louder. That same voice from the other day at the check-out counter downstairs. The one that so defiantly dictated, You’re wrong.

“—not my problem that you hate dogs, Courtney. I promised the rescue kennel a set number of volunteers, and that’s what they’re gonna get—”

I brace my other foot on the table edge. Lean further back to peek out the door.

“—if you’re that concerned, find someone to switch with you. Otherwise, put on your big girl panties and—”

I crane my neck.

It’s too much. Stretching the limits of static stability. Tilting a perfectly balanced center of gravity right over the edge of equilibrium. Net forces shift. Momentum rolls. And I—

The door opens.

—go crashing down.

Ouch.

Fuck.

“You know, Rowe, I’ve had guys fall at my feet before, but never quite so literally.”

Frozen as I am with mortification, at least I can’t see Summer’s expression when she squats next to me. My glasses flew off the second my chair went rolling back. I keep my blurry gaze solely on her feet and not on the bend of her knees or how she tucks her coral skirt under shapely thighs. Squinting, I can just barely make out her sending a look somewhere below my neck, while she pockets her cell phone.

“Nice shirt,” she says.

I resist the urge to button the shirt over my tee (Think like a proton. Stay positive!) and scowl at her feet instead. “Did you know wearing heels significantly increases pressure on calf muscles and can shorten the Achilles tendon?”

“Yep,” she replies. “And I’ve made my peace with it. Have you seen how fantastic my ass looks?”

I don’t have an answer for that any more than I did her previous remark. Sitting up, I make a concerted effort to not glance in the direction of said part of her body by searching the floor for my glasses. When I put them on and the world once again takes visible shape, I finally look at her.

And instantly wish I was still half-blind.

All weekend, I told myself I’d imagined it. That I misremembered our first encounter. That I built her up in my mind, like a modern Pygmalion enamored with his own creation. So I downplayed my expectations for today’s session. No way could she be as pretty as I originally thought.

I’m mistaken.

She’s much prettier.

For once, I curse my ability to notice. Because I can’t help but look at Summer and observe one immediate, arresting detail.

Curves.

Everywhere. Just. Curves.

Notice one, you can’t help but notice more. The inverted slope of her neck, skating into sun-kissed shoulders against a sleeveless ivory top. A delicate, gradual sweep of collarbones, winding to the shadowy hollow at the base of her throat. Inviting swerves and dips and swells, from the rise of her breasts and the fall of her waist and rounded hips thereafter. Butter-blonde curls, a veritable cascade of swirls and twists and spirals. Every inch of her, a series of continuously flowing points and parabolic arcs and flawless curvature.

Never before have I wanted so much to lay a woman down and trace the pure geometry of her. Translate the lines of her body into quadratic function. Entangle math and beauty in a mass of lips and limbs and breath and being.

It’s just your brain.

But telling myself that doesn’t stop the fluttery feeling low in my abdomen as I draw my gaze to her face. Oval chin. Upturned nose. Round, rosy cheeks. Plump, pink lips in a perfect bow. Silver eyes accentuated by half-moon lashes, dark and lush. One pale eyebrow in a model arch as she reads over a piece of green paper.

I do a double-take. Shit. The internship flyer. I pluck the sheet out of her hand.

She frowns. “Gonna toss your hat in the ring?”

Folding the paper into uniform rectangles, I tuck it into my chest pocket. “I might.”

Those curved eyebrows narrow into angled lines. “Seems pretty ambitious.”

“I’m pretty smart.”

“It’ll take more than facts to impress Nolan Prescott.”

“I’m also pretty impressive.”

“And modest, to boot,” Summer wryly murmurs. “Never mind, Rowe. Apply. You’ll do great. There’s nothing egomaniacs like more than someone else who’s absolutely full of himself. Birds of a feather.”

“How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That Prescott’s an egomaniac.”

For a moment, she blinks at me with a straight stare. Then she shrugs, “Aren’t all rich assholes?”

Since my personal experience amounts only to high school bullies and frat tutees too hungover to show up for lessons—I can’t say I disagree. Besides, I’ve never bothered much with reading articles on Nolan Prescott or watching interviews of the guy. I care less about him and more about the advancements his company’s made to the prosthetics field. I’m all about the science.

Not that I can explain any of this to Summer, since she immediately interrupts when I open my mouth, holding up the textbook I’d been studying.

“Now what,” she says. “Is bioinformatics?”

I can’t help myself. Too eagerly, I launch into professor mode. “It’s this awesome blend of biology and computer science, where we take analysis and development of large datasets—I’m talking huge. Like these giant datasets that are incredibly complex and…”

Halfway into rendering an explanation of genomes with my hands, I glance up, only to find Summer’s eyes glazed over.

Shit. I’m doing it again.

See, Superman has kryptonite. Daredevil hates loud noises. Storm has severe claustrophobia. And while I may not have super strength, heightened senses, or the ability to control the weather, I do have one weakness.

Questions.

When you know so many things like I do, you tend to have a lot of answers. Answers that you want to explain to the fullest. Because knowledge is so vast and engrossing, and well, they asked, so they probably want to know, too. So you start explaining, and then you get absorbed in the topic, and once that happens, you want to dissect every aspect of it—to the point that you forget not everyone has the same thirst for knowing things that you do.

Summer doesn’t care about software methods and molecular biology. And I’ll look like a fool prattling on while she sits there, bored out of her skull. In fact, when I think back to the way she so eagerly asked, I’d almost think she was trying to distract me.

Well, duh, no one but you actually looks forward to studying.

I take the text from her and stand, righting my chair. “We should start our lesson.”

When she blinks this time, it rids the dullness from her gaze, and she stands, brushing her skirt and setting an oversized purse on a chair. From it, she drops two textbooks onto the table. Since stats is closest, I sit down and pull it over.

The spine creaks in protest when I open the cover. Brand new. I push back the memory of her holding my bioinfo text. A library copy. Three years out of date and with one corner peeling apart.

Scowling, I flip through the introduction. “We can start with the basics.”

But when I raise my head to the chair across from me, it’s empty.

Summer slowly paces the length of the table. Trailing her fingertips on the beige study room wall, she rounds to the window. After peering out it, she turns and leans with her elbows back on the sill. Waving one hand, she tells me, “I couldn’t agree more. Year and major.”

My hands halt their flipping. “What?”

“Your year, Rowe,” she repeats, slowly. “And your major. What are they?”

“Not relevant.”

“I’d argue the contrary.”

She crosses one tanned leg over the other. Mouth dry, I swallow and glance down. The title of the first textbook chapter shifts under my gaze.

No, wait. That’s my fingers. I let go, flattening the page with my hand to hide its sudden unsteadiness.

It’s just stress and chemicals. Adrenaline and hormones. Definitely hormones. But the kind best dealt with alone. Preferably in the shower.

“It’s only fair that I confirm your credentials,” Summer continues. “My little sis recommended you, but she’s being a thorn in my ass about—”

“You have a sister?”

“Sorority.”

Of course she’s in a sorority. How did I not figure that out myself?

Because you’re distracted. By legs and hips and curls and curves.

“Liz Parry? You tutored her in o-chem.”

I draw a blank. Despite being able to recite, from memory, the first hundred numbers of pi, I’m terrible with names and faces. To be perfectly honest—I skim my memory—Yeah, I’ve already forgotten Summer’s last name.

Summer waits expectantly. Rather than confess I don’t have a clue who she’s talking about, I say, “Forty-six percent of Lakewood students are members of the Greek life system.”

“Tell me about it,” Summer rolls her eyes. “We’re crawling all over this place.”

Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitches. Running a hand over that burgeoning grin, I lean back in my chair and return to her original question. “Senior. Pursuing a dual-degree with a double major in chemical engineering and computer science—”

“A dual-degree.” Her eyebrow does that arching thing again. “You’re simultaneously completing your Bachelor’s and Masters. In four years. With two majors.”

“In addition, I’ve been enrolled in the honors program since freshman year, and I’ve made the Dean’s List for six consecutive semesters.”

“You really weren’t kidding about being ambitious, huh?”

“And aside from tutoring an average of fifty students per year on subjects like mathematics and science,” I level her a look, tapping a knuckle on the stats textbook. “Last summer, I was an intern for an industrial biotech company developing sustainable and cost-effective consumer products.”

Summer swears.

“I could also tell you about—”

“Nope,” she throws her hands up in surrender. “You’ve more than proved you’re qualified. I get it, Rowe. You’re really fucking smart.”

And I can’t help but release a full smirk now. I’ve worked hard to get to where I am, to prove myself worthy of that description.

Fifty. Twenty-five. Three.

Really fucking smart. Damn fucking right.

“All right, well, what about you? Any siblings?” Summer pushes herself off the windowsill and props her arms on the back of a chair. “Or were you specially engineered in a lab?”

“No siblings.”

“Where you from?”

“Here and there.”

“Parents move around a lot?”

“Are you always this nosy?”

She shrugs a bare shoulder. “Humor me.”

I lift my own eyebrow at her persistent stare. Where the hell did this examination come from? Why is she so intent on knowing these things? Personal things? We’re ten minutes deep into a lesson that has yet to begin, and she’s so obviously trying to sidetrack me. It’s irritating.

Because it isn’t actually all that irritating.

Her inquisitiveness… it’s enthralling.

And therein lies the problem. It shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be this captivated. I should be moving this lesson along, not giving in to each question. Whatever… this is, it’s concerning, and I need to put an end to it.

So, I bluntly tell her, “I grew up in the system.”

“I was joking about the lab.”

“Foster care.”

“Oh.” She straightens, arms slipping until only her hands grip the chair’s edge.

I wait for her to look away, to change the subject and finally focus on studying, all the while sending me uncertain glances that she thinks I won’t notice but which I most assuredly will. That’s the reaction I get most of the time. People who don’t know how to react, who become hesitant, though they’d been easy-going around me before. It’s not great, but I vastly prefer it to the patronizing well-wishers who apologize, like they had a part in my experience, or tell me how strong I am, like I had any control over the situation, either.

Honestly, though, I’ll take anything over pity.

That reaction’s the fucking worst.

Except…

Summer doesn’t look away. Both her eyebrows raise this time, like she’s taken back that I would so candidly admit it. But her eyes never leave mine, and mine never leave hers. That pewter gaze holds mine like a magnet.

Pewter isn’t a magnetic alloy, a distant part of me recognizes, and I immediately tell it to shut up because Summer’s perfectly curved lips part to ask, “Would you be interested in volunteering?”

Before I can respond, Summer bounces in a flurry of activity. Pacing back, she grabs her gigantic purse and drops not into the chair across the table, but the one right beside mine. She rummages through her bag. “We—my sorority, that is—I do work with the local library, and there’s this group home—Hold on, I have an information sheet about it—”

I’m overwhelmed. By her response. By her, close enough that I catch a faint trace of roses on the air when she tosses an errant curl over her shoulder. By my body’s own reflexes to her nearness—sweaty palms and that racing pulse and a sudden blockage in my throat.

“If you—”

“You’re wasting my time.” I snap.

She freezes, midway through pulling out a piece of paper, and raises a narrowed gaze to mine. Something flashes over her face. Insult? Disappointment? Hurt? It’s gone in a moment, too quick for me to decode. I look away. Concentrate on the textbook splayed before me.

“Okay,” and she stretches it into two separate syllables. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her return the paper to her purse and let that fall to the floor with a thunk. With one heel, she pushes on the carpet, swiveling her chair. “Then I guess we should start studying, huh?”

Morris would say I’m being rude. Even I can tell I’m bordering on harsh. Establishing a tension between us because I can’t get a grip on my own strained reaction to her.

I’ve long since mastered my body’s response to the unfamiliar, and I can do it again. Starting now. Even if Summer is the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever met, I need to treat her like any other tutee.

I need to ignore that she makes me forget that I don’t get nervous.

Yet… as she digs out a notebook from her purse, I decide to soften the rigidity in the air. To ask questions about her, so she knows I’m not totally blowing off her curiosity. In a gentler tone, I ask, “So what about your family?”

Summer reaches over and flips her stats book shut.

“Not math.”

I immediately bristle. “What’s wrong with math?”

“It sucks, Rowe. At least in chemistry, shit blows up,” her nose wrinkles in disgust. “When am I ever gonna use stats in real life? It’s dumb. Numbers are boring.”

I can’t quite put my finger on why—

Maybe it’s the way she continuously detracts from getting any work done.

Maybe it’s the way she pestered me for details about my life, then so obviously dodged when questions were thrown at her.

Maybe it is just my nerves, stretched to the breaking point.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s the absolute derision in her voice when she says numbers are boring.

—But something inside me snaps.

I can’t do this.

“I quit.”

Surging to my feet, I grab my studying materials and my bioinfo text, and sweep everything into my backpack. Without a backwards glance, I stride out the door.

Impatience, exasperation, anger—they all boil through me, so that I blink, and suddenly, I’m outside the library. Walking in a red-fogged daze, treading an unknown path with leaden feet. I take a moment, removing my glasses to rub my eyes and try to calm the jumpiness under my skin.

Shit.

I let myself go. Let emotion rule over logic. Allowed chemicals and blood and muscles to act fast, instead of urging my brain to fucking think. And now my little outburst has cost me a hundred bucks and I’ll have to ask Morris for help with my car and fuck, I—

Footsteps pound on the sidewalk.

“You quit?” Summer hisses behind me. “You can’t just quit, Rowe. I’m paying you.”

I turn, and there she is, swaying hips on stomping heels. She hikes her purse over her shoulder and crosses her arms over her chest. Silver eyes meet mine, indignant, as though I owe her servitude.

Emotion comes rushing back.

“Numbers,” I start, and she stiffens at my tone. “Are not boring. Numbers explain our universe. Numbers provide reason and objectivity; they give order in a world of chaos. Numbers make up our entire fucking lives, Summer.”

I step forward, right up to her. Bold in my determination to make her understand. My hard stare pierces hers, as silver eyes grow into large circles. Her lips part, and ever so slightly, she shakes her head from side to side. Like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Like she’s not entirely sure what’s happening, what to make of my rant—the same way I’m not sure what to make of her, with that hair and those heels and all those damn curves.

“Rowe,” she says.

“How else do you count your age? Or your shoe size?” Her toes curl when my eyes flit down to them. “Without numbers, food has no expiration date. Medicine has no dosage. Computers—your phone—wouldn’t exist. Money has no value. Do you get that? Money means nothing.”

Her gaze shifts over my shoulder. I didn’t think it possible, but those pewter eyes grow even wider.

“Rowe,” she says again, more urgently.

But I’m not finished. “Everything’s left to chance without numbers. Life becomes unpredictable. Nothing has worth. There’s no meaning to anything. And without that, then what is the fucking point—”

“Grayson.”

“What?”

“Kiss me.”

Before I can even process that or voice aloud anything resembling words, Summer reaches out. Grabs my shirt collar. Yanks my head down.

And kisses me.

As far as kisses go, this one is…

Clumsy. A tangle of mouths and teeth and bumping noses. And glasses. I cringe, trying to pull away, but her hands keep our lips smushed together. So I readjust. Tilt my head the slightest degree. Move to a more comfortable angle.

I feel Summer pause and realize my eyes are closed. I blink, eyelashes drifting open, only to catch hers fluttering close. She leans into me, her grip on my shirt loosening. Fingers press gingerly into my chest. Her lips part under mine—

“Hey, Summer!” a voice interrupts.

She jumps, knocking my glasses off entirely. As I scramble to fetch them, she turns to this newcomer, a blur of more pink and more blonde.

“Hey, Iris,” Summer says. “This is Grayson.”

I replace my glasses. At the same time Summer loops her arm through mine, tugs me closer, and announces, “My boyfriend.”