Slide
I’m a little keyed-up when my next golf class approaches, trying to crush the crush that’s strategically assaulting the no-dating-teachers barrier. While my more reasonable half knows Ethan fits squarely in the No zone, the lonely/silly/hopeful half keeps lobbing thoughts like, Class only lasts half a semester and But you’re the same age and What are they going to do, kick you out? It’s your last semester!
That last one makes me laugh—until I remember the math quiz I failed yesterday. The sobering fact that I might actually require another semester reinforces the seawall I’m constructing against the threat of Ethan’s charm. Risking my graduation on a silly crush would be beyond stupid. I can appreciate his attention without getting attached.
Right?
I mentally smack myself in the forehead—I don’t want to make a spectacle as I arrive at the driving range—and hope the effect is sufficient to keep my barrier intact.
It’s not unusual that Ethan isn’t here before class starts, so I grab my driver and start swinging, enjoying the heat on my back and the intermittent pings and thwacks of irons and woods around me. At five after the hour, he still hasn’t arrived. Surveying the area while I’m teeing up another ball, I notice a middle-aged woman coming our way. It’s like she’s walked straight out of the framed picture in the clubhouse—the one right next to the plaque bearing the name Patti Johnson and the list of top finishes she had on the LPGA tour.
“I’m Patti,” she says as if we didn’t know. “Sorry I’m late—got stuck on a phone call.”
“Where’s Ethan?” the girl to my left—the same girl who needed Ethan’s extensive help last week with her grip and swing—asks, looking and sounding like someone stole her puppy. Maybe if she hadn’t been batting her eyelashes so forcefully, she would have hit the ball more than half the time. I should think of her as a woman, but honestly, she looks a little young for my brother Kaden—and he’s not quite done with high school. Anyway, I’m thankful she asks before I can make a similar fool of myself.
“Tournament this week in Phoenix. He’ll be back Monday.” Patti says this with a compassionate smirk at Eyelashes—who, I remind myself, I need to make an effort to get to know. Her name would be a good start. Patti clearly understands and doesn’t seem to mind that she is the second-choice instructor, which makes me instantly like her. “Get out your 7-iron and let’s see where we are.”
We spend the whole hour with that club, Patti moving efficiently from student to student, making suggestions and small corrections and offering encouragement. She really is a golf genius. I should be thrilled at the prospect of semiprivate lessons with her for the rest of the week, and a part of me is. A very small part. Which forces me to admit that the sturdy barrier I’ve been building against Ethan’s charm is more like one of those bead curtains from the 1970s—and that my enjoyment of this class thus far has more to do with Ethan than the course itself.
Is it shallow of me to miss his attention? Whether or not it is, I do miss it. Him?
Irritation—with Ethan for not mentioning his upcoming absence, with myself for caring—dogs me all the way to math lab and mixes with an increasingly realistic fear of failure in math. Not, perhaps, the best mindset to promote learning.
Noah waits at the same table as last week. “How was the quiz?” he asks.
“Super!” I say, pushing false cheer through my irritation as I open my laptop and log in. “I was nearly perfect!”
His expression lifts like he’s surprised I did so well, which fuels the fire. I pull up the file and turn my screen so he can see the carnage for himself, watching as his brows sink from mild surprise into a deep furrow of confusion. “Perfect? This is awful.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, tightening my grip on the emotional reins as my irritation slides toward anger, “I somehow managed to get the last question right and ruin the perfect zero, but it’s hard to be sure with true and false.”
The furrow stays, though his confusion morphs into something else. He doesn’t say anything.
“That was called sarcasm,” I say, my voice dripping with it. “I didn’t actually intend to get a zero, or I would have answered false on the last one.”
He doesn’t even flinch. “So what happened with the rest?”
“No idea,” I say, my comfortable blanket of sarcasm slipping. “I thought I did pretty well, considering my panic.”
“Why would you panic?” he asks, as if I actually meant to.
“I don’t know,” I say, dangerously close to dissolving into tears as I dig my fingernails into my palms, focusing on the bite of pain. Must. Stay. Mad.
Either he doesn’t notice my instability, or he ignores it. “Well, let’s go through it and see what happened.”
We rework all the questions and find each mistake—stupid things like missed negative signs and transcription errors. It’s ridiculous, and I no longer have to struggle to maintain irritation. I do know this stuff.
“The good news is I can see that you understood the concepts. You just need to be more careful.”
I scoff. “And the bad news?”
“The bad news is . . . you’re out of second chances. You’ll need to average above a C on everything else to pass.”
I’m sliding again, straight past anger and into despair.
“You can give up now.”
My slide comes to a halt. Only I am allowed to disparage my abilities. He’s actually being paid to help me, and he wants me to give up? I take a deep breath of the math lab–scented air, ready to tell him off.
“Or you can get to work.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms, a challenge in his eyes. “Your call.”
I glare at him, but his flat expression holds. Is he using reverse psychology? Appealing to my competitive nature? Or does he really want me to give up and walk out? My opinion leans to the last option, but the competitor in me won’t give up. Whatever his motive, my downward spiral has screeched to a stop, and I figure I’ll have to concede the staring match if we’re going to get anything done.
“Fine,” I say, snatching my laptop away from him and pulling up today’s assignment.
Betraying neither dismay nor satisfaction, Noah sits forward and we get to work, slogging through problems until he’s satisfied I won’t embarrass myself again on the next quiz. My emotions are steadier when we’ve finished, probably because my brain is fried.
“So,” I say, not ready to thank him for his heavy-handed methods but willing to admit they worked with a conversational peace offering. “How was your weekend?”
He looks at me like I’ve asked if I can chew on his shoe. “It was fine,” he says.
“I was thinking about going home,” I say, closing my laptop and loading it into Trusty, “but my brother Kaden—he’s a senior—had an away game and they decided to make a trip out of it.”
Noah doesn’t offer anything in return, just sits there with his mouth in a thin line, which makes mine take off like he’s asked for a full rundown of the clan.
“And then there’s Zach. He’s twelve, and I think he took all the math genes. He could do this in his sleep,” I say, picking up this week’s assignment and tucking it into my bag. “Do you have siblings?”
“I gotta go,” he says, picking up his stuff and bolting out of the room.
Alrighty then.