trying to be nice and say hi.”
“I’m surprised you had time to see anyone with that guy attached to your mouth all night.”
“Hey! It wasn’t all night.” And it wasn’t. We didn’t starting making out until two hours into the party, and then, yes, we carried on for the rest of the night, but honestly it was just because we didn’t have much to say to each other and it seemed like the logical thing to do.
He sighs, like I’m completely boring him. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, tutoring! I was thinking we should probably—”
“Deal’s off.”
Sorry—what?! “Excuse me?”
“I’m not tutoring you.”
I try to contain my temper. “Yes, you are. We agreed on it.”
“Well I changed my mind.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Look, I don’t know what your problem is with me.”
He just rolls his eyes.
“Seriously, you don’t even know me and you’ve been nothing but rude to me since I first spoke to you.”
He snorts.
“You’ve just made all these judgments on me based on nothing. I never even met you until a couple of days ago, you were rude to me, and you completely ignored me at that Liberty party. Don’t blame me just because you didn’t have someone to make out with.”
“Are you kidding me? You are unbelievable, do you know that?”
“You’re the one who has a problem with me for absolutely no reason.”
“You really think we’ve never seen each other out in public before?”
I throw my hands up. “I don’t know. How would I know?”
“I was the one who stopped you from faceplanting right after you’d hit on your ex’s best friend at that party a couple of weeks ago, right before you dragged his other friend into the bathroom.”
What?!
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
He doesn’t say anything else, just stands there waiting for me to figure it out.
Oh damn. Dammit, he’s right. That’s why he looks familiar. He’s the guy I fell over by in Aaron’s kitchen, the one who helped me steady myself.
Well, that’s embarrassing.
“Coming back to you?” he asks me dryly, guessing from the look on my face that it’s clicked with me.
“Yes, well thank you for that. I was having a bad night.”
“Yup. I saw.”
I really am never going to live that night down.
“Whatever. Let’s figure out a day to start our tutoring.”
“I told you, I’m not doing it.”
“Yes you are. We agreed!”
“Well we also agreed on a time after school last week and you never showed and haven’t spoken to me since.”
Shit.
Double, triple, quadruple shit. I did do that, didn’t I? We were supposed to meet in the library after school last week and I just went home to get ready for my date with Dan without a thought. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“That was the only day I don’t work right after school, and I wasted nearly half an hour of it waiting for you.”
Well now I feel terrible. “I really am sorry.”
He shrugs. “Too late. My time is precious, and you don’t get to waste it.” Then he swings his bag over his shoulder and strides off without giving me a second thought.
“Hey! Hey, stop!” I rush after him. “Wait.” I manage to catch up. “Being a little dramatic aren’t we?”
He shrugs, pushing his way through one of the side entrance doors then cutting across the grass toward the student parking lot, and I have to quicken my pace to keep up with him.
“I mean, you agreed. It’s pretty poor form if you back out of it now.”
He smirks. “Poor form? Some might think leaving someone waiting in the library after school for an hour is poor form.”
I scoff. If he thinks I’m going to buy that then he’s got another thing coming. “Okay, quit the bullshit. You did not wait for me for an hour. You just said it was half an hour.”
“I was there until after four. You can check with the librarian.”
“Even if I cared, I’d have better things to do than check with the librarian.”
He stops dead in his tracks and whirls to face me. “Even if you cared? Nice. That attitude you’re wearing is really helping me to change my mind.”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant I’m not going to go around chasing after you.”
“Really? Because it kind of looked like you chased after me out here.”
Boom.
I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m sorry, okay? Let’s just agree on a new time to meet up, you can explain calculus to me, and we can all move on.”
“You think I’m going to